Palin, The Alaskan

My favorite local editorial cartoonist points out that just because you're from Alaska, doesn't mean you have the interests of wilderness in mind. And by one perspective, it's likely that your idea of custodianship is more akin to pillaging. We Washingtonians have an interesting relationship with Alaska politics: we're big trading partners, AK is a frequent vacation destination, most of the fishing fleet docks in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood, we share a medical school - okay that last one's not SO big a deal... This is the third or fourth consecutive shot at Go. Palin that Horsey has taken this week. I guess it's one way we look out for or meddle in the business of our neighbor to the north.

Reducing and Reusing, if not Recycling in the OR

Over at The Differential, I recently wrote about waste in medicine; lots of stuff gets thrown away, especially in hospitals. One of medicine's most egregious offenders is the OR. Items ranging from blue towels to cautery equipment to paper drapes to laparoscopic instruments to suture to bowel staplers all are pitched at the end of each case. In the past few weeks I've enlisted the help of scrub techs and circulating nurses to cut down on the footprint of the cases I'm involved with. Here's what we came up with in the reusing category:

1. Suction irrigators run on 8 AA batteries and are designed to run for two hours. After the case, the irrigator is pitched - including the pump. If you salvage the batteries from each suction irrigator used for ectopic pregnancy or cholecystectomy cases you assist with, you'll amass 10 hours of digital camera usage per irrigator, or put another way, a lifetime powering of remote controls per surgery clerkship.
2. Blue towels are the sterile, lint free linens that surgeons dry their hands and arms on after scrubbing but before donning gown and gloves. For folks like me, who 'scrub' using the germicidal alcohol-based Avagard chlorhexidine cleanser and come into the room 'dry,' there's a good chance that towel will go unused in the case. This makes a perfect car-drying towel. (For after you go through the automatic car washes, of course - they save water and reduce toxic runoff.)
3. Specimen containers are especially useful for my natural history collections. (See my entries on Wunderkammern for clarification.) The sterile cylindrical canister that comes with Foley catheter kits is good for spices when you go camping. Unused but opened pathology specimen containers work well for storing small parts. Any clean container works well for storing captured insects or categorizing bark samples or some other random hobby.
4. Sutures are thrown away all the time. Many ORs save the packets for student use and practice. Before grabbing extras off of the scrub tech's Mayo tray, be sure to ask. Not only because there's a chance open suture is contaminated with patient parts, but NEVER TAKE ANYTHING FROM THE SCRUB TECH'S MAYO TRAY!

It's hard to reduce consumption when you are a student. Since embarking on this mission, I have noticed that some providers are careful about ordering disposable items into the sterile field, asking for tools to be ready but not opened until it is absolutely necessary. This saves the patient money and reduces consumption. I'd say that counts as killing two birds with one (unopened) stone. Not that I'm advocating avicide.

Recycling will be a tough thing to implement in the OR. Most paper gets contaminated with blood, poop or iodine. I don't think we want that stuff getting into the recycling waste-stream. In the end though, shouldn't reducing and reusing decrease carbon footprint even more than recycling? Anyone have other ideas about reducing waste in the OR? Or in the hospital?

Recycling in Fairbanks

I am very happy right now because I just learned where to recycle aluminum cans in Fairbanks, and it's within walking distance of my apartment!

There are four locations. Two collect and two buy the metal.

• Collector: Fairbanks North Star Borough 456-1482
• Collector: Joy Elementary School 456-5469
• Buyer: C & R Pipe & Steel 479-5174
• Buyer: K & K Recycling 488-1408

The numbers are (of course) all 907 area codes. Hopefully, if I leave my cans at Joy Elementary School, someone will take them to a buyer to raise supply money for the kiddos.

There aren't many other items that can be recycled. Paper is on hold, glass is not available. Copper, metal scrap and cell phones are accepted at various locations, as is cooking oil. Head over to Green Star for more information.

Waste in Medicine

It's time for you to check out another of my articles at The Differential. This one's about how little recycling occurs at hospitals and what could be done to stem the waste-stream. Click it to Read it!

Water for $4.00 a Gallon!

This past weekend, as many as 15 motorists in Seattle filled up their tanks with water-contaminated fuel. Evidently 500 gallons of water found a way into the Shell-supplied Safeway gasoline at a few stations around town... No one is sure how this happened. Greedy middleman? Honest mistake? Maniacal anarchist? Each seems a possibility to me in this passive-aggressive, economy-conscious, WTO-rioting city. But my favorite part of the story is a quote from one of the afflicted drivers:

"I didn't think I'd pay $4 a gallon for water," Fitts said. "But I didn't think I'd be paying $4 for gas, either."

Um. Wake up Mr. Fitts!!! That case of bottled water in the back of the SUV you were driving your kids to the hardware store in? I bet that water cost more than $4 a gallon...

By the way, gasoline is so expensive in Alaska that they don't even bother putting the price up on the station marquees. This weekend, I paid between $4.15 and $4.75.

And The Sky Went Wild

The Wild Sky Wilderness is a reality!

Just northeast of Seattle is an area of amazing beauty and spectacular scenery that until today was just a patch of government land. Today, after many years of politcal wrangling, it has been Federally designated as wilderness, thereby protecting it for generations to come. This wouldn't be possible if Richard Pombo (R-Ca) had not been defeated in 2006 and if George W. Bush wasn't trying to salvage his 2000 campaign promises of expanding national parks and preservation areas.

The photo above shows an area just up the ridge from the Skykomish River, nearly at the point where I wrapped my canoe around a boulder two summers ago. I'd like to blame the scenery on my faulty steering, but really, I just read the river wrong... What's nice is that the 'Sky' river is just on the border of this soon-to-be pristene area. It will now be difficult to develop the river, thereby preserving the land, the sport and the fishery in that basin.

Put the Wild Sky Wilderness on your list of must-hike outdoors destinations. But not too many of you...

Photo credit to Joshua Trujillo and the Seattle P-I.

Passing (on) Gas

Are you as alarmed as I am about the cost of oil reaching $100 a barrel? Chances are good that you're just worried about 87 octane costing $3.00 a gallon. What are we going to do about it? I've been carpooling. But that's a pretty short term fix. Jonathan Golob (known to some as Seattle's only scientist) has put together a nice little call to arms over at his blog. In a rally the troops approach, he's thinking about environmentally friendly potential of oil shale and coal as dominant American energy sources. It's easier for me to get behind other (closer to implementation) innovations like residential solar, wind, and even geothermal production than by ravaging the land for its energy. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't surf on over to DearScience to read what he has to say. And after you're done there, go over to the World's Fair for an excellent essay linking $100 oil with Cuba.

$3 A Gallon? Try $10!

A lot is being made of the increase in cost for auto fuel. The national average is above $3 a gallon. It's $3.29 here in Anacortes, WA, and there's a Shell refinery just across the inlet. Two summers ago, I was in Grand Rapids, MI at a conference of the American Scientific Affiliation. There, one of Congress's only scientists (PhD in physics), Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), gave a keynote address about the science and policy of energy. You know what he said? He thinks gasoline should cost $10 a gallon. That way, folks would actually change consumptive behavior, industry would put alternative energy as a top priority, and the government would not be so reliant on foreign powers. This is a Republican! From Michigan, home of the US auto industry!

I think I could buy into this, as long as the $$$ doesn't go to the oil companies or foreign regimes. Maybe it could go to the National Park System or to local schools. Or fancy this: the extra cash could finance developing viable alternative fuel sources. Of course, something would need to address folks around the poverty line - maybe something like gas stamps - but apart from that, we need to wise up.

Not So Extinct

I was one of many who lamented last month's echo of a proclamation in January 2007 that the Baiji, or Yangtze River Dolphin, was 'most-likely extinct.' Well, it seems like I should have respected the principle of scientific uncertainty a little more than I did. ScienceBlogger Zooilogix has posted a report that a Chinese factory owner filmed the dolphin on August 19, and a science daily article provides more details. One question I have is whether a private citizen's siting counts against the 50 year clock needed to announce 'definitive extinction.' I think the consensus is that this will merely delay the inevitable. I'll still stand by my opinion that the great leap forward set the environment several steps behind.

But this situation is a good case study of how scientists tend to choose their words carefully whenever certainty is concerned, but that this care is forsaken by mass media reports of the studies. The international commission charged with monitoring the status of the river dolphin used the phrase, "functionally extinct" to describe the baiji's plight. This followed a 6 week expedition at the end of 2006 to search for the dolphin. Another expedition in July made the same conclusion, and that two 'exhaustive' searched yielded no sightings was evidence to reinforce the original claim. "Functionally extinct" is a term that Wikipedia defines as

The population is no longer viable. There are no individuals able to reproduce, or the small population of breeding individuals will not be able to sustain itself due to inbreeding depression and genetic drift, leading to a loss of fitness.

A good example of this is Lonesome George, the Galápagos Abingdon Island Tortoise, who is that species one known surviving individual, but is going strong as a 70 year old who can look forward to a 120 year lifespan.

Functionally extinct in the case of the baiji could mean isolation by dams or population dispersement in murky water or genetic inbreeding leading to loss of fitness. There is, in other words, a chance of slim to none that the species will recover to a sustainable population. If population biologists use the same criterion we use in biomedical science, slim means less than 5%. What concerns me is when public media (and bloggers outside their field) uncritically take 'very sure' to mean 'definitive.' That sets up situations like this one where those same media outlets (or worse, anti-science interest groups) can point to an outlier or other counterexample and say, "See, those scientists don't know what they are talking about!"

I still want an answer to my question above concerning the 50 year rule, but we all should question how it is that the practice and language of science can be better represented by the media.

Ruminate On This...

goats on campus, originally uploaded by tom_robey.

Currently at a cost of $750 per day, a herd of 60 goats is eating ivy, blackberries and assorted other goodies along the southeastern most section of Ranier Vista on the University of Washington campus. There's gotta be someone out there that knows if this is cost effective, better for the environment or hilarious...

Baiji: RIP

Extinction occurs in the modern era not with a bang, but a whisper.

The Yangtze River Dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) was declared "functionally extinct" in December 2006, but was confirmed today as fully non-existent after a second six-week search found no animals. Technically, the Baiji can't be classified as extinct until 50 years after the last sighting, according to the standards of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Is the Great Leap Forward to be blamed for the first vertebrate extinction in half a century and the first ever cetacean (whale or dolphin) extinction due to human influence? The ultimate cause of death can be attributed to pollution, dams, overfishing, and boat traffic. That sounds like good old 'progress' to me. Your local news will report several tragic deaths tonight. Why won't this be one of them?

Baiji
Millions of Years Couldn't Prepare You for a Century of Progress

Dems' Energy Plans

A Daily Kos blogger has posted a nice comparison of the energy policy proposals from the four Democratic front-runners for the presidential nomination. Each improves on the present policy, but I can't help but notice how the candidates with the best name recognition are the most anemic on details...

Seattle Coyotes

I made a post recently about the coyotes that have taken up residence this year in the woods near my apartment complex, so was pleased to read on the front page of the web version of the Seattle P-I about the rise of the urban coyote in Seattle. Because my wife and I work long and odd hours in the lab, we regularly encounter these cute little beasties on our walks from the bus stop. We have seen a parent and 4 pups together in our parking lot, as well as numerous singles. Once one sat near the common pool area just checking out my wife as she walked by. We most frequently see the coyotes at the top of a parking lot, so I explored that area last weekend, and found lots of evidence of their presence. My treasures included freshly dispersed grouse feathers, worn paths, occasional tracks and lots of scat. I dissected some of the scat to find crushed large bones, a few rodent femurs and several bird talons. Some of the scat consisted entirely of fur and hair. Thankfully, my wife thought this little dissection project was interesting enough to allow me to do it inside our apartment!

Many of the comments about this article (& the content of the story) over at the P-I focus on the predators' impact on pet populations. Because of my allergy, I have never been very fond of cats, but my wife is. Whenever we encounter a friendly cat on our walks around the neighborhood, my wife pets it and give it a friendly reminder to stay close to home so as not to become coyote chow. I haven't heard her telling the same thing to the rats and moles...

For lots of great info about coyotes, visit the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife site. If you see a coyote, you can report it at Northwest Coyote Tracker, as featured on King5 (click for video.) Monday 7/23. The Google map appears to be focused in south and central Seattle. I'll be emailing the mapkeeper my reports to get more representation from No'Seattle!

Wild Spawned v. Hatchery Raised

Did anyone catch the latest news about salmon? By way of Kansas, I learned of an interesting ruling regarding salmon fisheries. The National Marine Fisheries Service, an executive branch administered department, had been counting hatchery-raised salmon the same as wild-spawned salmon in its environmental impact calculations. The hatchery-raised fish generally boost census counts, changing the status of species like steelhead trout from 'endangered' to the less restricted 'threatened.' Clearly, it was the developers that argued for including hatchery raised fish in the counts.

A Seattle P-I article details this story quite well, and Blogfish has another analysis.

Wouldn't it be nice if environmental agencies could listen to science BEFORE a judge has to take account of the situation? On the one hand, we probably only hear about the most egregious cases, but on the other hand, you have to wonder how else is science being ignored by the current administration...

Just as clarification, this ruling does not apply to "farm-raised salmon." Blogfish nicely points out that:

Scientists are careful not to call salmon wild if they're raised by people for part of their life cycle. For a scientist, there are three main types of salmon, wild, farmed, and hatchery. But fishermen and the seafood industry call salmon wild if they're caught in the ocean, no matter how long they actually lived free.

So if you eat fish, keep buying those wild salmon.

I spotted the salmon pictured above at this weekend's Solstice Parade.

Solstice Viewing

A few weeks ago I introduced you to Puget Sound's Mud Monster. He is a spokesman for MudUp, a local effort to clean up Puget Sound. I hear from a reliable source that he will make an appearance in Seattle at this weekend's Fremont Street Fair. Following the (in)famous Solstice Parade, there is a segment of the fair where you will be able to learn about all sorts of important steps you can take to improve your relationship with the planet.

What I want to know is whether the Mud Monster plans to ride a bicycle in the parade.

Carbon Footprint: Stay Grounded

An editorial in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer induced my choice of this week's Carbon Footprint series. Kathleen Braden, a professor of geography at Seattle Pacific University, relayed her reasoning for not supporting the Sierra Club's efforts to combat global warming because of duplicity between the group's positions and its member services. Don't worry, she doesn't spare other conservation groups that are as two-faced as Janus.

Braden is familiar with the consequences of international travel: she recently gave a seminar about ecotourism in Russia. (The 30 minute talk is available for podcast.) But the central premise of her P-I column was something else - carbon emissions from airplane travel. By offering members vacation travel packages to remote destinations around the world, she calculates that the Sierra Club will add 689 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere this year, just so that members can enjoy nature in Nepal or Peru. The same duplicity comes from groups that send plush toys, t-shirts and other packages overnight by air freight to new members.

So what's the take home from this? Are we to take fewer plane trips? Reduce the number of overnight orders? Visit distant family less? The culture of academia is dependent on travel. Just like salesmen, professors travel the country to present their research and ideas to colleagues via conferences or invited seminars. NIH grant review occurs in study sections in Washington DC. Some societies plan 'destination conferences' in Waikiki or Sydney or Venice. On a more personal note, I expect to fly to eight to ten cities next year to interview for residencies. What are we to do about this culture of travel? Whatever it is, it will require system-wide changes in behavior. I am going to start by not worrying whether I will make 'MVP' this year on my Alaska Air frequent flier number. A 14 hour drive to visit my parents? That would be more difficult. And visiting my in-laws in Hawaii... Right now, we are limited by time and finances, so making that trip is still infrequent. Are there any frequent travelers out there - in business or academics - that have found ways to reduce their carbon impact without 'suffering' lost productivity or professional standing?

There's another little pearl from this column that I don't want to overlook, and it ties nicely with a recent post of mine. Here is a Christian - a professor at a Christian college - who is a member of the Sierra Club, the Ocean Conservancy, and probably others that sees no problem between the scientific claims made by these groups and her personal faith. I bet that Kathleen Braden sees her public scholarship on this issue as part of a Christian imperative to be good stewards of the Earth.

Christian Environmental Stewardship

Sometimes I think the chances of science and religion coming together in a meaningful way are next to nil.

If you take as proxy the evolution 'debate' for the science and religion discussion, you may be right. Maybe neuroscience will be the domain of the next schism. But maybe there is some hope. If you want to talk about environmentalism, scientists, community activists and religious people are more likely to be on the same page than not.

Specifically, consider the back page of the May/June newsletter from the church I attend. There's a story there about the church's Christian Ecology Group. They facilitate pickup of of organic produce grown by Southeast Asian and East African immigrant families living in Seattle's High Point neighborhood. This is part of a partnership between several churches, the local P-Patch Foundation and the city called Seattle Market Gardens.

By participating with this program, citizens are satisfying goals of living a more healthy lifestyle, providing meaningful supplemental income for immigrant populations, reducing the burden of carbon emissions involved with the global agriculture trade. Christians should identify that the Biblical imperative to have dominion over the Earth is one of stewardship, not exploitation. For a comprehensive article supporting this view, consider this paper. Another innovative thinker in this area is Holmes Rolston III.

I wonder what would happen if the fundamentalist Christians that are the face of religion in the United States these days added environmentalism to their political platform.

Move Over Sasquatch...

Have you seen a large, difficult to describe hominid wandering the shores of Puget Sound recently?

Nope - It's not Saquatch, it's (drumroll) the MudMonster!

It turns out that Puget Sound is messed up. Think Chesapeake Bay with cruise ships and nuclear submarines. There are efforts afoot to fix that (WA House Bill 1374, Governor Gregoire's plan, WA Senate Bill 5372, etc.) but this will need time, money, federal involvement and public support. Part of the public relations efforts include a new program (kicked off today), called MudUp! is geared toward getting interested citizens involved.

I highly recommend visiting that site to learn about how you can get muddy and improve the ecology of Puget Sound.

But back to the Mud Monster. According to the website,

Like Sasquatch, he can be rather elusive at times, but he's friendly and doesn't shy away from crowds. You never know where he'll pop up - at farmers' markets, at festivals, and even on ferries.

In the Mud Monster photo album, there is a picture of our governor - the same one who led the charge against big tobacco as Washington's attorney general - standing uncomfortably next to what appears to be a giant turd. At least the turd has a big smile, starfish on its chest, a kelp sash and shore grass for hair.

I hope that MudUp! is successful, and I applaud their efforts to bring some fun to a task that will require lots of hard work from the grass- I mean eelgrass-roots level on up to federal policy work.