Welcome to Yellowstone

Reality speaks up

Courtesy of McClatchy

Experimenting in the air

Airlines are trying to reduce their carbon emissions. While Solar Impulse is truly experimental and not allied with the airlines, it does represent a major attempt to make the world cleaner. Now, we learn that United Airlines will be using biofuels, fuel created from farm waste and oils derived from animal fats. It will be making a $30 million investment in one of the largest producers of aviation biofuels, Fulcrum BioEnergy.

Fulcrum turns municipal waste — household trash — into sustainable aviation fuel that can be blended directly with traditional jet fuels. The company claims its technology can cut an airline’s carbon emissions by 80 percent compared with traditional jet fuel.

United is not alone in going down this road. Other airlines are also experimenting with biofuels. 

Time leaps

Addicted to War

William Astore is a retired Lieutenant Colonel who writes for TomDispatch. His latest article is entitled "America's Got War". It addresses a fundamental problem with this country. Here are some excerpts:

War on Drugs. War on Poverty. War in Afghanistan. War in Iraq. War on terror. The biggest mistake in American policy, foreign and domestic, is looking at everything as war. When a war mentality takes over, it chooses the weapons and tactics for you. It limits the terms of debate before you even begin. It answers questions before they’re even asked.

When you define something as war, it dictates the use of the military (or militarized police forces, prisons, and other forms of coercion) as the primary instruments of policy. Violence becomes the means of decision, total victory the goal. Anyone who suggests otherwise is labeled a dreamer, an appeaser, or even a traitor.

War, in short, is the great simplifier -- and it may even work when you’re fighting existential military threats (as in World War II). But it doesn’t work when you define every problem as an existential one and then make war on complex societal problems (crime, poverty, drugs) or ideas and religious beliefs (radical Islam).
Recent American leaders have something in common with their extremist Islamic counterparts: all of them define everything, implicitly or explicitly, as a jihad, a crusade, a holy war. But the violent methods used in pursuit of various jihads, whether Islamic or secular, simply serve to perpetuate and often aggravate the struggle.

Think of America’s numerous so-called wars and consider if there’s been any measurable progress made in any of them. Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on poverty” in 1964. Fifty-one years later, there are still startling numbers of desperately poor people and, in this century, the gap between the poorest many and richest few has widened to a chasm. (Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, in fact, one might speak of a war on the poor, not poverty.) Drugs? Forty-four years after President Richard Nixon proclaimed the war on drugs, there are still millions in jail, billions being spent, and drugs galore on the streets of American cities. Terror? Thirteen years and counting after that “war” was launched, terror groups, minor in numbers and reach in 2001, have proliferated wildly and there is now something like a “caliphate” -- once an Osama bin Laden fantasy -- in the Middle East: ISIS in power in parts of Iraq and Syria, al-Qaeda on the rise in Yemen, Libya destabilized and divvied up among ever more extreme outfits, innocents still dying in U.S. drone strikes. Afghanistan? The opium trade has rebounded big time, the Taliban is resurgent, and the region is being destabilized. Iraq? A cauldron of ethnic and religious rivalries and hatreds, with more U.S. weaponry on the way to fuel the killing, in a country that functionally no longer exists. The only certainty in most of these American “wars” is their violent continuation, even when their original missions lie in tatters.
Historically, when a nation declares war, it does so to mobilize national will, as the U.S. clearly did in World War II. Accompanying our wars of recent decades, however, has been an urge not to mobilize the people, but demobilize them -- even as the "experts" are empowered to fight and taxpayer funds pour into the national security state and the military-industrial complex to keep the conflicts going.

What America needs right now is a 12-step program to break the urge to feed further our national addiction to war. The starting point for Washington -- and Americans more generally -- would obviously have to be taking that first step and confessing that we have a problem we alone can’t solve. "Hi, I’m Uncle Sam and I’m a war-oholic. Yes, I’m addicted to war. I know it’s destructive to myself and others. But I can’t stop -- not without your help."

True change often begins with confession. With humility. With an admission that not everything is within one’s control, no matter how violently one rages; indeed, that violent rage only aggravates the problem. America needs to make such a confession. Only then can we begin to wean ourselves off war.

Views from space

Courtesy of The Atlantic

Solar Impulse

Well, it's had its first major delay. It had planned to fly from China to Hawaii on its next leg, but had to stop in Japan. The Solar Impulse is powered only by the sun. Here is its voyage around the world thus far.

The pilot sits in a cockpit that is about the same size as a telephone booth. If the plane doesn't get enough sun during the day, he will have to bail. He can take naps for only twenty minutes and not too many of them.

The President Sings

SpaceX problem

Oil and Gas Companies Should Pay U.S. More as they move into the 21st Century

At least as far as what they pay the government to drill on our land. The companies pay the feds a royalty of 12.5%. That's the same rate they paid in 1920, ninety-five years ago. The fed rate is one of the lowest in the world. The states do better, some of them get double that, 25%. 

But the royalty is not the only money the fed gets from these companies. There is something called a bond. When an oil and gas company successfully bids on a lease, it must post a bond—or insurance—to guarantee that it will comply with the terms of the lease, including cleanup costs for unseen disasters during production and after the well stops producing. The bonding requirements on federal land have not been updated in more than 50 years. Currently, under regulations set in 1951, a company can secure a nationwide bond for all its oil and gas wells on public lands for only $150,000.  This works out to less than $100 per well. Yet, reclaiming a well can cost anywhere between $2,000 and $30,000.

Then, there are the bonus bids, which grant the company the right to drill on the leased land for a period of 10 years. This costs the companies $2 per acre. Finally, companies pay an annual rental fee to the federal government. Current rental rates are set at $1.50 per acre for the first five years of a lease, and $2 per acre thereafter.

Most estimates conclude that, as a result of these antiquated regulations, we are forgoing more than $730 million in revenue every year. 

Give me your tired, your poor..

...Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. That's what Emma Lazarus wrote a century or so ago. While she was writing about the U.S., it applies to all countries for the world has a refugee crisis unlike any preceding one. According to the UN, nearly 60 million people are now classified as refugees, more than at any time since such records have been kept. The number of refugees increases by 45,000 each day. And more than half are under the age of 18.

It's war and the collapse of nations that are the primary causes of the diaspora, although many of these refugees are  internally displaced. If refugees formed a country, it would be the 24th most populous in the world, between South Africa and Italy.

We have not done much to alleviate the problem. We have taken in 700 of the
4 million Syrian refugees. But other developed countries have done little, as well. The developing world hosts 9 out of 10 refugees. The top host countries, in terms of the number of refugees per capita, are Lebanon, Jordan, Nauru, Chad, Djibouti, South Sudan, Turkey, and Mauritania. Only when you get to the ninth place on the list does a truly rich country appear: Sweden.

Nye on Climate Change

Melting ice reveals ...

...caribou dung, marine reptiles, baskets, arrow shafts with the feathers intact, arrowheads, lashings, weapons, tunics, shoes and other implements, including a complete arrow shaft dating from 5,900 years ago. And, of course, people.

Water in Israel

Many years ago I visited Israel on a business trip. The sight that still stalks my mind is the blooming in the desert. After millennia, the Israelis were the first who were able to make the desert bloom. That is vital to Israel and they have developed more than one way of solving the problem.

They have developed a different method of irrigation - drip irrigation. It is a way of irrigating plants via a system of perforated pipes that water crops with judicious regularity. It reduces water usage and increases crop yield, resulting in as much as four times more produce for the same amount of water. Israel uses drip irrigation in 75 percent of its farms. Other places only use it in 5 percent. Yet, agriculture accounts for about 70 percent of water usage globally.

They can turn seawater into tap water. Some feel this is a bad idea. But it does produce drinkable water.

Perhaps, the most important aspect of Israel's water is that there is only one water authority that sets both policy and pricing for the whole country. They can get things done. Israel recycles more than 80 percent of its wastewater for reuse in agriculture and other industrial processes, which is quadruple the amount of the second largest wastewater recycler, Spain. In California, there’s still strong public distrust of such recycling, even after rigorous treatment. 

Only another 1,000 miles to go

Ernie Andrus, a 91-year-old World War II veteran, is running cross-country from California to Georgia. He is not doing it in one fell swoop. As of March he had run from California to Texas. I don't know how long it took him, but he plans on reaching Georgia in the next two years. He is running by himself, although he says, "I'm sure there are many others my age who could do what I'm doing, It's just not something they want to do."

He is running to raise money for the LST 325 Memorial, which hopes to bring Ernie's old World War II landing craft back to Normandy for the next D-Day commemoration.

"Every nation has dark spots in its past...

...and nowhere are those spots darker than in Germany. However, the greatness of a country is reflected in how it deals with this past and whether it critically examines it. In this respect, the United States is not the great nation it believes itself to be."

That is how Markus Feldenkirchen ends a commentary of racism in the U.S. He begins "The United States excels at dealing with the injustices of other countries. The US has been less successful, however, in conducting the same process when addressing the dark parts of its own past."

You should read the article.

A real fan

So, the Chicago Cubs fan is feeding his seven-month old son when a foul ball comes his way. He does what every true fan would do - catches the ball - and continues to feed his son.

Numbers can be confusing

Today's NY Times has an article entitled "Homegrown Radicals More Deadly Than Jihadis In U.S." The article is based on a report by New America, another Washington Research Center. The article reports that since 2015 "48 have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim, compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists". So, I guess the term 'deadly' can be considered accurate. However, the report does not include the Newtown school or Colorado theater killings. Furthermore, the report states that 276 of the extremists were jihadists, while 183 were not.

The Northern Lights

Polling is more difficult in the 21st century

An article by Cliff Zukin, past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, brought back memories of the effect of a rising ownership of telephones had on forecasting the results of a presidential election, perhaps one in the late 1940s. Zukin ascribes a fair amount of the recent poor polling results to the rise of the cellphone. First of all, it has increased the cost of polling. The 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection  prohibits the calling of cellphones through automatic dialers. Paid staff now has to dial as well as poll. 

The response rate has also gone downhill. In the late 1970s, an 80 percent response rate was typical. By the late 1990s it was 36 percent; in 2014 it had sunk to 8 percent. Some pollsters have gone to the internet. But, here again there are problems. This time it's age and voting habits. While all but 3 percent of those ages 18 to 29 use the Internet, they made up just 13 percent of the 2014 electorate, according to the exit poll conducted by Edison Research. Some 40 percent of those 65 and older do not use the Internet, but they made up 22 percent of voters.

Fraud with Medicare Part D

ProPublica has been studying Medicare for quite a while. Here is the latest summary from a report by Health and Human Services Inspector General.

• More than 1,400 pharmacies had questionable billing practices last year in the drug program. Some billed for extremely high numbers of prescriptions per patient and others billed for a high proportion of narcotic controlled substances. Collectively, they billed Part D $2.3 billion in 2014. Prescriptions for commonly abused opioids continue to rise, despite warnings about inappropriate use. 
• Between 2006 and 2014, Medicare's spending on them grew to $3.9 billion from $1.5 billion, a 156 percent increase. By comparison, spending for all drugs in the program, including expensive specialty medications, grew by 136 percent during the same period. More than 40 percent of Medicare beneficiaries in Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Alaska filled at least one prescription for a narcotic in 2014, compared to 32 percent for the nation as a whole. 
• New York and Los Angeles remain hotbeds for questionable prescribing, with far higher use of expensive drugs associated with fraud than other parts of the country. The New York metropolitan area, for instance, accounted for half of all prescriptions for the expensive topical ointment Solaraze last year, a disproportional rate. The drug is used for lesions formed as a result of overexposure to the sun. New York and Los Angeles also stood out for prescribing of two omega-3 fatty acids, used to help reduce very high triglyceride levels. The two regions accounted for nearly half of all prescriptions for Vascepa and about a third of those for Lovaza.

This is sickening

The above chart is from the Economic Policy Institute

Interview with 101 year-old Hattie Mae MacDonald of Feague, Kentucky:

Reporter: Can you give us some health tips for reaching the age of 101? 

Hattie: For better digestion I drink beer. In the case of appetite loss I drink white wine. For low blood pressure I drink Red Wine. In the case of high blood pressure I drink scotch. And when I have a cold I drink Schnapps. 

Reporter: When do you drink water? 

Hattie: I've never been that sick.

From a Duncaster correspondent

What is it?

To me it looks like a zipper on rather rough clothing. What it really is are olive groves in Cordoba, Spain. The photograph is actually an image taken by a satellite in space. It is part of a series called Daily Overview that posts a new satellite image from space every day. 

You can see many more here.

Summer 2015: Day 1

A true Christian

Life moves faster

An Australian view of gun control

A crab or two

The Solar Plane

I wrote about this solar-powered plane last month. Here is a video of it in action:

Dog meat in China

When I was a kid, the story was that China was in such bad shape that people were eating dogs. Maybe this story was just that, a story. The BBC quotes the executive editor of the China Dialogue environmental blog, "Although meat eating has increased in China over the past 30 years as the country becomes more affluent, dog meat is really not widely available."

Another indication of the story: Yulin, in Guangxi province in southern China, has an annual Dog Festival, the main feature of which is the cooking and eating of 10,000 dogs.

Driving piles in Pakistan

Courtesy of our Plymouth correspondent

More and more studies

It seems that almost every day the results of a new scientific study appear in the media. The average reader makes the assumption that, since the study was published in a major scientific journal, the results must be true. However, that is not always the case. Many times a publicized article is retracted after a period of time.

Retraction Watch has been studying these retractions for a number of years. What they have found out is that there has been a 20 to 25 percent increase in retractions across some 10,000 medical and science journals in the past five years: 500 to 600 a year today from 400 in 2010. (The number in 2001 was 40, according to previous research.) It appears that a third of retractions are because of errors, like tainted samples or mistakes in statistics, and about two-thirds are because of misconduct or suspicions of misconduct.

Water is a problem

NASA has done study of the world's largest aquifers, thirty-seven in total - and has found that they are being depleted at alarming rates.

Twenty-one of them have passed their sustainability tipping points, meaning more water was removed than replaced during the decade-long study period. Thirteen aquifers declined at rates that put them into the most troubled category. The researchers said this indicated a long-term problem that’s likely to worsen as reliance on aquifers grows.Underground aquifers supply 35 percent of the water used by humans worldwide. Demand is even greater in times of drought. Rain-starved California is currently tapping aquifers for 60 percent of its water use.The aquifers under the most stress are in poor, densely populated regions, such as northwest India, Pakistan and North Africa, where alternatives are limited and water shortages could quickly lead to instability.The world’s most stressed aquifer — defined as suffering rapid depletion with little or no sign of recharging — was the Arabian Aquifer, a water source used by more than 60 million people. That was followed by the Indus Basin in India and Pakistan, then the Murzuk-Djado Basin in Libya and Niger.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing...

...that we have so many (20?) running for president. It's probably better than the days before JFK when the party bosses selected the candidates. And, maybe someone who has been a governor or senator may be capable of being a good president. But judging by what most of them say or do they probably have not been very good as a governor or senator. I would doubt that the old party bosses would have chosen many of them as their party's nominee. 

Harking back to JFK once more, we have him to thank for the current campaign fiasco. He defied the party bosses and made the primaries the place to earn the nominations. He started in January of 1960, an election year. The start now has been pushed back to almost two years before the election. We need to adopt a restricted campaign period as most sensible countries do now. Canada has a campaign period of only 35 days.

I suppose that this perpetual campaigning is good for the media. It gives them something to pontificate about - and advertising dollars. It would be nice if the candidates could pontificate about how they intend to alleviate our myriad problems.

Hitching a ride

That's an alligator that he is riding on.

Mayflies closed the bridge

The picture above shows the mayflies that for some strange reason made the bridge over the Susquehanna River, in Pennsylvania, into a treacherous, slippery mess. It was so bad that the bridge was closed overnight. Piles of mayflies up to 2ft deep were seen the morning after. One observer stated, "They were getting in our mouth. We had to close our eyes. We had to swat them away. Even when we got back, it felt like bugs were crawling in you."

Brutal and medieval

College is not but has become a business

Hunter Rawlings, president of the Association of American Universities and a former president of Cornell University and the University of Iowa, explains why college should not be a business. When one buys something at a store, he simply has to pay for it with dollars and cents. When one goes to college the payment is more than dollars and cents. The student has to work to acquire and education. The student 'pays' for his/her education by making decisions: courses to take (and not take), the amount of work to do, the intellectual curiosity the student exhibits, participating in class, his focus and determination. 

Rawlings concludes:

To create what is, for most of us, that “new sensation,” you need a professor who provokes and a student who stops slumbering. It is the responsibility of colleges and universities to place students in environments that provide these opportunities. It is the responsibility of students to seize them. Genuine education is not a commodity, it is the awakening of a human being.

Step by step

So, another 450 troops are going to Iraq. What the rationale is is unknown, as Obama has not supplied any sort of comprehensive analysis to Congress. His only 'analysis' is a four-page document that is based in part on the 2001 Congressional resolution which “authorized the use of force against ISIL beginning in at least 2004, when ISIL, then known as al Qaida in Iraq, pledged its allegiance to (the late Osama) bin Laden". Was ISIL even a dream in 2004? The 'analysis' also argues that the movement against ISIL is consonant with the 2002 resolution approving the invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein. 

This is the guy pledging transparency, “My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.” And his administration has yet to respond to an ACLU  Freedom of Information Act request filed in September seeking any documents related to a legal analysis. 

What can't be transplanted?

Now we learn of a penis transplant. The penis of a young South African was destroyed when he was circumcised. Doctors transplanted a penis in December and today it is reported that his girlfriend is four months pregnant. While there has not been a paternity test, doctors believe the couple.

Police Killings

The Guardian has done a study comparing killings by police in the U.S. and in various places around the world. Here is a sampling of their findings:

Kennedy and Obama

Ray McGovern reminds us of a speech by John Kennedy that changed the world. It ended the cold war. The fundamental point Kennedy made:

"What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. … I am talking about genuine peace – the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living – the kind that enables man and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time. …"

And then, in comparing Kennedy and Obama, McGovern quotes former Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who quit his job as chief prosecutor at Guantanamo when ordered to accept testimony based on waterboarding under the Bush administration:

"There's a pair of testicles somewhere between the Capitol Building and the White House that fell off the President after Election Day [2008]."

Mastering stairs with a wheelchair

This wheelchair was developed by students at a Swiss university. The wheelchair needs work I think, but it is a start to solving a difficult problem. The video was obviously made by young kids. I don't think it's very good.

Not your typical Park Ranger

Back to nature

Boston has had some problems maintaining its parklands. The grounds in many areas are overrun by poison ivy and weeds. Boston's solution:

That's right. Goats. As a Parks Dept. spokesperson says, "Bringing in the goats will let us open those areas up, and we won’t have the noise from the heavy machinery. They eat these plants and remove all of the harmful oils and seeds and produce a clean and natural fertilizer to the landscape.” It also eliminates the need for herbicides. A single herd of goats can eat one-third of an acre of shrubbery per week. Consuming plants that are poisonous to people is par for the course in goats’ diet, and doesn’t harm them.

Where was her husband?

In the recent issue of Harpers, Vanessa Gregory, a professor at UMiss, wrote about her ectopic pregnancy. This is the result of fertilized egg being implanted outside her uterus, perhaps in one of her fallopian tubes. Ectopic pregnancy is the leading cause of first-trimester deaths in the United States. Approximately one out of every fifty pregnancies in the United States is ectopic. It can be treated with surgery (you lose your fertility or the baby) or with drugs. She chose drugs.

Throughout the four page article she mentions her husband once, despite her telling of discussions with friends. He is mentioned when she needs him to drive her to the doctor's office when her nerves prevent her from driving. Maybe she did not want to reveal the role her husband played in her difficulty. Yet, I found this strange. What is marriage about? We all have problems, some are life-and-death ones. That's when you're glad you married someone who will help you get through the difficulties.

The government is sponsoring the water crisis

Or, at least that's the case in Arizona. Surprising to me is that Arizona grows a lot of cotton. That requires the importing of billions of gallons of water each year. Cotton is one of the thirstiest crops in existence, and each acre cultivated here demands six times as much water as lettuce, 60 percent more than wheat. The water comes from a nearby federal reservoir, siphoned from beleaguered underground aquifers and pumped in from the Colorado River hundreds of miles away. 

Cotton is not exactly a hot product; demand and prices have plummeted. Yet, Arizona  uses two to four times as much water per acre as cotton powerhouses like Texas and Georgia because they irrigate their fields more often. Furthermore, to refer to supply and demand principles, China, the world’s largest cotton producer, has enough cotton in warehouses to stop farming for a year. And Texas, the U.S.’s largest producer, harvests enough to cover more than one third of U.S. exports alone, relying largely on natural rainfall, not irrigation, to do it. 

Farmers continue to grow cotton in Arizona because the U.S. Farm Bill offers cotton farmers a good deal of money. The farmers receive government checks just for putting cottonseeds in the ground and more checks when the price of cotton falls. They get cheap loans for cotton production that don’t have to be fully repaid if the market slumps. Most recently, the government has covered almost the entire premium on their cotton crop insurance, guaranteeing they’ll be financially protected even when natural conditions — like drought — keep them from producing a good harvest.

Will Congress do something?

Making Bail

Transplanting pancreas, kidney and skull

Some data on retirements

According to the Census Bureau the age 65-and-older population will grow over 50 percent between 2015 and 2030. The GAO decided to study how prepared these upcoming retirees are for their old age. Here is what the GAO learned.

Many retirees and workers approaching retirement have limited financial resources. About half of households age 55 and older have no retirement savings (such as in a 401(k) plan or an IRA). According to GAO's analysis of the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances, many older households without retirement savings have few other resources, such as a defined benefit (DB) plan or nonretirement savings, to draw on in retirement (see figure below). For example, among households age 55 and older, about 29 percent have neither retirement savings nor a DB plan, which typically provides a monthly payment for life. Households that have retirement savings generally have other resources to draw on, such as non-retirement savings and DB plans. Among those with some retirement savings, the median amount of those savings is about $104,000 for households age 55-64 and $148,000 for households age 65-74, equivalent to an inflation-protected annuity of $310 and $649 per month, respectively. Social Security provides most of the income for about half of households age 65 and older.

Another Red Cross Fiasco

When will the Red Cross return to operating in the public interest? Over the past several years, I've documented a number of problems in the organization. Fines for violating blood safety laws, failing to specify how their money is spent, focusing on PR rather than helping people, the rapid turnover of presidents - and the list can go on and .

The latest fiasco is the organization's handling of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. They did well in the raising of money - about a half billion dollars. The spending and their claims as to what they did is another matter. Some examples:

• Claiming they would build 700 homes in Campeche and building none.
• Claiming they provided homes to 130,000 people. They'd have a hard time fitting that number of people in the six permanent homes they built.
• Claiming they helped  “more than 4.5 million” individual Haitians “get back on their feet.” That's kind of hard in a country of 10 million.
• Launching hand-washing education campaigns where "people had no access to water and no soap.”

Growing Up Black

Face Transplant

Melting glaciers in the Antarctic

It took a while but scientists have concluded that several glaciers on the southern Antarctic Peninsula suddenly began shedding ice in 2009. This has resulted in 72 cubic miles of water being dumped in the ocean since then. Here's where this is happening.

The scientists think that ocean warming—and not warmer air temperatures or a lack of snowfall—explains the ice loss. "The bedrock on which they sit is below sea level. As the region’s ice shelves continue to thin (they have lost one-fifth of their mass in the last 20 years), warm water pushes inland from below, causing the glaciers to melt from underneath, thus speeding their demise."

Controlling Drug Costs

Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy released another study of drug spending among industrialized countries; this time for 2012. It didn't break new ground. The U.S. at $1,010 per capita was the biggest spender. Germany was next at only at $668 per capita,or about a third less than us. Maybe we should emulate Germany and other countries and institute some kind of price control mechanism. 

The Lyre bird speaks

Can you run a marathon?

Harriette Thompson ran the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon in San Diego in seven hours, 24 minutes and 36 seconds. She set a new record for the oldest person to complete a marathon: 92 years and 65 days. Note that she has also beaten oral cancer three times.

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What's your opinion?

Should we still worry about The Population Bomb?

Hell on Earth?

That's what New Delhi sounds like in this article by Gardiner Harris, a NY Times reporter who spent the past three years there. His 8 year-old son's breathing problems were significantly worsened while there. Had he stayed in America, the problems would have lessened. In Delhi, half the kids in school have breathing problems. But it is more than the kids who have problems caused by pollution. Harris writes, "it is in Delhi — among the most populous, polluted, unsanitary and bacterially unsafe cities on earth — where the new calculus seems most urgent. The city’s air is more than twice as polluted as Beijing’s, according to the World Health Organization. (India, in fact, has 13 of the world’s 25 most polluted cities, while Lanzhou is the only Chinese city among the worst 50; Beijing ranks 79th.)"

But it's not just the air that inflicts harm. Half the population, about 600 million Indians, defecate outdoors, and most of the effluent, even from toilets, is dumped untreated into rivers and streams. Add the efforts of animals and shit can turn up anywhere, even in the shower.

And then there are the fires. "In some places in Delhi, the levels of fine particles that cause the most lung damage, called PM2.5, routinely exceed 1,000 in winter in part because small trash and other fires are so common, according to scientists. In Beijing, PM2.5 levels that exceed 500 make international headlines; here, levels twice that high are largely ignored."

Water is polluted. Air is polluted. What's left?