Charlie Sheldon's Blog, page 5

Passing of an era, whether we like it or not….

This is kind of a sea story, I guess. In 1984 I’d been working out of Fall River, Mass on a red crab vessel, Taurus, ten day trips to the edge of the continental shelf ranging from Virginia to Maine, deep water, catching red crab at 600 fathoms on 100-trap lines, butchering the crab, icing them, for delivery to a processing plant up by Boston. Red crabs are hard to keep alive in tanks of water, unlike, say, lobsters, or, I am guessing, the Alaskan crab species. We’d fill mesh bags with crab parts, bodies or legs, bathe them in a sulfite mixture for disinfectant, then ice them in the hold. The Taurus was a converted small Navy ship, 180 feet long, a sister ship of the infamous Pueblo, but with the topsides ripped off and changed, a good sea boat, comfortable, and safe, or as safe as a 40 year old ship could be. Then I had a chance to go to work in New York, and I took the job because it was a challenge, with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, to rebuild an abandoned steamship terminal in Brooklyn into some kind of fishing operation. In 1984 New York was the biggest port in North America, landing millions of containers at newer terminals over on the Jersey side, Newark, as well as a terminal on Staten Island and one in Brooklyn. Containers were king, and New York was the center of the action. Remember Continue Reading →

Impacts of Gulf Stream Collapse

The long article below discusses in detail the data showing a weakening of the Gulf Stream function over the last century (maybe two centuries). The Gulf Stream moves hot water from the Equator north to northwestern Europe, such that average temperatures there in the winter are as much as 40 degrees warmer than at the same latitude in Canada. The weakening seems to happen when volumes of fresh water, less dense than salt water, fail to sink even after cooling, halting the flow caused when warm Gulf Stream waters cool and sink off Europe and then wander south deep in the ocean. There is a worldwide current flow as well, taking about 1,000 years for a full cycle. A warming Arctic has melted volumes of sea ice and Greenland glacier ice and this less dense fresh water, not sinking as it should, seems to be slowing the Gulf Stream. What happens if the Gulf Stream collapses, and the transfer of heat slows or stops? Waters get hotter around the Equator, and colder near the North Pole. Europe and North America and Asia will become colder; in the case of Europe, much colder. Entire weather patters will change in ways impossible to predict. The much colder conditions might even start off another ice age, because perhaps winter snows won’t melt year to year and over decades and centuries a huge ice sheet forms. While it looks like the Gulf Stream may have been slowing even before the last half century of Continue Reading →

A “braided stream”

The article here documents how thinking is changing, or has changed, regarding the line of human development, suggesting that modern humans arose from a braided and complex series of interactions among earlier human groups. What I find interesting here is how Homo Erectus, the most successful earlier human in terms of longevity (nearly 2 millions years!) overlaps all subsequent forms (Neanderthal, Denisovian, etc) nearly to the present day. My thesis is that “modern” humans arose from earlier or other forms when somehow the intermixing enabled people to tell stories and thus carry culture, and this happened 70,000 to 100,000 years ago. https://geneticliteracyproject.org/20...

More evidence of an earlier arrival…

Ancient Footprints Push Back Date of Human Arrival in the Americas Human footprints found in New Mexico are about 23,000 years old, a study reported, suggesting that people may have arrived long before the Ice Age’s glaciers melted. By Carl ZimmerSept. 23, 2021Updated 2:22 p.m. ETSign up for Science Times  Get stories that capture the wonders of nature, the cosmos and the human body. Get it sent to your inbox. Ancient human footprints preserved in the ground across the White Sands National Park in New Mexico are astonishingly old, scientists reported on Thursday, dating back about 23,000 years to the Ice Age. The results, if they hold up to scrutiny, would rejuvenate the scientific debate about how humans first spread across the Americas, implying that they did so at a time when massive glaciers covered much of their path. Researchers who have argued for such an early arrival hailed the new study as firm proof. “I think this is probably the biggest discovery about the peopling of America in a hundred years,” said Ciprian Ardelean, an archaeologist at Autonomous University of Zacatecas in Mexico who was not involved in the work. “I don’t know what gods they prayed to, but this is a dream find.” For decades, many archaeologists have maintained that humans spread across North and South America only at the end of the last ice age. They pointed to the oldest known tools, including spear tips, scrapers and needles, dating back about 13,000 years. The technology was known as Continue Reading →

A Crazy, Stupid, Arrogant Idea. Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

First of all they aren’t talking about bringing BACK the mammoth but creating an elephant-mammoth hybrid with long hair and a lot of fat. To live where? Second, lower in the article is the statement that mammoths pushing away snow to get at the grass beneath exposes the soil so the permnafrost can stay frozen. Really? Seriously? Scientists Say They Could Bring Back Woolly Mammoths. But Maybe They Shouldn’t Updated September 15, 20216:24 AM ET Scott Neuman Twitter An artist’s impression of a woolly mammoth in a snow-covered environment. Leonello Calvetti/Stocktrek Images/Getty Images/Stocktrek Images Using recovered DNA to “genetically resurrect” an extinct species — the central idea behind the Jurassic Park films — may be moving closer to reality with the creation this week of a new company that aims to bring back woolly mammoths thousands of years after the last of the giants disappeared from the Arctic tundra. Flush with a $15 million infusion of funding, Harvard University genetics professor George Church, known for his pioneering work in genome sequencing and gene splicing, hopes the company can usher in an era when mammoths “walk the Arctic tundra again.” He and other researchers also hope that a revived species can play a role in combating climate change. “We are working towards bringing back species who left an ecological void as they went extinct,” the company, Colossal, said in answer to questions emailed by NPR. “As Colossal actively pursues the conservation and preservation of endangered species, we are identifying species that Continue Reading →

Oldest human art now from Tibet?

This article reports on hand prints and footprints found in Tibet, made by children, as art. Either modern humans were far from Africa that long ago or another branch – Denisovian, or Neanderthal – also created art. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-...

Tribal urge stronger than survival urge?

The urge to survive is one of the strongest forces within humans. It seems that this urge is overcome, or overridden, only when a parent’s child or close relative is in imminent danger, in which case one sacrifices oneself for another, or in combat when a soldier sacrifices himself to save his friends. Except for a blood relation or combat, though, it seems the urge to survive triumphs over all else. A few years ago someone became trapped on a cliff and cut off his own arm to escape- to survive. In the face of a deadly pandemic most people have chosen to follow whatever steps they can to survive – isolate, wear masks, and, when finally available, become vaccinated.Yet in the case of this Covid pandemic, millions of people are choosing not to take such steps, and now, with this Delta variant, tens of thousands are dying because they have refused to take the vaccine. This counter view, that vaccines are bad, that wearing masks is weak, is held by millions, with little change despite the very clear evidence masks and vaccines either prevent catching the virus or minimize medical consequences if people do become infected. The evidence is overwhelming that deaths caused by this virus are enormously lower if people are vaccinated. Yet, still, millions refuse to take the vaccine. The reactions to Covid are surely tribal. Most tribes of people – groups of aligned views and interests – follow the suggestions of medical experts, believing that people Continue Reading →

Ancient technology

The article below describes in some detail the revealing of an ancient technology used to trap fish using wooden stakes, woven nets, and the tides. A very very simple concept – construct fish traps on the shore such that fish enter the traps at high tide and then are trapped in shallow pools when the tide goes out. People take the fish they need and let the rest go. The stakes and systems examined here seem to be 1300 years old, but the concept is so simple, using natural materials, it’s hard not to think humans did the same thing tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of years ago. Of course, throughout most of human history the sea level was lower than today, because of the ice advances and retreats, meaning any evidence of most traps has been buried deep in the water since.

Denny Rigged Our Gear

Denny was born up Pubnico way in eighteen and ninety two,In nineteen eleven to Boston he came, a dory man tried and true.He fished from a dory for thirty two years till the war put an end to the tradeMoved to Chatham and fished alongshore in good weather, not much, but a living he made,When seventy-two he fetched up on the beach in a shack in the woods by the Bay,Rigged gear for the fleet and cleared our bad snarls, recoiled in a tight perfect lay.A master, was Denny, rerigging our gear, each bundle a near work of art,With his help all that summer we landed huge trips and a half share we left in his cart.Denny was tiny, a lone quiet man, no family he had of we knew,We’d leave him some beer and groceries to hand in the winter when gear work was few.The following winter Denny fell sick, in his shack stone cold and in pain,To a hospital bed in Hyannis he went not far from our boat on the bay.We’d travel to see him, kids twenty five years, he’s lost in the bed, thin and pale,Hated that hospital food, he did, wouldn’t eat and was wasting away.So we went to the fish store and bought us some haddock which we cooked on our boat at the dock,Wrapped it in foil and raced to the hospital, still hot when he reached for his fork.Oh that fish he did eat, every bit, every bite, and a smile we’d Continue Reading →

Kirkus Review for Totem

Really happy to receive this from Kirkus today: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...