TURKEY VULTURES, GLOBAL WARMING AND URBANIZATION.

On Turkey Vultures —flying bloodhounds—Are they more common due to global warming? Or is their increased presence simply, over development and over urbanization? 

Early in April (2023) I observed a Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) here on LI, Suffolk County, New York.  Recently I have seen at least one member of this species, regularly flying overhead, above the canopy of oaks and Pitch-pine in this north shore area.  They are a rare sight here, often only appearing in a few numbers much later in the summer.  I wondered what circumstances may have caused their attraction to this area,  and why so early in Spring? 

The species is easily identified. It is a big bird, bigger than a Red Tail hawk and smaller than an eagle, weighing between 4-5 pounds and with a wingspan on average of about 67 inches (1.8 meters). From the ground, its small head and wide black wings with silvery, elongate, patches on the undersides are distinctive. Unlike hawks and eagles,  its wings are held upward at a slight angle above the horizontal (dihedral). In flight they generally do not flap their wings, but prefer to soar, often slightly “rocking” left and right as they make graceful turns with wings fixed in a dihedral. 

The Turkey Vulture is a scavenger “par excellence”.  The species is unusual in that it locates its food by smell alone.  Its very well developed  olfactory sense is almost unique in the bird world.  To facilitate  this function, Turkey Vultures have large nostrils in the upper part of the beak which interconnect across the beak, (possibly to increase air flow).  Their sense of smell is further enhanced in that their brain has an unusually large olfactory lobe to interpret and detect faint odors.   It is claimed that they can scent  decaying flesh from miles away.     

Once while visiting a neighbor in rural St. John’s County, Florida, my host took me on a tour of his new property.  We walked out onto his entrance road where the asphalt  entrance drive encircled a 30 foot diameter, surface-water, recharge basin. Enclosed by a high brick wall, this ten feet deep feature was planted densely with Live Oak, Cabbage Palms and closely spaced  understory plants.  As we approached, I noted the distinct smell associated with the roadkill of a perhaps a raccoon, opossum or armadillo.   Apparently to my host’s embarrassment one of these critters had entered the recharge basin, fallen into the water and died there.   The vegetation was so dense there was no chance of observation of the source of the smell, either from the road or from above. But when I looked  overhead there, circling  directly above us were two Turkey Vultures, gliding  in a tight  circular pattern. I was amazed that they could find their food source so readily, even though their prey was completely hidden from view. Obviously they were using “sent location. My neighbor termed them just  “flying bloodhounds”. It is reported that they are attracted to the smell of ethyl mercaptan, a gas given off in the early stages of organic decay. This chemical was routinely added to natural gas pipelines and propane tanks to aid in detection of gas leaks (of a gas with little odor). It was soon revealed that when leaks occurred the scent attracted numbers of vultures to the compromised containers. 

Turkey Vultures are large birds which must stay aloft for long periods of time to find their prey. . But for a bird weighing about 4-5 pounds to do so would require great expenditures of muscular effort and enormous caloric input for this essential daily process,  if the heavy bird had to flap its wings constantly to remain aloft.  For all wild creatures to survive, they must master the the fine balance between the calories they consume (from their prey or food), and calories they expend to obtain and ingest that prey or food.  To overcome these exigences of caloric economy,  vultures have developed an highly efficient system of seeking out prey,  by keeping their wings fixed in place and soaring over long periods of time and over wide distances to locate widely dispersed food sources (roadkill) with little or no effort on their part.   

But to accomplish this feat, these large, heavy birds require unstable air conditions.  That is, that the lower levels of the air must be warmer than the levels  aloft.  In these atmospheric conditions air rises in what are termed thermal currents, or simply “thermals”.  Thermals are vertical currents of air which rise up over the sun-warmed earth of a plowed field, or that of an asphalt parking lot, or a complex of buildings with dark heat-absorbing roof materials-and other areas which absorb and reradiate solar or other forms of energy.  

Vultures use thermals to get aloft and remain there. They can go aloft on one thermal current and then take a long gently sloping glide path down in elevation toward the earth, until they encounter another thermal which they use to carry them aloft again.  In unstable air they can remain aloft almost all day and travel over long distances and never have to exert effort which would consume their bodies’ scarce stored calories. 

Turkey Vultures are not found in places where “thermals” are uncommon.  In the southern part of the USA, where the climate and latitude insure that the earth is heated effectively by the sun, (and they have tall trees for roosting) this species can survive all year long.  In the northern states (excluding Alaska) they generally arrive only in the summer months, and in places where topography, as well as natural and man made structures generate adequate thermal currents upon which they depend for survival.

Thus, my question above is: Why have they shown up here on Long Island in the early Spring, a time of the year when the earth is still cool and damp and few thermals occur?  But their observed regular presence indicates that for some reason local thermal currents have somehow reached a new level of occurrence sufficient for survival of Turkey Vultures. Are they the “canary in the mine” indicating a warming Earth?. 

Can this be attributed to “global warming” as so many other natural phenomena currently are..or can there be other causes? 

I suggest here that the argument for other possible causes or co-causes. Thermal activity can be increased as a result of deforestation.  Woodlands, here in suburbia are under constant threat of “clearing” for construction. These small forest areas are “heat sinks” which remain cooler than their surroundings, and in general do not generate thermal currents readily. 

Then too there is the inexorable suburban sprawl and expansion. Development of more and larger heat-absorbing and heat radiating shopping plazas with huge asphalt parking lots, couple that with more roads , more automotive traffic, more housing development with their dark colored asphalt roofs and heat spewing air conditioners and one can assume that these increase local atmospheric instability and more thermals and increasing areas for Turkey Vultures to exploit.  

All these increase ground heat encourage air instability and create thermal current development early in the Spring. Perhaps these —as well as —global temperature changes are encouraging Turkey Vulture arrival earlier in the Spring season than normal. 

PS. I have noticed a large number of Turkey Vultures congregating in and around the rapidly expanding complex at the Riverhead Shopping Malls. Turkey Vultures  are common there even in the winter.  Good thermals from the many buildings and shopping plazas.  increased road traffic which may generate more road kill, are all positive developments for this vulture. 

 

IT’S NOT CLIMATE, IT’S THE POPULATION EXPLOSION!!!

 IT’S NOT CLIMATE CHANGE IT’S THE POPULATION EXPLOSION STUPID!

 SOME GLOOMY THOUGHTS…

Heraclitus (535BC-475BC) the Greek natural philosopher from Ephesus (in modern-day Turkey) was the author of: “On Nature”. In this work  Heraclitus presages modern scientific thought when he claims that all of nature is ever changing and in constant flux. He wrote:  “the only constant is change” and “no man can step in the same river twice…for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man .” Modern science agrees with Heraclitus. 

Sadly, today  non-scientist radical, ideologues who obsess over climate-change ignore this 2500 year old tenet of the Earth.  They lack the concept of “deep time” and see the earth as a static unchanging rock-body, rather than a constantly evolving “living” planet, undergoing for the last 4.5 billion years of its history—constant change. 

Earth Natural Warming Process. 

The earth’s  atmosphere is in constant flux, its oceans in constant motion. Even the Atlantic ocean has not always existed.  It is just over 100 million years old and continues to widen. One hundred million years ago it looked like the Red Sea which is a new  new expanding “ocean”. The continents themselves are not fixed in place, but are sliding around over the earth’s surface at the rate at which your fingernails grow.  And as for the climate—the earth’s temperature regime is not constant either. Presently we are in an “interglacial” or a warming period —between glacial advances…when glaciers retreat. This process of advance and retreat has happened several times over in the last 2.5 million years at least.  We can term this process the earth’s natural warming process. 

The human genus itself (Homo) evolved over two million years ago during the beginning of the recent Pleistocene glacial epoch..And our own species, Homo sapiens, emerged only 200,000 years ago during the most recent glacial warming period, which saw the slow retreat of massive ice sheets which covered vast areas of the earth. That process of natural warming facilitated human expansion and has continued to this day.  

Seventeen thousand years ago the very place where I am writing this piece was at that time covered by a 500 meter thick  slab of glacial ice.   This ancient global warming —simply more evidence of Heraclitus’ change—is only the earth’s response to the ending of  last glacial epoch.  

Human Generated Global Warming

In truth the human hordes which now populate the planet —a single species and their domestic animals— now far outnumber any wild animal species.  Human behavior of altering their environment has added to the warming process. Humans unearth carbon, sequestered underground for tens or hundreds of millions of years. They bring this substance to the surface, and burn it to generate cheap energy. The oxidation products  of that burning process are dumped as a waste gas into the air. It accumulates and warms the atmosphere, altering the composition and temperature of the very air we breathe. This we term human generated global warming. 

Today’s humans tend to downplay or ignore the fact of the earth’s natural geologic warming and are obsessed only with human generated warming (it is considerable).  But this is wasted effort.   Our puny actions will not and can not return an earth in natural temperature flux, to the levels  of the 1950s,  or to some level we humans have decided on as “normal” and which some claim to be its “correct level”. Those erroneous  ideas are the result of holding to out-dated  humano-centric 18^th century concepts of nature as existing only to serve human needs and is unchanging and static. 

In fact, if we were to immediately stop the burning all fossil fuels today and revert to rubbing sticks together to cook our food and stave off winter chill, the earth continuing in its interglacial warming processes and global temperatures will continue to rise, glaciers retreat, and ocean-levles rise  (perhaps at a slower rate) but in accordance with its own time scale.  

Human population explosion.

The real problem we face is not “the climate”, but our massive human population explosion. Like the pedestrian who jumps aside to avoid the sidewalk bicyclist, but stumbles out into the deadly path of a bus—- population explosion is our immediate, ultimate and existential  problem.  

In 2022, the world’s humans —in pursuit of a modern comfortable life— emitted  more than 36.8 billion tonnes (metric tons) of energy-related carbon dioxide. The source of this pollution was the mining and production of fossil fuels, and of ubiquitous concrete. The fossil fuels are burned for industrial use, for sprawling urbanization, home construction, transportation, industrial agriculture, domestic heating and cooling.  And that amount of annual carbon release grows by about 1% annually.  (The USA alone released 5 billion tonnes of energy related carbon dioxide based on 2019 data). 

In 2022 the world population was estimated to have reached the 8 billion mark and continues to grow  at about 1.1% annually, or at present, at about 83 million more people per year.  

Thus the 36.8 billion tonnes of energy-related carbon which was added to the atmosphere each year is a direct result of the activities of the 8 billion humans who live on this planet. We calculate that each one of us is responsible for  4.6 tonnes of carbon per person/year (36.8 billion tonnes/ 8 billion people = 4.6 billion tonnes/billion people, or 4.6 tonnes per person/ per year.   That is: each human on this planet is responsible for nearly 5 metric tons of carbon per year. ( Note that one tonne =1000 kg or about 2200 lbs)

For the USA, our own 325 million inhabitants contribute about 5 billion tonnes of carbon annually or (5,000 million tonnes/325 million US population =15 tonnes per person/year ) or  3.2 times the global average, or 320% above the global average. We are indeed exceptional!

Since the world population is growing by about 83 million per year (or 1.1% per year) that means that each year —were we to stabilize our carbon usage and release  no more than was released  in 2022–the carbon load in the atmosphere per year would increase by about 381 million tonnes per year.  (83 million people added per year  x 4.6 tonnes per person  = 381). That is an increase of  about @ 5% annually. (381 million tonnes /8,000 million tonnes = 0.047 or 4.7 % or @5%). 

So just by simple population growth alone we are increasing our earth warming  carbon load in the atmosphere  by almost 5% annually.  

But carbon reduction goals (as per recent published criteria for carbon reduction) have been set at the Paris accords at  2.5% per year. That is only half of what simple population growth is causing. Any changes in our global footprint would have to be greater than that amount (5%) to have any impact on the total carbon.

With natural global warming (the earth is now in an interglacial warming period) , plus human generated warming, plus population growth (which each year adds an additional 5% more carbon)—-meeting the 2.5% goal of seem far beyond the realm of possibility.  We need a pragmatic approach.

Reforestation, deurbanization, decapitalization, deindistrialization and depopulation? CAN WE GO THERE?

Addressing climate change is not simple.  The five processes above would be difficult to introduce and maintain in the present global social and political climate.  Present efforts seem to be more religious  obsession and ideology rather than pragmatic.   It is apparent that with populations expanding explosively, meaningful  reduction in fossil fuel use will not have time to have significant effects on global warming.  Without massive and immediate alterations in the global economy and structure of society—such as: reforestation, deurbanization, decapitalization, deindistrialization and depopulation meaningful change is not likely to be globally instituted. But are we ready for these radical alterations. I think not.  

Since we will require adequate, affordable  energy resources to refit and adapt to a less carbon dependent and warmer global climate we  should be moving to maintain present fossil fuel production levels, rather than undermining them.  

But our most pressing threat is over-population. That decision can be made individually.

A return of the glacial age?

But the earth has its own time scale and changes in store …Perhaps as some glaciologists predict…rather than a warmer earth in our future —a conflation of natural processes, such  earth-orbital variations, combined with increases in felsic volcanism (ash causing a higher earth albedo), as well as melting of the Arctic ice cap which will open of the Arctic Ocean to warming Gulf Stream current's may all contribute to a cooling planet (as they did in the past)  —-and the growth and expansion anew of the continental glaciers. 

COMMON HENBIT: AN EARLY SPRING WEED

 April 4, 2023

On daily walks this time of year be on the lookout for Common Henbit one of our earliest booming weeds.

Common Henbit or Lamium amplexicaule, is a native of Europe, Asia and Africa. This member of the mint family is a low growing, late winter or very early spring purple-flowered weed whose flowers stand out sharply against the still drab brown of early spring waste places and poorly maintained lawns. This spring blooming weed survives in cool weather and shady places, and dies off as temperatures rise. 

The flowers  are arranged in whorls among the upper leaves. The leaves are opposite, about an inch across, rounded, coarsely lobed, bright green with prominent leaf veins. The upper leaves are directly attached to the square (in cross section) stem, the leaf having no “leaf stem” (petiole), while the lower leaves have long petioles. (The species name “amplexicaule” means:  “grasping stem“ from: amplexus = grasping + caule = stem ”). The purple or green square stem is also a clue to its relationship to other members of the mint family which all have this square stem feature. 

Its purple flower has five petals and  typical of the mint family, two are fused into an upper lobe and three fused into a longer, lower lobe, which at a lower level form the tubular base of the flower. The stamens are commonly four, with two longer and two shorter arranged against the upper flower lobe.  

The common name “Henbit”may refer to observations  that free range chickens foraging in weed fields often consumed this plant. As an early blooming plant Henbit is an important source of nectar and pollen for first emerging honeybees and bumblebees, and also provides a source of nectar to early arriving hummingbirds.  Its fibrous roots serve to anchor soils. Like other mints Henbit is edible. Unlike peppermint and other members of this family, it does not have a strong mint scent. Though it can be used much as peppermint is used for culinary purposes, rather than a minty sent and taste it is reputed to have a slightly sweet and peppery flavor (not tested or recommended by this author).

Purple Dead Nettle, Lamium purpureum  another mint family member, which looks much like Henbit but generally appears later in the season*, is of the same genera (Lamium), but unlike its close relative L. amplexicaule (above) it has triangular (rather than round) leaves which are attacjhed to the stem with petioles , and the upper leaves rather than green have a purple cast to them.

*Though Henbit is an earlier bloomer, this year, I observed on this date, several areas where Henbit and Purple Dead Nettle were growing side by side and both in bloom.  In 2023 by April 4, large swathes of walkway grassy margins were found to have extensive areas of  Purple Dead Nettle in bloom on this date intermixed with Hairy Bittercress (see below). While Henbit which was observed in bloom from late February and March was much less common. Perhaps the early and warm spring is the cause. 

BIDEN WEAPONIZES DOLLAR DRIVES WORLD TO ABANDON US RESERVE CURRENCY SYSTEM

 April 1, 2023

(A STORY THE US PRESS WILL NOT PRINT)

BIDEN WEAPONIZES DOLLAR: ENCOURAGES ABANDONMENT OF RESERVE CURRENCY STATUS

As a result of weaponization of the dollar to punish Russia and the sharp rise in the value of the dollar over the last decades…the world is moving away from the greenback as the world’s reserve currency. That is not a good sign for the US economy. (See Aljazera, March 7, 2023 “Will Russian sanctions dethrone the dollar” )

Since the end of WW II, the world has depended on the US dollar as its reserve currency. Reserve currencies help to “grease the skids” for international trade. A reserve currency  facilitates investment, paying international debts, and limits  “exchange-rate risk” for traders and investors. There are great advantages to having a reserve currency.  Foreign nations hold US dollars all over the world to conduct business, pay debts, and store wealth in a secure currency that will hold its value.  For these reasons dollars are in high demand. The advantage for the US governments comes with lower interest rates, high value of the dollar, and easy access to borrowed money.  

When Russia invaded the Ukraine in 2022, the Biden Administration, abandoned diplomacy , and instead, instituted a series of “sanctions” against Russia. The Biden team froze billions of Russian dollars held in reserve currency bank assets, and then as well, (the “nuclear option”) shut Russian banks out of SWIFT, (an international  money transfer system used by banks to facilitate international money transactions).  

The world business community favors stability, security and predictiveness in international monetary matters.  World business interests perceived the Biden Administration’s policy with trepidation. They viewed Biden’s acts as an abrogation of the responsibility of a major economic power to maintain stability, trust and order in the world economic system. The manner in which the  Biden Administration used its special reserve dollar  privilege , was viewed as dangerous and threatening. The term “weaponization of the dollar” is now used to described the US policy. The world business community responded to this existential  threat against the entire business and financial world with a move away from the dollar. 

Their reason was that if the USA could use its reserve dollar advantage  as a weapon in its political and economic war to deny Russia its own reserved dollars ($300 billion worth) it could do it to any one of the world’s smaller, less powerful nations, were they to fall afoul of the US administation. This Biden policy threatened the security and stability of international trade relations.

China and Russia are both targets of sanctions by the US,  and as a result have been in the forefront of those looking to end the dependence on the dollar.  China is slowly selling off its treasury notes. It has almost $900 billion dollars of US treasuries today, but this amount, the lowest it has had in recent history, is in regular decline. As China and others sell off treasury notes and convert into using other currencies those dollars return to the US to inflate our dollars, Inflation would get much worse than it is now. 

In fact, China has just recently (March 30,  2023) negotiated a deal with Brazil, (the largest economy in South America) to abandon the dollar and settle  trade and other debts with their own currencies—the Yuan and the Real.  A month earlier in February, China and Iraq revealed a deal in which Iraq will abandon the dollar in its sale of oil, and permit other trade with China in renminbi (Yuan).   Other nations such as Bangladesh, Shanghai, Uzbekistan, Kazakistan, Tajikistan Kyrgyzstan, and Saudi Arabia, have in recent months made similar deals to abandon the dollar and trade in Yuan and other currencies.      

But fear of sanctions and US retaliation are the most important, but not the sole reasons for abandoning the dollar in transactions.  The high cost of being forced to trade in dollars is also a factor. Since 2013, the dollar has risen by 30% in value against other currencies. Just over the last year, it has gained 10% in value. For countries that buy large quantities of food or fuel or other essentials from other nations,  their import costs have risen accordingly. Costs are higher since  they must first purchase high value dollars using their own currency, so as to to pay their trading nations in reserve dollars. It is a crazy system that simply increases the costs of anything they import by staggering amounts.  

The nations of the world are looking to abandon the dollar as a special reserve currency. Fear of the USA using the dollar as a political and economic weapon to retaliate and control smaller nations, as well as the  value of the dollar and rising import costs are making this huge change in US economic privilege a dire reality. 

Among all the other slings and arrows of “Biden World” we have suffered over the last two years,  this will hurt the long term economic situation of the US the most.  

We will not like the results of decline in value of the dollar, the higher inflation as dollars held abroad come home, , higher interest rates and costs to borrow money, will be the negative economic results of Biden’s weaponization of the dollar.