Preparing for food shortages during disasters

In yesterday's Nourish entry, I reported on the possibilitty of a global food shortage by 2050 and what could be done about it.  It turns out we don't have to wait 36 years for a food shortage.  One could happen any time there's a large enough natural disaster as Bob Norton of Auburn University described on April 3, 2014 in Food Defense Begins with Food Intelligence.

Consumers have largely lost an understanding of the traditional sources of food (such as farms, fields, ranches and orchards) and now tend to think of food’s origin as the grocery store or the fast-food restaurant. America has moved so far away from its agrarian past that most people cannot produce for themselves even the most simply grown foods.

Consumers need to understand the complexities of modern food production so they can prepare for disruptions caused by natural disasters or terrorist attacks. This can be accomplished in part by better understanding how food corporations plan for contingencies and then applying those lessons at the household level.

The average large city in the United States contains about three days’ supply of food, smaller communities often even less. Should the supply chain be disrupted, a readily available alternative supply might not exist. Some people think the government would step in to provide necessities in an emergency, but countless cases—including the disasters caused by tornadoes in the Oklahoma City region last year—have proven that the government is only marginally effective in providing even short-term solutions. Like companies, individuals should always consider food disruption as a distinct possibility when an emergency looms.

After the Oklahoma tornadoes and Hurricane Sandy, some people actually did go hungry, some for several days, because no one could get through the debris to offer assistance. This is one reason the Department of Homeland Security recommends that all households store at least a three-day supply of nonperishable food.
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Emergencies cause incredible amounts of stress, which may naturally depress appetites. It is important to choose food products that will provide sufficient nutrition while proving palatable enough to encourage consumption. Some food products require water in their preparation, and water is a key ingredient for human survival. Food and water supplies have to be kept close by, so that in an emergency both are readily available.  Prepare for a longer duration emergency and you will have sufficient capacity to help other family and friends, should an emergency be of shorter duration.  In this way neighbors can look out for neighbors when roads are impassible and government assistance will be delayed.
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Communities made up of households that understand and practice food security are communities less likely to experience widespread food emergencies in the face of natural- or terrorist-related disasters. Food-secure households make food-secure neighborhoods, which in turn make food-secure communities, which make food-secure regions and a food-secure nation.

Read the rest of the article at the link to get advice for communities and companies.

Fortunately, this year's hurricane season will be less likely to produce a Sandy or Katrina, as North Carolina State University reported Expect Relatively Quiet Hurricane Season, NC State Researchers Say on April 16, 2014.

The 2014 Atlantic hurricane season will be less active than in the past 20 years, but still in line with overall averages from 1950 to the present, according to researchers at North Carolina State University.

Eight to 11 named storms should form in 2014 in the Atlantic basin, which includes the entire Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, according to Dr. Lian Xie, professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences (MEAS), and collaborators Dr. Montserrat Fuentes, professor of statistics, Marcela Alfaro-Cordoba, graduate research assistant in statistics and Bin Liu, research assistant professor in MEAS. This number is slightly lower than – but within the margin of error for – the (1950-2013) 63-year average of 10.8 named storms.

Of those named storms, four to six may grow strong enough to become hurricanes, and one to three may become major hurricanes.

That's good news.  Just the same, be prepared.

Happy Star Wars Day from North Star and NASA

As I wrote last Star Wars Day:

To celebrate Star Wars Day, I'm going to be a good environmentalist and recycle.

I have one final piece of Star Wars music to play. On their YouTube channel, DCI Fan Network featured one of the two drum and bugle corps I marched with, the 1978 North Star, as the corps for Star Wars Day.

May the 4th be with you!
Now, a video from this year: A Star Wars Day Message from NASA

In celebration of Star Wars Day, NASA flight engineer Rick Mastracchio hopes to deliver a special message from the International Space Station. Little does he know, however, that the Empire plans to jam his transmissions. Thankfully, R2-D2 is on the case.

I'll be back with more Star Wars Day entries later, just as I did last year.

100% of California in drought

I've been neglecting to follow up on the California drought since I last mentioned it in Weather and the economy for February 2014.  That's despite the promise I made in Lady Gaga does a water conservation PSA and other drought news.  To remedy my neglect, here's the lead story from Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (100% of California in drought) on Daily Kos.

L.A. Times: Drought covers 100% of California for first time in 15 years
By Jason Wells
April 25, 2014, 6:53 a.m.

A prolonged period of below-average rainfall has put the entire state of California under some level of drought, ranging in severity from moderate to exceptional, for the first time in 15 years.

The latest drought monitor released by the National Climatic Data Center this week shows that the entire state is under moderate drought conditions, but within that map, 76.6% of the state is experiencing extreme drought conditions, and for 24.7% of the state, the level of dryness is "exceptional."

During the same period last year, none of the state was considered to be under extreme or exceptional drought conditions, and just 30% fell under the "severe" category, according to the assessment released Thursday.

The drought is so bad that the first major fire of the season has already been mostly contained, as Jonathan Lloyd and Christina Cocca of NBC Los Angeles reported yesterday in Firefighters Make Good Progress on Fire in San Bernardino National Forest.

All evacuations were lifted and schools had reopened as firefighters got a handle on the blaze

Firefighters made good progress Friday on the 2,190-acre brush fire in a San Bernardino County community.

The blaze, dubbed the Etiwanda Fire, was 67 percent contained as of Friday night. All evacuations had been lifted one night earlier.

The fire broke out at 8 a.m. at the base of the San Bernardino National Forest 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. The fire grew to 200 acres by noon, quadrupled in size within a few hours and had burned through 1,000 acres of brush by that afternoon.

That's 8 A.M. Wednesday, as The Weather Channel notes in Southern California Wildfire Only Smoldering.

Winds in the area below the San Bernardino National Forest were around 15 mph Thursday night, with 25-mph gusts — a far cry from the 70-mph gusts a day earlier.

The Etiwanda fire had started in the San Bernardino Mountains near Rancho Cucamonga Wednesday morning, and Santa Ana winds fed the fire and pushed smoke into nearby neighborhoods.

About 1,600 homes were evacuated Wednesday, but families were allowed to return home for the night. Officials did urge people in some northern neighborhoods of Rancho Cucamonga to leave voluntarily if they felt threatened, said Chon Bribiescas, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

Fire season in southern California is now starting in April.  Last year, it started in May.  Welcome to the 400 ppm world.

Asteroids from Mars and Earth from space in this week's space news leftovers

It's time to be a good environmentalist and reuse the space news leftovers meme.  This week, after sharing the best of last week's space news from Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (100% of California in drought) in Nourish: Growing lettuce on the ISS, Large meteor explosions more common than thought, and Earth Day on and above the planet, I still have a full meal of leftovers to serve before I collect this week's space news.  Nourish your curiosity (or be nourished by Curiosity, as the case may be) on them, beginning with NASA via Science Daily: Asteroids as seen from Mars -- A Curiosity rover first published April 24, 2014.

A new image from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is the first ever from the surface of Mars to show an asteroid, and it shows two: Ceres and Vesta. These two -- the largest and third-largest bodies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter -- are the destinations of NASA's Dawn mission. Dawn orbited Vesta in 2011 and 2012, and is on its way to begin orbiting Ceres next year. Ceres is a dwarf planet, as well as an asteroid.

Here's the image.


Cool.

That's the most recent news.  For what's still to come, JPL/NASA presents LDSD: We Brake for Mars.

NASA tests a supersonic parachute under Mars-like conditions for future exploration.

Follow over the jump for Earth from space and space research that helps people on Earth.

Nourish: Global food shortage by 2050

For today's entry on this month's theme, I return to this blog's original purpose of examining possible causes of civilizational collapse and what can be done to prevent or delay them.  I begin with Texas A&M reporting on April 18, 2014 (updated April 23, 2014) that Food shortages could be most critical world issue by mid-century.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The world is less than 40 years away from a food shortage that will have serious implications for people and governments, according to a top scientist at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“For the first time in human history, food production will be limited on a global scale by the availability of land, water and energy,” said Dr. Fred Davies, senior science adviser for the agency’s bureau of food security. “Food issues could become as politically destabilizing by 2050 as energy issues are today.”
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He said the world population will increase 30 percent to 9 billion people by mid-century. That would call for a 70 percent increase in food to meet demand.

“But resource limitations will constrain global food systems,” Davies added. “The increases currently projected for crop production from biotechnology, genetics, agronomics and horticulture will not be sufficient to meet food demand.”

That's the problem.  The next week on April 21, 2014, Texas A&M followed up with a possible solution in President Obama supports biotechnology in letter to Dr. Norman Borlaug’s granddaughter.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Barack Obama, in a recent letter to Julie Borlaug, granddaughter of the late Dr. Norman Borlaug, “father of the Green Revolution,” showed his strong support for continuing Borlaug’s legacy of using of scientific innovation, especially biotechnology, in the fight against global hunger.

Julie Borlaug is external relations director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture at Texas A&M University. The institute is named after her grandfather, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Congressional Gold Medal recipient, who was also a distinguished professor of international agriculture at Texas A&M. Borlaug passed away in 2009 at the age of 95.

The President’s letter cited Borlaug’s advances in agriculture as a “model of the American spirit of innovation and ingenuity” and stated that his “support of investment in education and continued research in the biotechnology field are inspirational.”

“I am pleased to join in celebrating the life of your grandfather, Dr. Norman Borlaug,” Obama wrote. “With unwavering commitment to feeding the hungry, leaders like your grandfather profoundly changed the way we develop food products that are accessible to the world’s increasing population.”

In case Borlaug's name looks familiar, I wrote about him in Norman Borlag statue in U.S. Capitol.  I should correct the spelling, but the link would remain misspelled.  As I tell my students, his work was responsible for feeding billions of people.  We're going to need another Borlaug to avoid global famine this century.

Just a reminder about biotechnology, despite all the nasty things I write and repeat about Monsanto, I have no problem with biotechnology properly handled.  I just dislike the way that Monsanto uses the legal system to enforce their business model.  Unfortunately, the coming crisis in food will likely strike Monsanto as a great business opportunity.  Sigh.

Earth Day on and above the planet

It's time to review how Earth Day 2014 ended up being celebrated.  First, NASA brought Earth Day Greetings from the ISS.

The crew of the International Space Station send their greetings to everyone around the world on Earth Day, April 22, 2014.

Next, NASA followed up on the #GlobalSelfie Twitter campaign in Earth Day 2014 on This Week @NASA.

NASA activities for the celebration of the 44th Earth Day included an event at Washington, DC's Union Station, featuring Hyperwall and Science Gallery exhibits highlighting the agency's Earth science work to understand and protect our home planet. Online, people around the world were encouraged to post a photo of themselves with their local environment as a backdrop -- as part of NASA's global "selfie", to promote environmental awareness. 2014 is the first year in more than a decade that NASA is launching five Earth Science missions into space. Those missions will address critical environment and climate related challenges facing our planet. Also, Humans to Mars, Space station spacewalk, Two-day rendezvous test, Science & Engineering Festival, FIRST Robotics championship and more!

Finally, the University of Connecticut posted a photo essay in Spring Fling Celebrates Sustainability by Peter Morenus on April 23, 2014.

UConn marked Earth Day 2014 with a range of activities to promote environmental awareness.

I hope everyone had a happy Earth Day!

Large meteor explosions more common than thought

From the same Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (100% of California in drought) that included the video in Nourish: Growing lettuce on the ISS come the following article and video about how large meteor and asteroid explosions and impacts turn out to be more common than usually thought.  First, Iain Thomson of The Register (UK) reports Asteroids as powerful as NUCLEAR BOMBS strike Earth TWICE YEARLY.

Cold War tech detects worldwide hit rate

A study using data from monitoring stations designed to enforce a nuclear test ban treaty shows that the Earth is enduring far more dangerous asteroid impacts than previously thought.

Between 2000 and 2013, the Earth was hit by 26 asteroids that exploded with a force of between one and 600 kilotons – an average of one every six months. Even more concerning is that in all cases the asteroids themselves weren't detected in space and only came to light when they detonated in Earth's atmosphere.

The study was carried out by the B612 Foundation, a group set up by three former astronauts who are worried about the threat of asteroids to life on Earth.

Looks like a bunch of Crazy Eddies after my own heart.  Here's the video the B612 Foundation released last week.


Discovery News had their own take on this report in Why Does Russia See So Many Meteors?

A few days ago, a fireball lit up the skies over Murmansk in Russia. It seems like Russia sees more meteors than the rest of the world. Trace is joined by Ian O'Neill from Discovery News to discuss why this is.

As a reminder of why I think asteroid impacts are an important topic, here's what I had to say about it in In Russia, space explores you!

This blog is still about how to avoid the collapse of the current civilization and takes a science-fiction slant on the topic.  An asteroid impact is the perfect merger of the two.  On that note, I leave you this graphic I took from Nebris.

Nourish: Growing lettuce on the ISS

The first food news I'm going to share for this month's Nourish theme comes from Science at NASA: ScienceCasts: Lettuce Orbit Earth -- A New Form of Life Takes Root on the ISS.

A new life form is taking root on the International Space Station, and its name is "Outregeous." The space-faring lettuce was delivered to the space station by a SpaceX Dragon capsule on April 20th.

Here's to the astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS eating local for the first time in the history of space exploration.

Drum corps maypoles for May Day

Last night, I wished John Greer a happy Beltane and he wished me one back.  That reminded me that I should probably wish my readers a happy May Day, too.  I couldn't decide how to reconcile the two meanings of May Day, the sanitized pagan festival of spring or the European Labor Day, so I decided to post something else that would be distinctly mine--drum corps maypoles.

First, here's the 1978 Santa Clara Vanguard with their guard dancing around a maypole.


Insert joke about them wearing red, playing Soviet-era music (Aram Khachaturian's "Gopak"), and being the vanguard of the protelariat here.*

Next, the 1979 Schaumberg Guardsmen doing their version of a maypole dance, this time to something more in tune with the tradition, "Greensleeves."  First, two color photos.




Now, another, larger photo.


With that, I wish you all a happy May Day!

*The Vanguard actually was a working-class organization at the time, so the joke is more apt than one might think.  The ex-girlfriend I mention here from time to time marched in them from 1977-1979--in fact, she may be in the photo--came from a working-class family and described how most of her fellow corps members shared her background.

Nablopomo for May: Nourish

So what is the NaBloPoMo theme of the month?

NOURISH
The monthly email promoted the theme by playing up the food angle.

Bite into a big juicy blog post this month and nourish your mind and soul with a delicious NaBloPoMo.  BlogHer Food kicks off in Miami, Florida in the middle of this month, but online we're holding our own discussion on what we eat and why we eat it.  Food provides nutrients, but it gives us so much more -- a connection to our personal history, a good mood, a bonding moment with friends.

We're going to share recipes, give restaurant recommendations, and review cookbooks.  And along the way, we'll also talk about other ways we nourish ourselves such as meditation or writing.

We hope you'll join along and sink your teeth into scrumptious thoughts.  You can read more about the new NaBloPoMo theme on our opening post.

Who am I to refuse a transition served to me on a silver platter?

Yum. What makes you think "yum" when you see a cake in a bakery's glass case, or walk by the open back door of a restaurant kitchen and smell meat grilling, or taste that tomato sauce that has been bubbling on the stove all afternoon? Is it because you're hungry, or is it because food goes beyond fueling our body, speaking to our very soul? Food obviously nourishes us in the sense that it keeps us alive, but good food does so much more: it makes us feel happy, transports us to other countries, or gives us access to memories.

This month, we're going to be looking at food as nourishment and food as a harbinger of fun and creativity.  We'll be recounting favourite recipes and restaurants.  And we'll be looking at what else nourishes us: is it writing, religion, relationships?

A month of entries about food, recipes, and restaurants--how could I possibly resist?  I already have labels for two of the three categories and really should have a label for the third, as I have enough posts to make it worthwhile.  In fact, I could easily use some of the prompts, as those are good questions that already have health and science answers and could also have sustainability slants to them.  Yeah, I'm game.

Both the page at the site and the email invited readers by using the word "delicious."  The email took the nice tack with "Hope you join along for May's NaBloPoMo because it's bound to be delicious."  The site was more direct--"Sign up for May's NaBloPoMo and sink your teeth into some delicious blog posts."  Either way, I signed up.  It looks like a popular theme, as there are more than 30 people listed on the blogroll already.