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The Way To Eat Now

Posted on February 3, 2011
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On Monday morning, I woke to the news that the US government agencies USDA and HHS had released their latest dietary guidelines. The emphasis this time seemed to be about reducing our salt intake. On average, Americans consume 3,500 mg of sodium every day. The new guidelines recommend reducing this to at least 2,300 mg per day for the not-at-risk population (at risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, children etc.) and 1,500 mg per day for the at-risk population.

So, how bad are we Americans in our eating ? I liked this graphic from the report.

The USDA and HHS put out these guidelines every five years. This year’s report has been praised for their bluntness compared to the complicated and less accessible reports of the past (not that most of us even read these reports, including the current USDA Secretary, Tom Vilsack, who said that he has never read the report till he got this job). For example, on page 66, they explicitly advocate reducing the amount of pizza and warn that many foods that are labelled “Whole Grain” or “100% Wheat” may not be whole grain at all. One applauded that they explicitly said “fill half your plate with fruits and vegetables” instead of the more vague “eat more vegetables”.

The Unhealthy Ecosystem

Another graphic that I liked from the report is this:

While we may quibble over the size of the individual factor compared to the rest of the factors, the ecosystem we live in is a major contributor to the unhealthy lifestyle that we’re a part of.

By now, many of us know that they cannot just put out scientifically sound advice without facing the wrath of the food industry. I first found out about this via Michael Pollan, a lucid writer and a leading journalist probing behind the malaise of our contemporary eating culture and the unhealthy practices of the American food industry and their effects. In an illuminating and insightful article titled “Unhappy Meals” back in 2007, he wrote the following about a defining moment in the advent of our current eating fad:

“No single event marked the shift from eating food to eating nutrients, though in retrospect a little-noticed political dust-up in Washington in 1977 seems to have helped propel American food culture down this dimly lighted path. Responding to an alarming increase in chronic diseases linked to diet — including heart disease, cancer and diabetes — a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, headed by George McGovern, held hearings on the problem and prepared what by all rights should have been an uncontroversial document called “Dietary Goals for the United States.” The committee learned that while rates of coronary heart disease had soared in America since World War II, other cultures that consumed traditional diets based largely on plants had strikingly low rates of chronic disease. Epidemiologists also had observed that in America during the war years, when meat and dairy products were strictly rationed, the rate of heart disease temporarily plummeted.

Naïvely putting two and two together, the committee drafted a straightforward set of dietary guidelines calling on Americans to cut down on red meat and dairy products. Within weeks a firestorm, emanating from the red-meat and dairy industries, engulfed the committee, and Senator McGovern (who had a great many cattle ranchers among his South Dakota constituents) was forced to beat a retreat. The committee’s recommendations were hastily rewritten. Plain talk about food — the committee had advised Americans to actually “reduce consumption of meat” — was replaced by artful compromise: “Choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.”

A subtle change in emphasis, you might say, but a world of difference just the same. First, the stark message to “eat less” of a particular food has been deep-sixed; don’t look for it ever again in any official U.S. dietary pronouncement. Second, notice how distinctions between entities as different as fish and beef and chicken have collapsed; those three venerable foods, each representing an entirely different taxonomic class, are now lumped together as delivery systems for a single nutrient. Notice too how the new language exonerates the foods themselves; now the culprit is an obscure, invisible, tasteless — and politically unconnected — substance that may or may not lurk in them called “saturated fat.”

The linguistic capitulation did nothing to rescue McGovern from his blunder; the very next election, in 1980, the beef lobby helped rusticate the three-term senator, sending an unmistakable warning to anyone who would challenge the American diet, and in particular the big chunk of animal protein sitting in the middle of its plate. Henceforth, government dietary guidelines would shun plain talk about whole foods, each of which has its trade association on Capitol Hill, and would instead arrive clothed in scientific euphemism and speaking of nutrients, entities that few Americans really understood but that lack powerful lobbies in Washington. This was precisely the tack taken by the National Academy of Sciences when it issued its landmark report on diet and cancer in 1982. Organized nutrient by nutrient in a way guaranteed to offend no food group, it codified the official new dietary language. Industry and media followed suit, and terms like polyunsaturated, cholesterol, monounsaturated, carbohydrate, fiber, polyphenols, amino acids and carotenes soon colonized much of the cultural space previously occupied by the tangible substance formerly known as food. The Age of Nutritionism had arrived.”

And this emphasis on nutrients hasn’t vanished. As Marion Nestle, a professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at NYU notes in her blog:
“They still talk about foods (fruits, vegetables, seafood, beans, nuts) when they say “eat more.”  But they switch to nutrient euphemisms  (sodium, solid fats and added sugars) when they mean “eat less.” They say, for example: “limit the consumption of foods that contain refined grains, especially refined grain foods that contain solid fats, added sugars, and sodium.” This requires translation: eat less meat, cake, cookies, sodas, juice drinks, and salty snacks.”

In a column on NYT, Mark Bittman provides some other suggestions to change the ecosystem, suggestions such as reducing government subsidies on processed food (what!, I didn’t know we subsidised the manufacture of processed food), subsidising sustainable meat production and farming, taxing unhealthy foods and their advertisements, and enforcing truthful labelling of food products. One of the interesting ideas he lists is the breakup of the USDA and a greater empowerment of FDA. He writes:
“Currently, the U.S.D.A. counts among its missions both expanding markets for agricultural products (like corn and soy!) and providing nutrition education.  These goals are at odds with each other; you can’t sell garbage while telling people not to eat it, and we need an agency devoted to encouraging sane  eating.”

And The Reactions From The Food Industry

The reactions from the food industry has been predictable. The US Beverage Association has lashed out against the report:
“To suggest that Americans ‘drink water instead of sugary drinks’ fails to be grounded in the totality of the science,” Dr. Maureen Storey, senior VP for science policy for the ABA, told just-drinks. “If consumers are seeking ways to reduce caloric intake, our industry provides myriad no-and low-calorie and smaller-portion beverage options, in addition to bottled water. While many consumers may enjoy tap or bottled water, beverages with no- and low-calorie sweeteners are more appealing to others and may in fact help people lose weight or maintain a healthy weight,” Storey added. “This is a position supported by health organisations including the American Dietetic Association.”

And the American Salt Institute calls the report “Drastic, Simplistic and Unrealistic”.

But they don’t need to worry. With the emphasis on sodium, I see a future filled with “reduced sodium” versions of products, much like the “carb free” or “sugar free” versions that now hound us. One more choice. And by the way, does “reduced sodium” automatically include reduced sugar or will we have all sorts of combinations of products to choose from. And if you think this is just a spoof, here is what the report in NYT had to say:
“David S. Smith, a vice president at Campbell Soup who oversees research and development, said his company was offering reduced-sodium versions of hundreds of its products, in some cases replacing regular salt with smaller amounts of sea salt.”

Other References:

  • Washington Post has an interesting slideshow on the history of the guidelines, specifically the main graphics used to illustrate the recommendations.
  • Marion Nestle’s blog post on the nutrition euphemisms in the report that require translations into actual food for practice.
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Tower Running

Posted on February 1, 2011
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I throw in my running shoes, when we go on just about any trip and so far, I’ve always managed to squeeze a run in. For example, just recently, I paid a surprise visit to my sister on the East Coast to attend her graduation ceremony (she completed her MA in Anthropology). I left early on Saturday morning and was back on Sunday night. I managed to get a run in. But I was more certain of not getting a run in when I recently visited India. Usually, I squeeze runs during my stay in Shanthala’s parents’ house, because of the close proximity of their house to a 400m track. Optimistically, I packed my running shoes anyway.

I was travelling alone with Maya to India and based on her behavior the previous times we were there, I didn’t think there would be any way I could go running. Being optimistic, I packed my running shoes. But, before I left, I spoke to a friend about some way to get some aerobic workout that didn’t require me to leave Maya. He suggested something he called box steps. You can do it just about anywhere, he said. Pick a stool or find a pair of stairs. Climb up the step with one foot first, then bring the next foot up, then step down with the first foot and then the second one. Find a good rhythm and do as many repeats as you can, he said, and switch which leg you go first with every so often.

The first day I tried it at my friend’s house, using two steps of their stairway, I was done in about 15 minutes or so. The next two days, my legs felt sore around my ankles and my calf. Over the course of my stay in India, I quickly worked my way to doing 1000 steps in about 27 minutes. I’d try and do this at least twice a week, if not more. I managed to slip a workout wherever I stayed, thanks to the ubiquity of stairways. I couldn’t unpack my running shoes at all.

Yesterday, I ran across an article in NYT called “Glory at the Top Flight for Runners“. The article covered a new and upcoming sport called tower running in which people dash up the stairs of really tall buildings. Buildings such as Chicago’s Hancock Tower or NY’s Empire State. The sport is called tower running. The article states that there are over 160 races all over the world that involve climbing up large buildings. The longest single staircase climb is in Switzerland, a heart-stopping, quad screaming 11,674 steps.

How does my 1000 steps in 27 minutes (it’s really 1000 up and 1000 down the way I did it) compare with the competitors in these races ? 9 minutes and 33 seconds is the record for running up the 1576 steps.

References:

  • List of all Tower Running races, sorted by the number of stairs
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Me At The Tea Party Table

Posted on October 19, 2010
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I have a lot more in common with the Tea Partiers than I think.

This is according to Jonathan Haidt, a prominent professor of Pyschology at the University of Virginia, who has written such pieces such as “What Makes People Vote Republican” and “What Is Wrong With Those Tea Partiers ?”.

I first became acquainted with Haidt in 2008. It was the year of Obama and Palin, two figures with ideas as opposite of each other as can be. I couldn’t understand the enamor Palin seemed to have on the conservative voters. Was it because the progressive base was as excited as it had ever been by Obama’s campaign and the conservatives had no charmismatic figure to look to or was it something else ?  More specifically, why do whites from lower socio-economic rungs so overwhelmingly support Republicans, given how detrimental to their own well being the Republican policies typically are ? For example, a recent AP-GfK poll shows that 58% of whites without four-year college degrees prefer Republican candidates while only 36% prefer Democratic candidates. I sought answers in books like Thomas Frank’s “What’s The Matter With Kansas ?” and in George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant” and Haidt’s essay on the online magazine, Edge, titled “What Makes People Vote Republican”.

The Kansas View Of Things

Thomas Frank writes:
“That our politics have been shifting rightward for more than thirty years is a generally acknowledged fact of American life. That this rightward movement has largely been accomplished by working-class voters whose lives have been materially worsened by the conservative policies they have supported is a less comfortable fact, one we have trouble talking about in a straightforward manner. ”

According to Thomas Frank, the Democratic Party has in recent times made itself out to be the “other pro-business party”, courting the rich campaign contributions from the corporations while thinking that the working class poor and minorities have nowhere else to go, that they, the Democrats, would always be marginally be more attractive to these sections.

Further, Frank writes that the liberals assume that the working class has enough common sense and logic to see how Republican policies will work against them and not vote Republican. Truth and logic wins. Therefore, they refuse to engage in any discourse on the subject. For example, Obama frequently says “I am the eternal optimist. I think that over time people respond to–to civility and rational argument.” Liberals also spend less and less time building a grass roots movement or maintaining one (he writes that labor unions are only 9% of the private work force today compared to 38% in the 50s) while the right wing has been building an effective grass roots movement with a well defined, succinct message that is consistently echoed by their intellectuals (interestingly, Obama’s win in 2008 was credited to a successful grass roots movement that he helped mobilize).

The Family Model Metaphor

George Lakoff approached the problem from a linguist and cognitive scientist’s perspective. He writes that his interest in the problem started in 1994, a year not unlike this one. That year, the conservatives regained control of the House and Senate with a strongly conservative agenda in the wake of the wreck of Bill Clinton’s health care reform. Lakoff writes:
“I was watching election speeches and reading the Republicans’ “Contract with America.” The question I asked myself was this: What do the conservatives’ positions on issues have to do with each other? If you are a conservative, what does your position on abortion have to do with your position on taxation? What does that have to do with your position on the environment? Or foreign policy? How do these positions fit together? What does being against gun control have to do with being for tort reform? What makes sense of the linkage? I could not figure it out. I said to myself, These are strange people. Their collection of positions makes no sense. But then an embarrassing thought occurred to me. I have exactly the opposite position on every issue. What do my positions have to do with one another? And I could not figure that out either.”

As a linguist, Lakoff found his answer in the language that the conservatives used, especially in their refrain: “family values”. He says that the family as a metaphor for nation is a common one (for example, we use terms such as Founding Fathers). And the reason for the difference in perspective between the liberals and conservatives comes from their differing ideas on what an ideal family should be like. Progressives prefer the nurturant parent family model while the conservatives prefer the strict father model. Lakoff writes of the assumptions underlying the strict father model:
“The world is a dangerous place, and it always will be, because there is evil out there in the world. The world is also difficult because it is competitive. There will always be winners and losers. There is an absolute right and an absolute wrong. Children are born bad, in the sense that they just want to do what feels good, not what is right. Therefore, they have to be made good.
…
What is required of the child is obedience, because the strict father is a moral authority who knows right from wrong. It is further assumed that the only way to teach kids obedience—that is, right from wrong— is through punishment, painful punishment, when they do wrong.”

And the nurturant parent model, according to Lakoff, is one that emphasizes empathy and responsibility, that assumes that the world is a good place and can be made better by working at it.

Lakoff constructs several examples of making sense of the position of conservatives and liberals using these two models of families. For instance, he says that because conservatives believe in the unquestioning moral authority of the father, then the US (as the father) has no interest in asking anyone else in attacking Iraq. He says that this was Bush’s (and his aides) thinking when they said that they didn’t have to ask the UN for a “permission slip”.

Lakoff also credits the Powell memo, written by Lewis Powell in 1970, two months before he became a Supreme Court Justice, with creating bodies within universities that ensured that the students did not come out of universities with an anti-business mindset, that the conservative viewpoint be developed and encouraged.

Haidt’s Morality

Haidt starts his essay with:
“What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies?”

Haidt’s conclusion is that the differing ideologies of conservatism and liberalism comes from their differing views on morality.  His quest began with disgust. Consider these two examples. Do you consider it morally wrong to cut up your country’s flag for use as a toilet rag because you were out of toilet rags ? How about cooking and eating your family dog that had become road-kill ? Haidt asked questions like these and others to 180 adults and 180 eleven year old children, one half of each in lower and upper socio-economic strata, in USA and Brazil. Most people, he said, found the actions to be morally wrong (the one exception being college students, more support for the WEIRD diagnosis), even when the actions hurt no one. He puzzled over the reasons for this.

His research led him to India. He went to Bhubaneshwar, the capital city of the state of Orissa, a renowned Hindu temple town. As a Western liberal atheist, he was horrified by the stratified, religious and male dominated society that he saw there. The shock soon waned and he writes:
“Rather than automatically rejecting the men as sexist oppressors and pitying the women, children, and servants as helpless victims, I was able to see a moral world in which families, not individuals, are the basic unit of society, and the members of each extended family (including its servants) are intensely interdependent. In this world, equality and personal autonomy were not sacred values. Honoring elders, gods, and guests, and fulfilling one’s role-based duties, were more important.”

From all this, Haidt concludes that morality is not just about how we treat each other (the maxim: “free to do what I want as long as it harms no one else”), but also about building a shared group identity and leading a noble life. He mentions the five foundations of morality: reciprocity/fairness, harm/care, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity. Haidt says that liberals are governed only by the first two foundations, while the conservatives pay attention to all of them. As he writes:
“We think of the moral mind as being like an audio equalizer, with five slider switches for different parts of the moral spectrum. Democrats generally use a much smaller part of the spectrum than do Republicans. The resulting music may sound beautiful to other Democrats, but it sounds thin and incomplete to many of the swing voters that left the party in the 1980s, and whom the Democrats must recapture if they want to produce a lasting political realignment.”

He says that this dependence on group loyalty and purity are what lead the conservatives to rail against multi-culturalism, diversity, Chomsky and gays.

And So The Link Between Me and The Tea Party

In a more recent essay, published in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, titled “What the Tea Partiers Really Want”, Haidt writes that what unites conservatives and libertarians alike is their belief in an American version of karma. They both think that the government has gone too far in protecting people from the consequences of their choices: be it from risky financial dealings (for libertarians, read bank bailouts) or from premarital sex and crime (for conservatives, read abortion, sex education, Miranda Rights).

But he notes that libertarians are closer to liberals compared to conservatives in their moral outlook. He writes that in a recent survey conducted on 3600 Americans where they stated their political preference and answered the question: “Everyone should be free to do as they choose, so long as they don’t infringe upon the equal freedom of others.”, he found that self-described libertarians most agreed with this statement, followed closely by liberals. He writes that self-described social conservatives were the most lukewarm in their agreement to the statement. Similarly, self-described conservatives were most enthusiastic about the statement: “Employees who work the hardest should be paid the most.” while the liberals and libertarians were similar and less enthusiastic, and in response to the question: “Whenever possible, a criminal should be made to suffer in the same way that his victim suffered.”, liberals strongly rejected this sentiment, libertarians mildly rejected it while conservatives were slightly in favor of it.

Building on his five foundations of a morality (fairness, care from harm, ingroup loyalty, respect for authority and purity/sanctity), he writes that libertarians and liberals are strikingly close as shown by the responses to questions that address loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity (see figure) but diverge in the first two foundations.

Interestingly, the blog on Haidt’s research website, yourmorals.org, concludes instead that tea partiers are more like social conservatives with a libertarian-like emphasis on the economy.

And To Conclude

While there is some truth to each of the stories, they are also simplistic in some cases and quite a stretch of imagination in others. Missing in this discussion, I think, is inclusion of other aspects of the environment we function in. For example, people have no time to calmly reflect on issues and in an urge to to blame somebody for their ills, focus on the incumbents, never mind doing some root cause analysis. The role of money is not discussed much, money that is being poured into the anti-Obama campaign is stunning (look at the money poured in by the libertarian Koch brothers or the conservative group led by a resurgent Karl Rove). Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision to allow corporations to anonymously finance ads directly in support or in opposition to political candidates, Wall Street and other businesses, angry with Obama’s policies, are pouring money into the election to influence voters away from the Democrats.

I think there is a lot of truth in Frank’s opinion that neither party addresses the real concerns of the working class any more. With that playing field levelled, voters focus on wedge social issues.

Michael Shermer, in his critique of Haidt’s essay on Edge, says that the framing of the question shows their bias. Why is Haidt’s essay titled “Why People Vote For Republicans” ? Why is something not wrong with the Democrats and who they chose to support ? Or if Democrats like PJ O’Rourke’s characterization of their lofty ideals: “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it”, then Republicans like the characterization: “Teenagers and Democrats are happier spending other people’s money”.

One telling point that Haidt makes is that the first rule of moral psychology is that moral judgements are quick gut reactions, not well thought, carefully considered positions. He, among others such as Tom Gilovich, say that we humans are adept at first taking a position and then seeking facts to support our position, rather than the other way around. Haidt writes: “So when passions run high, as they do among tea-partiers, their reasoning doesn’t get turned off. Rather, their reasoning is working overtime, and very elaborate belief structures (such as conspiracy theories) can be constructed out of the flimsiest materials (such as rumors about forged birth certificates). This is normal, and readers on the left should ask themselves how often they searched for counter-evidence that would have contradicted the worst things their friends said about George W. Bush.”

But, I still can’t understand what’s wrong with those tea partiers!

Also See:

Image credit: WSJ.

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The Season of Ignorance

Posted on October 14, 2010
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When history books are written, John McCain’s may be remembered most for his role in catapulting Sarah Palin to the national stage.

The midterm election season is heading for the final stretch and what has disturbed me the most are the reports that seem to herald a race to the bottom that is appalling to say the least. Sarah Palin seems to be just one of a myriad of the people spewing ignorance and hate. Mostly women, all white and all Tea Party. Their trumpets of ignorance include stating that Muslim law is taking over parts of the US, masturbation is adultery, that the healthcare bill creates government death sqauds and a twisting of facts and spewing of hate (against Latinos, Muslims, gays, almost anyone not Christian and white), dehumanizing anyone not like them. It is as if Jerry Springer‘s cast is standing for election. And reason and critical thinking are scarce in this debate.

Are we living in the US in the 21st century or some country at the edge of the dark ages ? We laugh at Ahmadinejad and Holocaust deniers and tune in to Rush Limbaugh’s denials over Obama’s religion and birth (polls in August by the Time magazine and the Pew center show anywhere from one-third to almost half of the Republicans saying that they think Obama is a Muslim). Religion is at the forefront now more than ever and every year, the power of the religious right grows ever more. And to think that I used to laugh derisively at people in rural areas of India voting almost solely based on the caste of the candidate. Obama also seems to have brought out the latent racism in the country. No one talks about it as such, of course.

I worry about the declining lack of adherence to even the most basic of facts and the almost retarded level of reason and critical thinking. In a world that is changing so rapidly, resources depleting and conflicts rising, how can address the issues if people seem incapable of even uttering a coherent sentence ? I can understand people are angry about the economy, but are these angry people incapable of understanding how the very ideas they champion have been the cause of their state ? How can more deregulation fix the problems of Wall Street or the harm caused by companies such as BP ? How can they not see the designs of the people who are pouring money that is turning their fears into something that can only make matters worse ? How can they not see the link between the people who lied about the Iraq War and how it very costs are a big reason for the mess we’re in economically ?

Enough has been written about all of this that I don’t want to spend too much time writing about it. But, I worry about what the future holds for Maya and all our children in this country that is their home. This is how atrocities like the Holocaust or slavery or Native American genocide come to pass. Bit by bit, with people like me going about their daily lives with their worries cocooned by some personal well-being and an inability to act. Am I as deluded as they are in seeing the outcome of the slippery slope we’re sliding down ? A part of me says that all this is more media hype than anything else. After all, didn’t Bill Clinton, the man liberals loved for his intellectualism and charisma, fire the Surgeon General, Jocelyn Elders, for saying that masturbation was normal human behavior ?

Let me end with a link on a more humorous note, to a satirical take on the current season of madness:

“Man oh man, I’m mad. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. Take what? I don’t know. And that makes me mad too.”

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Three Pictures Of The World We’re Creating

Posted on October 2, 2010
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Another week when the words wouldn’t come out. Of if they did, they were an incoherent mumble. Or if they did, they were in the middle of the night when I had no easy way to pin them to paper or screen. And if I tried to pin them down by trotting down at 2 am or 3, when the words seemed to make sense, they faded away like a mirage. And now, its the end of the week and the weekend is crowded with things to do and people to see. But these three pictures caught my eye as I surfed the news. So, here’s another week where the pictures speak for words.

The three pictcures paint the world – starkly, in my opinion – we’re creating.

This first picture is the first snapshot of the world seen through the haze of particulate matter. NASA released this picture this week and I ran across it at the Wired Science Blogs, penned by Duncan Greene. From the article:

“Many estimates of air pollution in developing countries are innaccurate, as there’s no network of surface-based sensors that can find the worst-polluted areas. Scientists regularly have to rely on a few dated observations of questionable veracity.

However, Nasa has just published the first long-term global map that shows density of particulate matter below 2.5 micrometres in diameter. This size is important, because it’s small enough to get past the body’s defences and accumulate in the lungs, making it dangerous to human health. Epidemologists believe that they cause millions of premature deaths each year.

Satellites can’t easily scan the surface of the Earth — they instead scan a column of air in the atmosphere, and the difficulty comes in getting readings at a particular level out of that data. The team who produced the map, Aaron van Donkelaar and Randall Martin at Dalhousie University, in Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada, blended total-column aerosol measurements from satellites with information about how aerosols are distributed vertically in the atmosphere to obtain the data.

The World Health Organisation’s recommended level is 10 micrograms per cubic metre, so anything on the map that’s green or above is cause for concern. Once in the lungs, the particles can cause asthma, cardiovascular diseases and bronchitis. Some very fine particles can even get into the bloodstream.

Some of the particulate matter is man-made and some is natural, and scientists haven’t quite worked out the relative quantities yet, but both are dangerous to human health. In the Arabian and Sahara deserts, its mostly natural mineral dust lifted by the wind, but in eastern China and Northern India, it’s more likely to be soot particles emitted by power plants, factories and cars.“

Global satellite-derived map of PM2.5 averaged over 2001-2006. Credit: Dalhousie University, Aaron van Donkelaar

I was appalled at the haze over the Himalayas. The only dim light in the picture for me was that Southern India, especially around Bangalore, doesn’t seem as bad as Northern India. At least our loved ones living there aren’t as badly exposed.

The other picture captures is a good visualization of the history of global warming, including the different predicted outcomes based on various models and scenarios. This picture comes courtesy of the brilliant climate change site, Skepical Science, one site that attempts to synthesize all the climate change news – scientific and political – and present them in an easily comprehensible manner. I highly recommend readers to visit the blog for insightful information about climate change, including the basic facts.

From the blog entry:
“I love a simple, accessible graph that tells a clear story. A good example can be found in a new paper Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future (Chapman & Davis 2010). They plot past climate change over the past 1000 years together with what we can expect to experience over the next century. In a single figure, it tells us a number of stories which are fleshed out further in the paper.

The past 1000 years feature a number of temperature reconstructions (the thin coloured lines) using various proxies such as tree rings, corals, sediments, glacier length and boreholes. The black dotted line is the average temperature over the decade centered on 1 Jan 2000. Having a variety of independent proxy methods gives us confidence that current temperatures are warmer than any experienced over the past 1000 years.

The coloured areas represent future projections of global temperature. The yellow projection (C3) tells us what would happen if CO2 concentrations were held steady at year 2000 levels. In other words, what would happen if humanity had suddenly stopped emitting CO2 in the year 2000 (but it’s okay, we’d still be allowed to breath). Even in this imaginary case, temperatures would still continue to increase due to the thermal inertia of the oceans. ”

The third picture comes from the BBC, from a story titled, “Water Map Shows Billions At Risk of ‘Water Insecurity’“. Reporting on a story published in Nature this week, the article warns that more than 80% of the world’s population live in areas where the water source is insecure. They urge the developing nations, where the water insecurity is the highest, to not follow the lead of Western nations but “governments should invest in water management strategies that combine infrastructure with “natural” options such as safeguarding watersheds, wetlands and flood plains.” From the article:

“Looking at the “raw threats” to people’s water security – the “natural” picture – much of western Europe and North America appears to be under high stress.

However, when the impact of the infrastructure that distributes and conserves water is added in – the “managed” picture – most of the serious threat disappears from these regions.

Africa, however, moves in the opposite direction.

“The problem is, we know that a large proportion of the world’s population cannot afford these investments,” said Peter McIntyre from the University of Wisconsin, another of the researchers involved.

“In fact we show them benefiting less than a billion people, so we’re already excluding a large majority of the world’s population,” he told BBC News.”

Image courtesy of the BBC

“For developed countries and the Bric group – Brazil, Russia, India and China – alone, “$800bn per year will be required by 2015 to cover investments in water infrastructure, a target likely to go unmet,” they conclude.

For poorer countries, the outlook is considerably more bleak, they say.

“In reality this is a snapshot of the world about five or 10 years ago, because that’s the data that’s coming on line now,” said Dr McIntyre.

“It’s not about the future, but we would argue people should be even more worried if you start to account for climate change and population growth.

“Climate change is going to affect the amount of water that comes in as precipitation; and if you overlay that on an already stressed population, we’re rolling the dice.”

As I have penned before, these visualizations are not merely academic for me. They are an indicator of the kind of world we’re leaving behind for our children, for Maya. Attempting to provide for the most opportunities for our children is not just by sending them to good schools or ensuring that they eat well. If we don’t wake up and act, continue to deny and live our lives in ways that will create a world that is more poisoned and strife-ridden, we’d have acted less with love for our children.

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