Some stellar fireworks will be visible in your skies tonight, November 17, 2010.
The Moon is in conjunction with Jupiter. The Leonid Meteor Shower will peak soon after the Moon and Jupiter set.
Oh, to be in the desert tonight, far away from the lights of the city!
Even in a city, the Moon and Jupiter should be clear, and near spectacular.
Things are great, if you’re looking up.
It won't be this spectacular -- this is a photo of the 1990 Moon/Jupiter conjunction (ICSTARS photo)
2 Comments | 
Astronomy, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Moon, Science | Tagged: Astronomy, geography, Jupiter, Leonid Meteor Shower, Moon, November 17 2010, Science | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
John Quiggin’s done with his book, Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us.
Cover of John Quiggin's Zombie Economics
Go buy a copy. You will be happy you did.
Today, at Crooked Timber he’s looking at zombie ideas he was sure would eventually go away — like the bizarre, false idea that a lot more DDT should be used to fight malaria.
Is Quiggin ever wrong?
3 Comments | Books, DDT, Economics, History, Politics, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Books, DDT, Economics, History, John Quiggin, Politics, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, Zombie Economics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
One of the key hoax points of the pro-DDT crowd claims that most early studies on the harms of DDT — from 1945 into the 1970s — must be dismissed because chemists then could not distinguish DDT from PCBs.
Chemically, were that the case at any point, modern methods of spectrophotometry would allow the retesting of tissues, or egg shells, or anything sampled years ago. Why not retest?
I stumbled into this interview with Art Cooley, one of the early activists with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) (now just “Environmental Defense”). In it, Cooley said that EDF had been able to establish that DDT can be distinguished from PCBs.
Which case is he talking about, in Wisconsin? What was its outcome? Which research papers, where, discuss how to tell DDT from PCBs? This appears to be one more point where the hoaxsters exploited a general lack of specific information about a case. What will the record show?
Climate Action Can’t Rest: Q&A with Art Cooley
August 12, 2010 | Posted by Sam Parry in climate action report
Art Cooley, one of EDF's founders, offers his perspective on the climate fight and the road ahead.
With the Senate apparently giving up on its efforts to pass a strong climate and energy bill this year, we took some time to talk with several EDF experts to help provide a broader perspective and describe some of the other important ways we are fighting to cut global warming pollution.
We begin this series with Art Cooley, who helped found EDF in 1967 to campaign against the use of DDT. Art remains on EDF’s board as a founding trustee.
Question: You helped found EDF more than 40 years ago. Can you tell us a bit about the early years and what EDF’s mission has been since?
We originally got started because we were concerned about the decline of ospreys on Long Island. We started by looking at the science and the case we put together — the effect on brown pelicans and peregrine falcons and bald eagles and ospreys — was compelling. It was DDT.
In one of our first cases in Wisconsin they tried to confuse the debate and tell us that we couldn’t differentiate between DDT and PCBs. Well, we plotted out evidence and showed that in fact yes we could tell the difference, and so weren’t confusing the effects from DDT with other chemicals.
That focus on science has always been central to our work. And getting the science right remains at the core of our mission today, which is why we are all so concerned about climate change.
10 Comments | History | Tagged: Art Cooley, DDT, Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental protection, History, PCBs, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Lancet is one of the premiere research journals in the world for all of science, but especially for issues of health and medicine.
Image from Lancet –
Mother and child under a mosquito bite-preventing bednet.
On October 29, 2010, Lancet published a special report, “Malaria Elimination.” Much science. Much history. No call for more DDT.
A plan for research is laid out. Plans to eradicate malaria from more than 90 nations are laid out, explained and debated. Calls for more research are made. Calls for disciplined action from nations and health care organizations, and donor organizations.
But no call for more DDT.
Go take a look at the issue. Several of the articles are available for no charge, out from behind the usual Lancet paywall.
Get the real science, real history, real policy. Environmentalists are not evil villains there. malaria is the villain in that story, and serious health care researchers and deliverers discuss serious methods to beat the disease. Consequently, DDT has only a bit part.
Resources:
8 Comments | Africa, Asia, DDT, Malaria, medicine, Research, Science | Tagged: Africa, Asia, DDT, Health care, History, Malaria, Medical Care, Research, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
People so wedded to a hoax, or just wrong, view of events cannot be swayed away from their convictions easily.
Elizabeth Whelan’s hoax science policy group, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), put out a press release taking note of the study published in Lancet that calls into question the count of malaria deaths in India promulgated by the World Health Organization (WHO). You remember, the study suggests the malaria death toll among adults in India may be as high as 200,000 annually, compared to the 15,000 estimated by WHO.
ACSH can’t resist the spin. Implicit the debunking may be, but the study thoroughly debunks ACSH’s claim that more DDT will help defeat malaria. India is the world’s greatest user of DDT, using more than all the rest of the world together. Clearly a surplus usage of DDT has not created the miracle end to malaria that ACSH and other hoaxsters claim it would.
Still, ACSH sticks to their views, even when those views are grossly wrong. ACSH said, “ACSH has called for resumed use of indoor residual spraying of small amounts of DDT to prevent mosquito bites, repel mosquitoes, and reduce malaria deaths.”
No word from India on whether it will dramatically reduce DDT use to meet ACSH’s call for “small amounts.”
ACSH’s press release calls attention to a Wall Street Journal Blog article describing WHO’s response to the Lancet-published study of India malaria deaths — WHO questions the “verbal autopsy” methodology, and says it stands by its estimates of malaria deaths in the nation:
“The new study uses verbal autopsy method which is suitable only for diseases with distinctive symptoms and not for malaria,” WHO’s India representative Nata Menabde said in an email statement Thursday.
The WHO says it takes into account only confirmed cases of malaria and surveys those using healthcare facilities.
Malaria symptoms include fever, flu-like illness and muscle aches. Malaria is endemic to parts of India, where many people live in mosquito-infested areas. Confirming the presence of malaria requires tests like the “Peripheral Smear for Malarial Parasite” and “Rapid Malaria Antigen”.
Lancet said the determinations made by its field researchers were reviewed by two of 130 trained doctors for all the 6,671 districts who determined whether or not the person had died from malaria.
The data concluded that 205,000 deaths before the age of 70, mainly in rural areas, were caused by malaria each year – 55,000 in early childhood, 30,000 among children ages five to 14 and 120,000 people 15 and older.
The WHO called for further review of the study.
“Malaria has symptoms common with many other diseases and cannot be correctly identified by the local population,” Dr. Menabde said, adding: “The findings of the study cannot be accepted without further validation.”
4 Comments | DDT, denialism, Health care, India, medicine, Research, Science, WHO - World Health Organization | Tagged: DDT, denialism, Health care, India, Malaria, medicine, Research, Science, World Health Organization | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
This is a story about the persistence of bad information, and about the flow of news and other new information.
At about the same time I was writing about the Lancet study on potential undercounting of malaria deaths in India, Debora McKenzie at New Scientist pored over the same article (maybe the same Bloomberg News piece), and reported it in greater detail than I did here. McKenzie’s piece is worthy of a read.
Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit
Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit picked up on McKenzie’s piece — but reflecting his pro-poison and anti-humanitarianism bias, he tacked on a gratuitous slap at health workers, scientists and governments who tried to eradicate malaria in the 20th century:
MALARIA KILLING MORE PEOPLE THAN WE THOUGHT?
Malaria has always been one of humanity’s biggest killers, but it may be far bigger than we realised. An unprecedented survey of the disease suggests that it kills between 125,000 and 277,000 people per year in India alone. In contrast, the World Health Organization puts India’s toll at just 16,000.
Other countries using similar accounting methods, such as Indonesia, may also be underestimating deaths from malaria. That means it could be killing many more than the WHO’s official estimate of nearly 1 million people a year worldwide, suggesting more money should be spent to fight it.
It’s too bad the malaria eradication efforts were allowed to fail.
“Allowed” to fail? Reynolds assumes someone wanted the program to fail? Reynolds assumes someone could have stopped the failure, other than the pro-DDT forces who overused the stuff and drove mosquitoes to evolve resistance, or other than the governments of Subsaharan Africa who could not mount massive health care campaigns due to the instability of their governments? It’s too bad the program failed — it was mighty ambitious. “Allowed to fail” is an undeserved slap at malaria fighters like Fred Soper.
This slip to finger-pointing is what I warned about in my post: Though India is the world’s greatest manufacturer of DDT, and though more DDT is used in India today than the rest of the world combined, someone will look at the undercount story, blame the imaginary ban on DDT, blame Rachel Carson (who never advocated a ban on DDT), and make some smug political snark.
Reynolds was pulled away from the snark, fortunately. Reader Kevin O’Brien wrote to Reynolds about the difficulties of beating any disease, using smallpox as his launching point. Beating smallpox was a massive effort, made easier by the fact that the pox resided only in humans, as opposed to the malaria parasite’s two-species life cycle. O’Brien’s missive to Reynolds, a few errors included, is the best commentary Reynolds has had on DDT and disease in some time.
One frequently-obnoxious blogger pulled back from the brink is not enough, though.
Andrew Bolt
Andrew Bolt jumped the shark at his blog for the Melbourne (Australia) Daily Sun. The headline for his post is inflammatory and wrong, and warns us that most of what Bolt writes will be wrong:
How many children did Carson’s green lies kill?
Foolish hope that DDT could be a magic bullet against malaria, like Bolt’s, helps frustrate workable plans to fight the disease. Policy makers being convinced that some political conspiracy keeps DDT from working to beat malaria, in effect kills children. Fighting malaria requires long, hard work, to bolster health care systems in entire nations, to accurately and quickly diagnose malaria, and to provide complete treatment to cure human victims. That work is hampered by policy makers and popular opinion who hold that DDT would be cheaper and quicker, and effective. Bolt takes any source, no matter how scurrilous, in his unholy condemnation of conservationists and scientists, especially Rachel Carson. His sole source to condemn Carson is a publication from the far, far-fringe.
How many children will Bolt’s brown lies kill? one could ask.
Watch. Advocates of poisoning Africa and Asia will claim scientists and environmental activists are somehow to blame for any underreporting, and they will call for more DDT use, claiming a ban has made India a refuge for malaria. Those reports will fail to mention India’s heavy DDT use already, nor will they suggest an ineffectiveness of the nearly-sacred powder.
Andrew Bolt, you’ve made me a prophet — a saddened and disappointed prophet. It’s good to see Glenn Reynolds step back from the brink of hysteria. It’s too bad Bolt took the plunge. Others will probably follow Bolt.
How far will the bad claims spread?
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, DDT, Health care, India, Journalism, Junk science, Malaria, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Accuracy, Andrew Bolt, DDT, Glenn Reynolds, Health care, India, Instapundit, Journalism, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Great mysteries of science, history and spirit call to us: How do the monarch butterflies do it?
Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) fly north from their enclave in Mexico every spring, stopping to lay eggs on milkweed plants. After a migration of several hundred miles, that first group that left Mexico dies off. Their offspring hatch in a few days, devour the milkweed, make a chrysalis, metamorphose into butterflies, then fly farther north, where they repeat their parents’ behavior: Lay some eggs, and die. Within three generations, they’ve spread north into Canada.
Inviting the monarchs in: You can see how Kathryn worked to attract butterflies. In this photo, you can see the butterfly weed (a milkweed), red Turk's cap, and blue ageratum especially for the monarchs.
Then the fourth generation does something so strange and wonderful people can’t stop talking about it: They fly back to Mexico, to the same trees their great-great-great grandparents left. There they sip some nectar, get some water, and spend a lot of time hanging in great globs, huddling over the winter, to start life for generations of monarch butterflies the next spring.
Sometimes in Texas in October, we can see clouds of monarch butterflies winging south. If we’re lucky, they stop to visit our backyards and gardens, and we might provide some water and nectar to urge them homeward. Kathryn, of course, plants the stuff the monarchs like, to help them, and to give us a chance to see them.
Monarch habitat in Mexico is under severe stress and threat. Late storms and early freezes decimated monarch populations over the last decade [yes, that’s the proper use of “decimated;” look it up]. Human plantings are more critical to the monarch butterflies than ever before.
Two years ago Kathryn and I spent a September morning outside the library at Lawrence University, in Appleton, Wisconsin, watching monarchs sip nectar from local flowers for their journey. Those same butterflies — we hope — passed through Texas a couple of weeks later.
Two weeks ago . . . well, see for yourself:
A monarch butterfly feeds on blue porterweed in Kathryn's garden, October 2010 - photo by Ed Darrell
. . . we're here with the camera, little guy, just open up those wings, please . . .
That's it! Beautiful! Have a safe trip, and come back next spring, will you?
Resources, more:
12 Comments | Biology, Botany, Entomology, Gardening, Geography - Physical, Natural history, Science, Travel, Wildflowers, Wildlife | Tagged: Biology, Botany, Butterfly Gardens, Entomology, Gardening, geography, Monarch Butterflies, Natural history, Nature, photography, Science, Travel, Wildlife | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Malaria hotspots in India. Image from Nature magazine, 2010. News report on Lancet study that suggests mortality from malaria in India may be significantly higher than WHO reports indicate.
Good news from the war on malaria has been that annual deaths are calculated to be fewer than 1 million annually, as low as 880,000 a year — the lowest human death toll from malaria in human history.
Researchers in India suggest that deaths there are grossly underreported, however — not the 15,000 estimated by the World Health Organization, but closer to 200,000 deaths a year, nearly 15 times as great.
Reading that news, DDT partisans might get a little race of the pulse thinking that this might improve the urgency for the case for using more DDT, as advocated in several hoax health campaigns and media, such as the recent film “3 Billion and Counting.”
The problem, though, is that India is one of the few places where DDT manufacturing continues today, and India is one of the nations where DDT use is relatively unregulated and heavy. In short, if DDT were the miracle powder it’s claimed to be, any finding that malaria deaths are 15 times greater than reported by WHO is nails in the coffin of DDT advocacy.
Researchers based their estimate on interviews with family members of more than 122,000 people who died between 2001 and 2003. The numbers “greatly exceed” the WHO estimates of 15,000 malaria deaths in India each year, the researchers wrote in the study, published today in the journal The Lancet.
“It shows that malaria kills far more people than previously supposed,” said one of the study authors, Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, in a statement. “This is the first nationwide study that has collected information on causes of death directly from communities.”
Remote regions may have an undocumented malaria burden, because conventional methods of tracking the disease are flawed, according to the authors. In India, the government malaria data, which is used by the Geneva-based WHO, only counts patients who had tested positive for the disease at a hospital or clinic. Others who died of symptoms closely resembling the malady but didn’t get a blood test aren’t included, co-author Vinod Sharma of the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi said in an interview today.
The lack of accurate data may hinder efforts by governments and aid organizations to provide diagnosis and treatment to the population at risk, the authors said.
Watch. Advocates of poisoning Africa and Asia will claim scientists and environmental activists are somehow to blame for any underreporting, and they will call for more DDT use, claiming a ban has made India a refuge for malaria. Those reports will fail to mention India’s heavy DDT use already, nor will they suggest an ineffectiveness of the nearly-sacred powder.
The article in the Lancet became available on-line on October 21 — it’s a 4.5 megabyte .pdf document: “Adult and child malaria mortality in India: a nationally representative mortality survey.” A team of researchers is listed as authors of the study: Neeraj Dhingra, Prabhat Jha, Vinod P Sharma, Alan A Cohen, Raju M Jotkar, Peter S Rodriguez, Diego G Bassani, Wilson Suraweera,Ramanan Laxminarayan, Richard Peto, for the Million Death Study Collaborators.
Accurate counts of infections and deaths provide essential information for effective programming of the fight against the disease. Researchers point no particular fingers, but make the case in the article that better methods of counting and estimating malaria deaths must be found.
There are about 1·3 million deaths from infectious diseases before age 70 in rural areas in which fever is the main symptom. If there are large numbers of deaths from undiagnosed and untreated malaria in some parts of rural India then any method of estimating overall malaria deaths must rely, directly or indirectly, on evidence of uncertain reliability from non-medical informants and, although our method of estimating malaria mortality has weaknesses, indirect methods may be even less reliable. The major source of uncertainty in our estimates arises from the possible misclassifi cation of malaria deaths as deaths from other diseases, and vice versa. There is no wholly satisfactory method to quantify the inherent uncertainty in this, and indeed the use of statistical methods to quantify uncertainty can convey a false precision. However, even if we restrict our analyses to deaths immediately classifi ed by both physician coders as malaria, WHO estimates (15 000 deaths per year at all ages)1 are only one-eighth of our lower bound of malaria deaths in India (125 000 deaths below the age of 70 years; of which about 18 000 would have been in health-care facilities).
Our study suggests that the low WHO estimate of malaria deaths in India (and only 100 000 adult malaria deaths per year worldwide) should be reconsidered. If WHO estimates of malaria deaths in India or among adults worldwide are likely to be serious underestimates, this could substantially change disease control strategies, particularly in the rural parts of states with high malaria burden. Better estimates of malaria incidence and of malaria mortality in India, Africa, and elsewhere will provide a more rational foundation for the current debates about funding for preventive measures, about the need for more rapid access to malaria diagnosis, and about affordable access in the community to effective antimalarial drugs for children and adults.
More:
111 Comments | Africa, DDT, Health care, India, medicine, Research, Science, World Health Organization (WHO) | Tagged: Africa, DDT, Health care, India, Malaria, medicine, Research, Science, The Lancet, WHO, World Health Organization | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Greg Marley’s new book on mushrooms is out, and there is a launch party set for October 30, in Rockport, Maine.
Can you be there?
Book Release Party and Mushroom Talk
- Cover of Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares, by Greg Marley
Saturday, October 30 from 4-6:00 pm
at Farmers Fare on Route 90 in Rockport [Maine]
Light refreshments served and beverages availableChanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares: The Love, Lore and Mystique of Mushrooms
Welcome a new book by Greg Marley, celebrating the wonder and mystery of mushrooms. Enjoy a readable, captivating and informative collection of great mushroom stories. From world-class edibles (with recipes) to the most deadly, learn about the mushrooms in your neighborhood and how to invite them into your life, or even how to grow your own.
Hey, if you’re in the neighborhood, drop in.
2 Comments | Biology, Books, Food history, Science | Tagged: Biology, Books, Chanterelle Dreams Amanita Nightmares, food, Greg Marley, Mushrooms, Mycology, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
One of the most frequent hoax charges against Rachel Carson claims that she didn’t base Silent Spring on research. Greater hoaxers claim that there is little or no evidence of harm to birds from DDT.
Rachel Carson’s book stirred controversy, as shown in newspaper headlines
These critics forget history, or they try to cover it up so you won’t know any better. Carson provided more than 50 pages of citations to peer-reviewed research and communications with leading scientists in ornithology and chemistry about DDT and the damage it does.
Carson’s deep research won acknowledgment from the U.S. Department of the Interior, in this 1962 speech before the Audubon Society meeting in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the Special Assistant Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife Robert M. Paul.
Paul told the birders that Interior was proud of the fact that so much of the research in the book relied on Interior’s research, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:
In addition, we are proud that so much of ‘Silent Spring“ is based on Fish and Wildlife Service research. And, with no modesty at all, we like to point out that Miss Carson is nobly carrying on a tradition that employees of the Department of the Interior, beginning with Walt Whitman nearly a century ago, have written some of the Nation’s most important books.
That’s quite the compliment to Carson, being compared even distantly to Walt Whitman. It’s also a helluva brag for USFWS.
It’s also a 30-second response to the false charge that Carson’s work was not research based, or that research did not show DDT damage to wildlife.
Paul spoke to the Audubon Society about work to set up and operate the Federal Pest Control Board.
A .pdf of the speech can be found at the website for Interior, in a compilation of information from Interior about DDT between 1945 and 1998. Full text below the fold.
4 Comments | Bird Watching, History, Ornithology, Rachel Carson, Science, Wildlife | Tagged: 1962, Audubon Society, Bird Watching, DDT, Department of Interior, History, Ornithology, Pesticides, Rachel Carson, Robert M. Paul, Science, Silent Spring, US Fish and Wildlife Service, USFWS, Wildlife | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Rats. On October 14 I missed noting the anniversary of Chuck Yeager’s great feat, breaking the sound barrier in level flight.
BOOM! Day.
Greg Laden’s blog reminded me, “Happy Anniversary, the Breaking of the Barrier.” Below, what I wrote in 2007, mostly still accurate.
_____________
Panorama of the Mountains noted the 60th anniversary of the first known faster-than-sound flight by a human — October 14, 1947. Test pilot and all-around good guy Chuck Yeager did it.
Bell X-1 displayed at the National Air and Space Museum
This is a great post-World War II, Cold War story of technology that should pique interest in the time and the events for many students. For a 90 minute class, a solid lesson plan could be developed around the science and technology of the flight (yes, even in history — this is key stuff in the development of economics, too). The physics of sound, a brief history of flight and aircraft, the reasons for post-war development of such technologies, the political situation: There are a dozen hooks to get into the topic. Fair use would cover showing a clip from “The Right Stuff” about the flight, and there are some dramatic clips there. (The movie is 3 hours and 13 minutes; great stuff in a format too long for classroom use. Is there any possibility your kids would read the Tom Wolfe book?)
When will someone – the Air Force? NASA? an aircraft company? — put together a DVD with authorized film clips from the newsreels and the movie, and suggested warm ups and quiz questions?
Back in the bad old days one of my elementary school teachers did an entire morning on the speed of sound, aircraft engineering, and the history of faster-than-sound flight. I learned the accurate way to measure the distance to lightning by counting seconds to the thunder (it’s about a mile for every 5 seconds, not a mile for every second, as our school-yard lore had it).
Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager at the C. R. Smith Museum at American Airlines HQ, July 25, 2010. Photo by Ed Darrell
This program, to fly at the speed of sound, at what is now Edwards Air Force Base changed the way science of flight is done in the U.S. Yeager led the group of Air Force pilots who proved that military pilots could do the testing of aircraft; the project proved the value of conducting research with experimental aircraft on military time. The methods developed for testing, evaluating, redesigning and retesting are still used today. The drive for safety for the pilots also grew out of these early efforts at supersonic flight.
Yeager’s flight came when technology was cool, not just for the virtual reality role playing games (RPGs), which were still decades in the future, but because it was new, interesting, and it opened a world of possibilities. We all wanted to fly airplanes, especially small, fast airplanes. 
A sonic boom over southern Idaho produced a couple dozen calls to the local police and fire departments (long before 911 emergency calling systems), and a couple of paragraphs in the local newspaper.Later, when we moved to Utah County at the foot of Mt. Timpanogos, we kids relished the flights of fighter jets at 6,000 or 7,000 feet above MSL on their way to or from Hill AFB in Ogden, only a thousand feet or so above our heads in those mountain valleys.
Whether authorized to fly them or not, the fighter jocks recruited us kids with their ground-hugging forays. And if one jet occasionally passed the speed of sound, the school bus-stop would buzz with it for a couple of days, as we tried to determine whether anybody ever really lost a window to such fun and excitement as a sonic boom. We could hardly wait to be the pilots of those airplanes, giving a start and a thrill to housewives across America who worried their replica Ming vases and picture windows would crash to smithereens.
Supersonic transport excited me then, and still does. As a lover of the environment, perhaps I should have stood firmly against supersonic flights of the British-French Concord over the U.S., but I hoped a compromise could be reached. New York to Los Angeles in two hours seemed like a good idea to me at the time, and it still does. The U.S. legislated ban on supersonic passenger flights probably doomed the idea of supersonic transport. Boeing dropped its plans to build a competitor to the Concord. The Concord itself never got the support it needed to continue production and refinement of the idea. By the time the Concord was retired in October 2004, it was 50-year-old technology.
I wondered at the time what would have happened had research on passenger supersonic flight continued. Shutting off technology is a strange thing. Steam engine technology was poised to make a great leap forward in the early 20th century, some argue. Diesel and gasoline engine sales blocked the leap, especially the creation of the Diesel-electric railroad locomotive engine.
But make no mistake about it: The Concord was fun. My friend Perry W. Buffington — as amiable and useful a traveling companion as is known in the modern world — found a fantastic fare for a Concord flight for us over the Christmas-New Year’s holidays, 1978 and 1979. We flew to London on a Delta L-1011 on Christmas night; we spent a week in London getting cheap tickets to great shows (the Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker, featuring a kid I knew from Spanish Fork, Utah; Pirates of Penzance at D’Oyly Carte; Evita in the first run, as I recall; a great revival of Oliver! Great stuff, cheap tickets). Then, to cap it off, the Concord from London to New York. Mach 2, on January 1.
It snowed record depths in all of southern England. On New Year’s Eve day, we skated the snow-packed streets to Harrod’s for last minute souvenir shopping, and bumped into Lauren Bacall. Then we sat in the bar of the hotel and watched the news reports of how the entire country was shut down by the snow, including the British Railroad. Our flight out seemed to be due a delay, at least. But we got a call from British Airways confirming the flight, later that night. So on January 1 we got a snowcat — not really, just a brave taxi — to the downtown check-in office of BA.
Then the show kicked in. The agent checking us in took our bags, reached into a drawer and pulled out a roll of pound notes. Without breaking his conversation with us, he beckoned over a woman who was helping passengers onto the shuttle bus to Heathrow, handed her the roll of bills and said simply, “Concord for these gentleman.” She sprinted to the curb outside and hailed a taxi. The agent had called the airport and informed us that while nothing else had flown, “The Concord will depart on schedule. Thank you for flying British Air — your taxi is waiting.” The woman at the curb held the door for us — no bus shuttle for Concord passengers!
The taxi rocketed to Heathrow. I don’t know how much BA paid, but the driver was extremely happy to move us at extreme speeds over slippery roads.
Concord waiting lounges provided the best amenities. Separated from even First Class lounges, the free champagne, and any other liquor, was served on the ground as well as in the air. For morning departures, a chef in the lounge created elaborate egg dishes to order, for breakfast.
Flying the Concord was always a celebrity experience. The festive feeling of our New Year’s Day flight zoomed considerably when Lauren Bacall breezed into the waiting room. (The only other time I got into a Concord lounge was at Dulles a few years later; Ray Charles checked in for the flight. He asked for a window seat.) We watched a television news report that all flights at Heathrow were delayed by the snow as we got the announcement the Concord was ready to board, on time. If our flight wasn’t the only flight leaving Heathrow that day, it was definitely the first. “Snow doesn’t bother the Concord,” one agent explained.
Supersonic flight passenger jets present special problems to air traffic control, especially with their speed. Plus, they fly better where the air is thinner. So instead of the normal 30,000 to 45,000 feet altitude of commercial airliners, Concords flew at about 70,000 feet. This becomes clear to a passenger on take off: Concords get off the ground, and then take a radically steeper climb that, from the inside, feels like going straight up. At cruising altitude, at about noon, a passenger looking out the window can look up to see the blue sky disappearing into darkness (a night flight with the Aurora Borealis must have been some great spectacle).
Concord’s cabin was not spacious. It held 100 passengers, a bit smaller than a modern 737. The food service was divine, with plenty of stewards on hand to attend to passengers. Among the best lamb chops I’ve ever had (and mind you, I come from sheep country). Complimentary champagne, wine, and cigars — “not Cuban, I’m sorry,” the steward explained. “U.S. rules.”
Sit back, sip the champagne, or puff a cigar and sip the port, and watch the Machmeter: “0.5 . . . 0.7 . . . 0.9 . . . 1.0 (Mach 1, the speed of sound).” The ride, smooth as it was, got a lot smoother. The entire aircraft was quieter. “1.3 . . . 1.7 . . . 2.0.” Twice the speed of sound is half as scary as Mach 1, once you’re already moving so fast.
Two hours from Heathrow to JFK. We flew faster than the time zones changed, landing a couple of hours earlier than our departure. Time travel!
(The week in London, airfare there, and the Concord back, was under $1,500 in 1978. Inflation affected the prices before the Concord retired.)
Two in my immediate family have flown faster than sound. My brother, Wes, flew F-4s. And champagne and steward service notwithstanding, he had the much better deal. He did it more often, and he had the stick.
Chuck Yeager did it first, in level flight (there is some conjecture that a British pilot had done it earlier, in a dive — but he didn’t recover from the dive).
How best to commemorate breaking the sound barrier? Do it again!
Astronauts Chuck Yeager and Dave Scott, with their co-pilots, prior to the 60th anniversary sound-barrier breaking flight, 2007 Edwards AFB
Edwards Air Force Base, September 21, 2007 – General Yeager flew a US Air Force F-16 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Breaking the Sound Barrier (October 14, 2007), the 60th anniversary of the United States Air Force (September 18, 2007) and 65 years of General Yeager flying in military cockpits. Yeager was part of a flight of four planes; two F-16’s with Gen. Chuck Yeager and Maj. Gen. Joe Engle aboard, and two T-38’s carrying F-15 pilot Fitz Fulton, NASA Astronaut Col. Dave Scott, and Commander Curt Bedke. Yeager and Engle’s F-16’s broke the sound barrier high above the Base Operations Center – a double sonic boom, then the four planes executed a slow straight through pass, pitched out, landed, and taxied up to the hanger where the 2007 Air Force Ball was about to begin, attended by more than 1,000. Hundreds of ball guests, in gowns, tuxedoes, and dress blues, were assembled to greet the flyers, who snapped on black bowties and strolled into the ball wearing their flight suits. Gen. Yeager was honored at the dinner with a 60th Anniversary Sound Barrier Busting cake.
Additional resources:
1 Comment | A Good Story, Airplanes, Heroes, History, Science, Travel | Tagged: Airplanes, Bell X-1, Chuck Yeager, Heroes, History, Science, Travel, U.S. Air Force | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Our internet’s best expert in bedbugs, Bug Girl, recently featured another post relating how DDT drove evolution of bedbugs, so that bedbugs are no longer susceptible to DDT. You should go read what Bug Girl said.
And you can view the video here, too; let’s spread the word, eh?
As Bug Girl describes it:
I discovered that bed bug evolution–specifically resistance to pesticides–was also the subject of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center‘s podcast this month. A FASCINATING interview with one of the grand old men of evolutionary genetics, James Crow. He worked on DDT resistance back in the late 40s and 50s.
Watch, and increase your knowledge.
3 Comments | Biology, DDT, Evolution, History, Science | Tagged: bedbugs, Biology, Bug Girl, DDT, Evolution, History, Pesticides, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
From America.gov, the real story of Rachel Carson, in less than two minutes:
More:
1 Comment | DDT, Environmental protection, History, History images, Natural history, Rachel Carson, Science, Video and film | Tagged: DDT, Environmental protection, History, History images, Natural history, Nature, Rachel Carson, Science, video | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
John Mashey assembled a massive document that nails down the case that bad science and politics make the complaints against scientists and the science that indicates global warming occurs, and can be attributed to greenhouse gases. It is a scandal, though it’s unlikely to be reported that way.
Mashey’s entire paper — and it’s very, very large — is published at Deep Climate.
Mashey’s paper indicts staff work done for Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas — not that any of the voters in Barton’s district will let this major breach of ethics sway their votes, but those who want to vote against him can be gratified that they are on the moral side of the ballot.
This report offers a detailed study of the “Wegman Report”: Edward J. Wegman, David W. Scott, Yasmin H. Said, “AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORT ON THE ‘HOCKEY STICK’ GLOBAL CLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION”(2006).
It has been key prop of climate anti-science ever since. It was promoted to Congress by Representatives Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield as “independent, impartial, expert” work by a team of “eminent statisticians.” It was none of those.
A Barton staffer provided much of the source material to the Wegman team. The report itself contains numerous cases of obvious bias, as do process, testimony and follow-on actions. Of 91 pages, 35 are mostly plagiarized text, but often injected with errors, bias and changes of meaning. Its Bibliography is mostly padding, 50% of the references uncited in the text. Many references are irrelevant or dubious. The team relied heavily on a long-obsolete sketch and very likely on various uncredited sources. Much of the work was done by Said (then less than 1 year post-PhD) and by students several years pre-PhD. The (distinguished) 2nd author Scott wrote only a 3-page standard mathematical Appendix. Some commenters were surprised to be later named as serious “reviewers.” Comments were often ignored anyway. People were misused.
The Wegman Report claimed two missions: #1 evaluate statistical issues of the “hockey stick” temperature graph, and #2 assess potential peer review issues in climate science. For #1, the team might have been able to do a peer-review-grade statistical analysis, but in 91 pages managed not to do so. For #2, a credible assessment needed a senior, multidisciplinary panel, not a statistics professor and his students, demonstrably unfamiliar with the science and as a team, unqualified for that task. Instead, they made an odd excursion into “social network analysis,” a discipline in which they lacked experience, but used poorly to make baseless claims of potential wrongdoing.
In retrospect, the real missions were: #1 claim the “hockey stick” broken and #2 discredit climate science as a whole. All this was a facade for a PR campaign well-honed by Washington, DC “think tanks” and allies, underway for years.
Now, if only Mashey had some e-mails stolen from Joe Barton, we could get some traction on the issue, eh? ::wink-wink, nudge-nudge::
One may wonder what it will take to rehabilitate the skeptical side of the debate, to the point that they contribute more than mau-mauing.
Mashey’s paper makes that case that Joe Barton worked hard to pull off a great, hoaxed political smear, with a high degree of success. Who will have the backbone to do anything about it? Global cooling will proceed to the next ice age before any Republican shows backbone, I predict.
But, how long before the Fort Worth Star-Telegram or the Dallas Morning News picks up the story?
Other Texas bloggers? Anyone?
It’s not an air-tight legal brief (I could quibble with some of the legal material), but in a better world, a world where politicians actually do good politics and public servants do public service, the House Rules Committee and Ethics Committee would be reading Mashey’s piece, and asking pointed questions. U.S. attorneys in Washington, D.C., and the Northern District of Texas, would also be downloading Mashey’s piece, and puzzling it out. Journalists in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Galveston and Houston in Texas, and Washington, D.C., and New York, would also be poring over the piece. Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia would also be paying attention to it, if he were concerned about justice.
More (watch for updates):
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Clean Air Act, Climate change, climate_change, Current History, Hoaxes, Political Smear, Politics, Scandals, Science, Texas | Tagged: Accuracy, Climate change, Climate Science, Global warming, Green Politics, Hoaxes, Hockey Stick graph, John Mashey, Political Smear, Politics, Rep. Joe Barton, scandal, Science, U.S. House of Representatives, Wegman Report | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Delingpole: Wrong and bitter on DDT
November 21, 2010The Daily Telegraph’s James Delingpole got suckered by the anti-Rachel Carson propaganda, and wrote a bitter piece complaining about how environmentalists are ruining the environment and people’s lives (double whammy: environmentalists worry about people over profits, and the environment over corporations, so Delingpole hoped to tweak ’em at both ends). Lots of discussion, too much to read and most of it nasty and off target.
It was a smaller part of Delingpole’s generally anti-science, contrary-to-fact rant about global warming.
Chris Goodall fixed all of Delingpole’s errors on DDT at Carbon Commentary.
Being pro-DDT has become as religious an exercise as being for creationism taught in public schools. There’s no good evidence to support the point, but there are a tiny handful of people who are gullible enough to spread whatever they say. That tiny handful of advocates never gets the facts on their side, nor they on the side of the facts, but they appear deluded enough that they get their panties in a wad if you point out that their claims are false. “I’m not a liar!” they’ll retort with indignation good enough to make them rivals of the Portugal soccer squad’s acting, or just crazy enough to fail to recognize their errors.
And so the falsehoods spiral on virally.
Rachel Carson’s ghost should get busier. DDT can’t stop malaria, and now rarely slows it at all. Rachel Carson was right — and had we listened in 1962, malaria might be a lot less prevalent today.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.