Random thoughts on dimethyl sulphide

One of the most powerful books I've read recently is  "The Seabird’s Cry: The Lives and Loves of Puffins, Gannets and Other Ocean Voyagers" by Adam Nicolson. It chronicles the lives and survival of our major seabirds and describes their innate ability to survive under changing circumstances. The book is in fact a lesson in survival and evolution that humans could learn much from.

One of the main stories in this book is the greater understanding we have recently acquired about the use of smell by birds to navigate. It is pivotal in the survival of some birds like the Shearwater and other "tubenoses". But as usual, us humans are now totally screwing this up for the birds. With plastic. These recent revelations are horrendous and should be more widely publicised, and so I share these quotes from the book:

“Gabrielle Nevitt,  a professor at the University of California at Davis, has been pursuing the significance of scent in seabirds for more than quarter of a century". She recently worked with “Tim Bates, a chemist at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who was investigating a gas called dimethyl sulphide, or DMS, which is emitted by phytoplankton, the microscopic plants that live on the surface of the ocean, particularly when they are damaged.”

“Nevitt knew that the gas is released when krill – a major food source for seabirds – devour phytoplankton. ‘I’d read about DMS,’ Nevitt says. ‘But it never occurred to me it might have an odor.’ It all clicked into place. The birds pick up the DMS trail and follow it to schools of krill. When Bates showed her a map of DMS plumes, Nevitt saw that they were more concentrated in areas with geographic formations near the ocean’s surface. ‘I could see peaks and valleys of DMS over shelf breaks, seamounts, and other underwater features, and I realized the ocean’s surface wasn’t featureless to the birds,’ she says. ‘They have their own map, an odor landscape, in the air above the water.’ It was, says Nevitt, the kind of ‘aha’ moment scientists live for.” (p. 222-223)

But…

"There is one disturbing footnote to this remarkable sequence of discoveries: small pieces of plastic that have been floating in the ocean for a while also produce a plume of dimethyl sulphide which all of the tubenoses –the shearwaters, the fulmars, the petrels and the albatrosses –now mistake for food. They don’t eat the little bits of plastic because they look like prey but because they smell like it. The plastic we have scattered across the ocean has become a sensory trap for the birds, and other sea creatures, that are out there in search of sustenance." (p. 232)

This is horrendous, and goes toward explaining the deceased sea birds with guts full of plastic that we saw on Blue Planet II. Fortunately Attenborough has now put the issue of plastic in many more peoples minds.

We need to all be aware that plastic is only safe if properly recycled. And who is doing that? Some of us also join in with #2MinuteBeachClean when we can, but the only long term solution is to develop alternatives to plastic, globally. And what chance have we got of making this happen when the superpowers are preoccupied with a new Cold War.....

Oy Vey!

x

One year on and here we go...

Leaving Europe

I will try to never use the B word again, it is inane and meaningless.

As the negotiations to leave Europe start, and the unexpected political environment in which they occur, I begin to wonder what can or will actually change. There is no doubt that any government, current or new, will have to ensure some part in a single market. Otherwise the British Economy will collapse as nearly everything we as consumers demand has interdependence with Europe. If those links are broken, the tariffs and exchange issues would have a catastrophic impact on prices and inflation. An example of this interdependence is the beloved Mini motorcar, seen by many as a symbol of Britain. It is still built in Britain (jobs), but owned by BMW. The crankshaft for this car is cast in Spain after which it is sent to Britain to be machined. From here it goes to Germany to be built into the engine, which is then sent back to Britain for the final car assembly. This is only viable in a single market, because if import and export tariffs are added for each boundary crossed, it would make the product financially unviable. Resulting in BMW pulling out and jobs lost along with a successful product. This interdependence applies to everything from energy, to food, to consumer products, to infrastructure support and much more. So leaving the single market would be an industrial disaster that no government would want, be it Conservatives as advocates for business or Labour as advocates for the workers.

So what Europe is quite rightly saying is that if this is to be negotiated, the status of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU must be resolved, along with resolving existing financial arrangements. In other words the Divorce before the Business.

Counter to expectations, and my own personal fears, May has now gone to Europe and proposed something far more realistic than the hate politics of the last year had suggested. It is still not realistic enough but moving in the right direction.

The first thing that the Leave community will now have to accept is that Europeans will not be ejected wholesale. Now for most that is probably acceptable, but that horrendous underbelly of racism that has exposed itself will now have to be brought to their senses, and I wonder if that is possible. They do not understand that it takes the free movement of people to create political and economic stability.
As Britain has now conceded to Europe's demands on resolving citizen status, I do wonder how many obstacles will be insurmountable as these negotiations move forward. Maybe in the end sense will prevail and this whole episode will come to an end with the acceptance that any referendum is only advisory, and not an opportunity for the far right to stage a take over. I think this is one of the things the people were saying on June 8th.

The conversation begins - Facebook transcripts

The following is a transcript of a Facebook post on 20th Feb. which solicited an interesting response from Vagrant Rambler. Although expressing an opposing view to my own, I find his arguments much more compelling than any of the Party Political, Media driven frenzy, that this important issue will attract. I hope this will become a much wider debate and I will be publishing update notification on FB and Twitter.

20 Feb 2016 

Original Post - Tom

Brexit? You must be joking!

When Britain joined Europe, there was an industrial base and the country still lead the world in many technical and financial spheres. There were apprentices and a hugely skilled work force. Basic ingredients for independence. But without anyone doing a thing, the state was allowed to sell it's silverware, polytechnics became "universities", as we lost our skills and then we nodded our heads to the captains of industry when they sold all our assets and moved our machines to China.

And then we all went abroad on holiday.

Now, we don't make things, we import 60% of our food and lead the world in just a few niche high-tech areas, whilst we continue to sell our lives to the Chinese, who will now build our power stations. And the word "engineer" is still a dirty one. So only a suicidal idiot would pull out of the one community that lends us some autonomy and prevents Britain being totally gobbled up by multi-nationals.

Oh, and do shut up about immigrants. We are all immigrants, and without migration there would be no civilised world. And without migration today, we'd have no health service and most other service industries would collapse. So please stop thinking Britain is so smart that it can stand on it's own two feet. There are nowhere near enough skilled workers, our farms can not sustain us and the Bullingdon Boys want to see us all as subservient. Britain would become a slave to the rest of the world in no time. Unfortunately, the Great British Heritage and Culture is not enough to stop that!

Comment - Vagrant Rambler

Surely all of these bad things have been happening whilst we are a part of the EU anyway so it's not like Brussels has helped to stop it. It could be that being in the EU has facilitated the problems you have mentioned because a consequence of the globalisation doctrine of the last 15 years or so is that you stop making stuff or investing in you're own country if other countries will do it cheaper. Perhaps leaving the EU would be the first step to reinvesting in our own children's futures, taking control back from the multinationals, rebuilding our own industries and our social infrastructure and gaining some autonomy as a country again? Especially if the Tories were voted out next election in favour of a more left wing ideology. Also I see a high percentage of Europe that is far more right wing when it comes to immigration than we are as a nation and immigration occurs regardless of whether or not we are in the EU from all over the world. Your view point sounds to me like someone who's resigned themselves to living as a nation of slaves regardless of the outcome and you have turned the choice into who will be our future masters. I personally think sometimes you have to take one small step back to take two steps forward.

21 Feb 2016

Comment - Tom

Interesting response Mr Rambler! One of the main reasons I posted this is precisely because the idea of enslavement worries me no end, and China still hasn't forgiven us for the Opium Wars! And my use of "autonomy" is diametrically opposed to enslavement. As a Socialist, I still strongly believe in the Internationale; we should all stand together. Isolationism is not a good idea when there are so many big capitalist fish out there who WILL gobble us up. Corbyn recognises the need for this Internationale and he too wants us to stay in Europe. And if you really want a more left-wing government, Corbyn is about as good as it gets as this country has taken a step shift to the right and I hope beyond hope that he can take the next election. Unlikely, because so many British people have become scared stiff thanks to the media lies. And it is not Europe that destroyed our industries, otherwise how do you explain the continued industrial growth of Germany, France, Italy and Spain, who all still make a lot of things! No, it's the greed of the British captains of industry, who saw the billions they could pocket that encouraged the sell-off of British Industry. I think that final chapter occurred when Dyson moved his entire operation from Anglia to China. Not because of Europe, but because he wanted to make more money. Sorry, Mr. Rambler, but you come across as wanting to take us back to the fifties, but without the skills base we had then and with nearly everything in the hands of the Bullingdon Boys. And sorry, we just do not have enough qualified British people to run this country anymore. It is also worth noting that governments in Europe have continually shifted left and right over the years, with in fact the median being social democracy in some form or other because of proportional representation (another "revolutionary" European idea!). Yes, because of Islamophobia there has been a shift to the right in Europe, just like here. And as regards immigration (I am a Dutchman by the way) Germany has taken just one or two more refugees in than Britain! In fact many hundreds of thousands more! But finally, the most important thing to remember is that since the creation of Benelux, followed by the treaty of Rome there has been no pan-european war. Which is why you and I have grown up in relative peace. But if you want to join in with the likes of Duncan-Smith, Farrage and Gove, best of luck!

Comment - Vagrant Rambler

I don't even know where to begin. OK at the beginning. Europe is in general more right wing than Britain. Britain in general has contributed more to overseas aid and taken in more immigrants and refugees than anywhere in Europe, just not in the past couple of years. Europe is for all it's retoric less socialist than here. Germany made a big deal out of telling the world refugees were welcome and now a couple of months later the old style Germans are resurfacing with their hatey ways. All the public services are privately owned and privately run in Europe including their healthcare systems. They have no ideological or financial interest in helping us to maintain our far more socialist model. Neither do our Tory government, nor do the Americans. All of their big business interests are aligned and they are working in near symbiosis to take everything. What percentage of wealth do the 1% have now? As a socialist you should recognise that there is no internationally recognised system for socialism to be rolled out across the borders of countries that doesn't involve a huge amount of violence, civil unrest and war. We have no vote in other people's countries, they have no vote in ours. Our democracies are very much separated / divided. Big business however is a dictatorship with one clear simple objective . Take all the money. The European Union is an institution designed and run by people facilitating big business to achieve their aims and cannot be stopped by borders or even by our own democratically elected governments unless a country is given the choice to opt out and make it's own decisions by it's leaders. The devise by which Big Business can erode our rights must be removed from the system in order that each country can ascertain what is in the best interests of it's own people. Removing ourselves from the European Union would not affect the ability of socialist ideas to travel from one country to another. But it would effect Big business's ability to legislate against an entire continent in one go. Scaremongering about past wars does you no credit. There has been no European war because everyone in power recognises the futility of it. Interesting that you mention Smith and Gove as well, is it because the media told you to? Of course it's distasteful to side with them, and Farage too but my reasons are entirely different from theirs. Why do you feel the need to parrot media sponsored propaganda? I believe leaving the EU is the surest way to undermine the right wing politics of this country and Europe that are currently masquerading as for the good of the people, when they are so obviously detrimental and the best chance of getting a left wing government back in this country that will defend the people's rights to public services and a decent quality of life. The European Union protects us from nothing, and exposes us to everything. International socialists have no power here and protect us from nothing. Our own left wing will do the job if we enable it. A smaller success is better than an epic fail any day of the week. As for Corbyn, he's missing a trick, simply because he's now implying he and his party are too weak to fight without big old right wing Europe holding his hand and telling him what he can and can't do. Sturgeon's doing the same in Scotland. They should be joining forces and saying leave the EU, down with the Tories, lets get a working partnership going and let's sort this crap out, build up industries, invest in our children and take back our public services.