An interesting article today from New Scientist on why Travel Bans don’t work to prevent the spread of a pandemic.

“There is no real sense in applying strict travel restrictions especially at this stage. It’s not going to help,” says Alessandro Vespignani, a computer scientist at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, whose team is also trying to predict the spread of the current outbreak.

The World Health Organization’s Emergency Committee also took this position at a meeting on Monday: “WHO does not recommend closing of borders and does not recommend restriction of travel,” said Keiji Fukuda, assistant director general for health security and environment.

Modellers have also attempted to measure the economic cost of widespread travel bans in response to pandemic flu. In 2007, a team led by Joshua Epstein of the Brookings Institution in New York estimated that a 95 per cent reduction in air travel in the US could cost about $100 billion per year, or a little less than 1 per cent of the US gross national product (PLoS-ONE, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000401 ).

“In this situation, things are definitely not bad enough to warrant the economic impacts [travel limits] are going to have,” Brownstein says.

Go to the original article, it has some great sub links as well.

Don’t panic about this flu, it’s not serious yet, it’s just the flu!

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And it is a familiar refrain. In this story detailing what looks to be the first cases of swine flu hitting a village named La Gloria in Veracruz, Mexico the possible source, a large production pork factory.

A La Gloria resident who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity yesterday described how illness swept through the village. “Some people started getting ill in February and an eight-month-old baby died,” she said. “After that another baby died on 21 March. Suddenly most of the village got ill. It was weekend and the tiny clinic here was closed. The state health authorities then did send doctors and nurses to look after us, and give us medication. About 60% of the village were ill and we asked them what it was and they said it was a severe and atypical cold. We talked about influenza and they said that was impossible, that influenza had been eradicated from Mexico.”

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the US owner of an industrial pig production facility around 12 miles from La Gloria said it had found no clinical signs or symptoms of swine flu in its herd or Mexican employees. The world’s biggest pig meat producer, Virginia-based Smithfield, said it is co-operating with the Mexican authorities’ attempts to locate the possible source of the outbreak and will submit samples from its herds at its Granjas Carroll subsidiary to the University of Mexico for tests.

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Smithfield, which is led by pork baron Joseph W Luter III, has previously been fined for environmental damage in the US. In October 2000 the supreme court upheld a $12.6m (£8.6m) fine levied by the US environmental protection agency which found that the company had violated its pollution permits in the Pagan River in Virginia which runs towards Chesapeake Bay. The company faced accusations that faecal and other bodily waste from slaughtered pigs had been dumped directly into the river since the 1970s .

I sincerely believe that with Listeriosis from Maple Leaf Foods, Salmonella from California, and Avian flu on Chicken farms… and now this…. well, shouldn’t we see this as a sign that Mother Nature is catching up to us? We are clearly tempting fate here with our gigantic food distribution networks.

It is time to relocalize in a big way. Grow locally, store locally, and only import luxury items that you can not produce at home.

This would not stop the spread of disease, but it would limit the waste, scale down the size of any operations making them more manageable and force those operations to maintain much higher standards of practice.

And just one more note before I finish. I discovered this link through a search for “swine flu” on twitter. I have discovered that Twitter really is an incredible way to find new information, fast, often long before it hits the airwaves.

And if you would like to see

a Map of possible and confirmed Swine flu cases here you go. It was last updated around 5:30AM PST.

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I spend a lot of words talking about oil decline without explaining what it is or how it works… well. If you’re looking for a slightly more technical take… here’s one on Cantarell.(Gerson Lehrman Group)

An average well in 1981 would produce 29,000 bbl/day. Development continued with production coming from many of the fields including Ixtoc, but as flow rates fell, gas lift equipment was installed. By 1995, the average well would produce 7,000 bbl/day. The gas lift program was expanded and by 1999, total production from the complex was 1.4 million bbl/day.

….

Had there been no pressure maintenance installation, by 2004, production per well would have been about 3,200 bbl/day.
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Pemex decided to inject nitrogen gas into the dome of Cantarell. That began in May of 2000 at an initial rate of 300 million cubic feet/day and was expanded through the year with a total of four stages to 1,200 million cubic feet/day.
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The original estimate of reserves was 17 billion barrels but this was raised to 19.3 after the nitrogen gas had pushed the original oil/water contact back to its original position. By 12/31/2006, cumulative production was 16.6 billion barrels. In 2004, the complex produced 2.136 million bbl/day which declined to 1.525 million by 2007. Production declines as the expanding gas cap intersects the well bores.
….

Today the end is near with expectations that Cantarell will become uneconomic as early as 2014 and no later than 2019.

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Today the House Energy Committee got a visit from Al Gore… and he ruffled some feathers… especially those of Mr. Gingrich.

Here’s his response

He says that Al Gore presented “misleading ascertions”.

Newt says…

[Al Gore] said for example, the rate of new discoveries, is falling for energy. That’s factually not true.

Actually, Newt, it is true. And it has been true for over 60 years… and here’s the proof Newt:

In 1965, 60 Billion barrels of conventional oil were discovered.

But Newt goes on:

In the last 3 years we have found (who is we?) have found 100 years of Natural Gas in the United States

That’s nice Newt. If I took only one sip out of a coke bottle every day then it might last 100 years as well. The question Newt, is not the amount, it is the rate. How much of the 20 million barrels of oil that the US consumes in a day can that “new natural gas” displace.

The answer, according to the US Energy Information Administration (PDF), is very little.

From 2004 – 2007, 46 Trillion Cubic Feet of “Proved Reserves” were added. Yet Estimated Production only grew by 0.2 Trillion cubic feet a year… the US consumed 23 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas in 2007

The picture for oil and oil substitutes like Natural Gas Liquids is even more grim:

From 2004 – 2007, 1.6 Billion Barrels of Crude Oil Equivalent were discovered of Natural Gas Liquids reserves. Yet estimated Production grew by 4 million barrels a year. That equates to 11,000 barrels of oil a day… roughly 0.06% of the daily 18 million barrel consumption in the US.

And finally, for crude oil…

From 2004 – 2007, -547 million barrels. Repeat. Negative 547 Million Barrels of crude oil were “discovered”….. in other words, we used it up faster than we discovered new stuff. Which brings us back to the graph above, the graph that matters.

Production of crude oil in the United States was 1.8 Billion barrels in 2004, and 1.7 in 2007. That’s a drop of 100 Million Barrels of oil a year or 0.5%.

……….

I hope that clarifies things for you Newt. The party is over. I know you’ll never accept it… probably not even when either your country collapses under its own debt to oil producing countries, or riots erupt from gas shortages and skyrocketing prices… but at least there are some who get it.

And by the way, from 1997 to 2007 total estimated production of Crude Oil plus Natural Gas Liquids went from 3 Billion Barrels of oil a year, to 2.5 Billion Barrels. A drop of 16%.

Brazil can’t save you Newt. Even without the current global recession, production from the new Brazilian finds wasn’t going to reach its full potential of 1.1 Million barrels a day (400 Million a year) until, wait for it, 2017.

Lets see.. in another 10 years we will likely drop another 16%… another 500 Million a year… much more than Brazil could provide, if even it all went to the US, which it won’t.

You’re dangerous Newt. You’re Dangerous!

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This at least makes me feel a little better about Carole James cynical opportunism….

If you don’t feel like clicking (come on, it’s only 1 1/2 minutes long!)… at a Senate Hearing discussing what sort of Climate policy and bill the US Congress should pass, a Senator mentioned that a Carbon Tax is a Carbon Tax, but a Cap and Trade system is a “huge tax” as well.

To this, Al Gore said… a Carbon Tax is a tax, and Cap and Trade is expensive, but he actually supports HAVING BOTH… first the Cap and Trade, to encourage a global market and get more countries into the system… and then a revenue neutral Carbon Tax to further encourage reductions.

I’ll just close my eyes and believe that Carole James is really just in Al Gores head… it’s all good. Right?

On another note… Al Gore also directly mentioned Peak Oil in his comments to Senate leaders today… unfortunately it’s not in the video linked above, but the other rumour going around is that there some sort of “An Inconvenient Truth 2″ focused on Peak Oil is in the works.

Hey Al? Can you hurry it up please? Thanks.

Here’s another opinion on the NDPs plan.

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