Vacation at Home

 First Costco wrote about how some of their customers shop by cargo bike. 

Then AAA (the American Automobile Association!!!) wrote about 8 car and taxi-free days in Paris. 

And I'm even quoted in the LA Times about getting glasses at Costco by eBike. Well, they didn't mention that I biked there. But I biked home from the Torrance Costco during peak evening traffic and I kept catching up with the same SUVs at each red light for the first 5 miles. 

The media is finally catching on that getting around by cars can be a PITA and bicycling for transportation can be fun, efficient, and healthy. It can be normal, if only we reallocate space for it. We shouldn't have to fly to Paris to experience a city with great food by bike. I mean, Paris is great, if you like French food, but the food in Torrance is way more exciting (I am saying this unironically). 

South Bay weather is nicer than Paris'. 

We have the beach, we have mountains (or the hills of Palos Verdes Peninsula). 

We could be paradise. And we don't have to go on vacation to experience it. We can stay right here at home, and live our best lives just by going about our normal business. It would also be cheaper, for both our personal pocketbooks and for society's. 

PFOS/PFOA/PFAS

 I was going to title this post "Why I am not freaking out about PFOS/PFOA" but worried that it would be quoted out of context by people who don't read beyond headlines. The point is I am not worried about my personal exposure to PFOS/PFOA because I did a little research and am reassured that I live in an area where my water is safe. But that is not true for everyone. (PFOS & PFOA are a couple of flourinated compounds in the bigger class of PFAS.)

If you live in California, your water provider has to send you an annual Water Quality Report. It's no longer provided in hard copy with one of your monthly water bills. But the link to the report should be listed in one of your recent bills. For instance, read the California Water Service Rancho Dominguez District Hermosa-Redondo System Water Quality Report 2022. 

Cal Water is a regulated monopoly that tests for PFOS/PFOA and similar flourinated compounds even though they are not required to. From page 10 of my report for Hermosa & Redondo Beach:

In March 2023, EPA issued a proposed national primary drinking water regulation for certain PFAS. The proposed regulation calls for a maximum containment level for PFOS and PFOA of 4 ppt each. Four additional PFAS—PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS, and GenX— would have a combined hazard index limit of 1.0; the hazard index calculation would determine if the levels of these PFAS as a mixture pose a potential risk. 

Knowing that these were constituents of emerging concern, Cal Water proactively tested active sources in our systems for these PFAS years ago. Although not required, we believed it was the right thing to do. In any areas across the state where detections were above levels at which DDW recommends water suppliers take action (the response level), we took the affected sources out of service until treatment was or can be installed. 

None of our active water sources have levels of these six PFAS compounds over current California response levels.

Then on page 16, I can see that my local groundwater has no detectable PFAS and the imported river water (supplied by Metropolitan Water District) has a range of 0-2 ppt (parts per trillion) of PFAS and an annual average of 1 ppt. While adverse health effects can occur with any amount of PFAS above 0, my exposure is very, very small since I drink a blend of groundwater and Metropolitan water. 

 If you live in Hermosa Beach or North Redondo Beach, your water comes from a few wells near Artesia Blvd like this one behind state senator Ben Allen's field office. 

The water is piped to blending tanks behind the new (and fantastic) bakery, Tommy and Atticus. 

From there, the water is pushed out in distribution pipes to 90278 and 90254. 

What does it mean to take a water source out of service and treat it? 

It means that water from each well is tested and, if it is too high, they stop using that well and serve you cleaner water from another source (uncontaminated well or imported water purchased from MetropolitanWD). 

CalWater found PFOS/PFOA at a well in Montebello (east of DTLA) and took the well off-line in February 2020, and began construction of a facility to remove the contaminants in December 2020. In January 2022, they held a ribbon cutting for the updated facility and returned the well back to service. 

The technology is simple and well-known. Read the EPA's explainer, Reducing PFAS in Drinking Water with Treatment Technologies. 

Well water is passed through a bed of Granular Activated Charcoal (GAC), which adsorbs a whole bunch of stuff I don't want to drink (some dangerous, some merely unpleasantly smelly). A regularly refreshed bed of GAC can remove PFOS/PFOA to below detectable levels (ND = none detected). 

But what do you do when the GAC becomes saturated with contaminants?  In the case of a Brita Filter, I toss the old one in the trash, run the pitcher components through the dishwasher to disinfect them, and install a new filter. 

At the water treatment plant, they use a polymer resin to perform anion exchange to pull the adsorbed chemicals off the charcoal. The resin can be incinerated at a high temperature to destroy the PFAS. The charcoal can be reused for years. The resin is expensive and also relies on having access to a high temperature incinerator (which we have in Long Beach with SERRF.) This treatment process adds about $50/AF (acre-foot) to the cost of water, enough for 5-10 people for a year. For a large water system, this is affordable. 

However, PFAS is a problem around the world, including places that can afford charcoal but not the resin. That's why I found so many papers about how to remove PFAS from charcoal using heat so that they can reuse the charcoal. 

Thermal Stability and Decomposition of Perfluoroalkyl Substances on Spent Granular Activated Carbon

Recent advances on PFAS degradation via thermal and nonthermal methods

Thermal destruction of PFAS during full-scale reactivation of PFAS-laden granular activated carbon

I'm happy that all of these papers are open access (doesn't require $$ purchase) because the authors paid for open access. This kind of knowledge should be available to everyone. 

Anyway, back to the LA Times newspaper articles that freaked so many people out  and lacked context. 

Risk of tap water exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals higher in Southern California cites a USGS study that sampled 700 public and private wells around the country. They modeled the characteristics of the sampled wells and estimated that 45% of US wells are contaminated with at least one PFAS chemical.  SoCal wells are more likely to be contaminated due to urbanization (industrial facilities, domestic wastewater) and past foam retardant use (fighting wildfires and at airports). 

Since there is no requirement to test for PFAS, your water supplier may not test for it. So I may not be panicked about PFAS because I have been reading my annual water quality report, but most people never bother to read it. Many people don't even know who their water supplier is, but that's a whole other story.

If you are among the 10 million people in Los Angeles County, the LA Board of Supervisors recently voted to require all water suppliers to test for PFAS chemicals. This won't change my water, but might change yours. I presume that, if they find PFAS, they will be required to remove it before putting it into the domestic water supply. 

If you live in SoCal, your water supplier buys imported river water through Metropolitan Water District either directly, or from a subregional water wholesaler like West Basin MWD at a cost of $1,400-$1,800/AF. Well water costs about half as much as purchased imported river water, if your water supplier owns permits to pump groundwater. Building a GAC treatment facility at $50/AF is worthwhile because well-water is still a bargain compared to imported river water and we have a convenient and safe way to dispose of the PFAS removed from the water. 

I co-organize a monthly series for the League of Women Voters called WIG, the Water and Infrastructure Group. Upcoming discussion topics/speakers, recordings of past meetings/talks and other educational info can be found on the LWV Beach Cities Natural Resources Page. 

I highly recommend watching Who Fills Your Taps? Introduction to LA Area Water Systems, Groundwater 101 and Understanding Drinking Water Quality.  

Hopefully, this will inoculate you against sensationalist newspaper headlines like Brita water filter company accused of false advertising. Have you ever installed a Brita filter wrong so that the water runs right through the gaps on the side of the filter? Do you always change your filter as often as the label on it?  I'm fallible. I'm using the Brita filter just to remove unpleasant odors. I expect it to reduce contaminants, but not to remove them altogether. I am running a home kitchen, not a water treatment facility. But I do expect my water company to supply safe water to my home. 

Read your annual water quality report. There are some smaller water systems that can't afford to fancy water treatment systems and are too remote to hook up to cleaner water supplies. Then there are big water systems like LADWP that politically can't raise water rates so they put off maintenance and upgrades. Look at how bad the LADWP water scores relative to other LA County water systems!  (Data and visualization from the CalEnviroScreen 4.0 Indicator Map of Drinking Water Contaminants.)

If I lived in the City of LA, I would be writing my council members and to the press every week. This is just so embarrassingly bad. (Fortunately, CA drinking water is very clean on a national scale, so you can be in the worst tenth (like LADWP at 90th percentile for CA) and still pass all federal EPA standards. But, for a large water system in an urban area, this kind of water system neglect is just inexcusable. 

Come to WIG on second Thursdays of each month at 7 pm on Zoom. Learn more about water and all sorts of other things that make our area run smoothly. Ask questions and get answers. 

The mask/no mask dilemma

During tree pollen season, I often wear a surgical mask outdoors to minimize allergies.  In February, I tried to restock ahead of the season. I also heard about a very bad flu virus that would make wearing a mask in crowded places prudent.  Too late, I realized that, not only were the stores near me sold out, they were not going to get any more in the foreseeable future.

I read intriguing posts on the internets about homemade masks, but wasn't sure if they were nothing more than dangerous placebos.

Please read Zeynep Tufekci's Why Telling People They Don’t Need Masks Backfired (NYT paywall)

First, she is right about the messaging.  Lying to the public, even for altruistic reasons, is still counterproductive.  I prefer to be treated like an adult and told that there are people who cannot stay home and need the masks more than I do.

Surgical masks, though not foolproof, offer meaningful protection for both the wearer and the people they are in contact with.

This doesn't help me now when stores don't have anything to buy and my doctor is saving masks for her own use and for her most critically ill patients (or caregivers.)  Professor Tufekci helpfully added a link to a paper about the effectiveness of different materials you can use to sew your own face masks.

I'm about to crank out some masks for my daily walks to protect me from pollen and stray human contact. I'm also making some for people I know who are essential workers and risking their lives to keep our society going.

This table is helpful, but takes a little interpretation. The first 2 columns are virus reductions over wearing no mask with surgical masks and home-made masks with a variety of materials. The third column is the pressure drop across the fabric.

That pressure drop is really important. If a mask is too hot, and you take it off, you are in danger again.  So you want to find that sweet spot of comfortable to wear for hours, and good filtration.  My normal go-to mask is the 3M micropore one.  I can wear it comfortably for long haul flights, taking it off only to eat and drink.

Two layers of a tea towel (a thicker fabric,) is as effective as a surgical mask, but it will be as comfortable as wearing a vacuum cleaner bag.

@pdxsquared showed pictures of her home-made ear loop masks.  She also shared per pattern.  One commentator said that she was irresponsible for posting it--2 layers of quilting cotton isn't real protection.  Well, the peer-reviewed lab-tested experiment showed that 2 layers of a pillowcase (percale, similar to quilting cotton) is 62% effective vs the 96% effectiveness of a real surgical mask, and has a similar comfort rating.  You should absolutely minimize contact with other people right now.  But, if you have to go out to work or get supplies or exercise, wearing DIY masks is definitely helpful.

I'm intrigued by the 75% effectiveness of "cotton mix" but can't figure out what that is.  I may try some cotton/nylon/spandex shirting I was saving for a special project someday.  That day is today.  I'm also going to use fun quilting and shirting fabrics.  Right now, I need more joy and fun.

BTW, I saw an old DIY emergency face mask pattern that suggested using 3 layers of cotton, laid at right angles.  This makes sense because fabrics typically have higher thread count (and smaller holes) in one direction.  Perhaps I should use cotton mix with a layer of silk scrap in the middle?

ASIDE:
If you are in a good financial place, spread the wealth.

I told our housecleaner that, because my husband continues to get paid, so will she.  She cannot work from home so I'm just mailing the check to her house.  Her husband is heroically driving city buses to get essential workers to their jobs--and doing it without protective equipment.  I'm sending a bunch of masks to them along with the check.

We're paying students to weed our yard (while staying socially distant.)  I'm making masks for them, too.  I know it helps with pollen and mold.

Show me what you are making and how you are coping.  We're anxious, but know that we are luckier than most.  I'm in no danger of running out of fabric.  ;-)

UPDATE:
Physician/sewing blogger Kaddidlehopper has some good tips and a free pattern: https://katiekadiddlehopper.blogspot.com/2020/03/fabric-surgical-style-mask-free-pattern.html

ElleC left a link in the comments on how Dr Dr Chen Xiaoting improvises surgical masks with disposable tissues or TP encased in washable/reusable cotton.
https://mustsharenews.com/cloth-face-mask/

Trustworthy Coronavirus News Sources

There is so much information and misinformation out there about, it's dispiriting.

My go-to source of reliable information is Pulitzer Prize winning science writer, Laurie Garrett, who has written extensively about pandemics and disease for decades.  Follow her on Twitter @Laurie_Garrett for the latest reliable news.

She uses the #COVID19 hashtag.  This time of year, I usually have a persistent scratchy throat from the tree pollen.   I don't follow that hashtag, because I don't want to obsess.  YMMV

I've been following the news of tests. I'm a physical scientist, but have worked in an analytical chemistry lab in college. I know that reliable testing for pathogens is very difficult, but don't understand the details. I found a couple of articles that helped me understand what is happening on the testing front.

How SARS-CoV-2 Tests Work and What’s Next in COVID-19 Diagnostics in New Scientist, by Bianca Nogrady

We Need a Cheap Way to Diagnose Coronavirus, in Harvard Business Review, by Devabhaktuni Srikrishna , Ranu S. Dhillon and David Beier.

Infectious disease docter, Dr. Krutika Kuppalli is also a good follow on Twitter, @KrutikaKuppalli.

The first article mentioned work on developing antibody tests.  Dr Kuppalli tweeted some preliminary antibody (IgG/IgM) test news out of China.

I live in the South Bay part of Los Angeles, which is bracketed by LAX international airport to the north and LA Harbor to the south.  So many airline employees live in my community, we are taking the prudent course and staying home as much as practical.  This will slow, but not prevent the spread.  That helps both you and your community weather the crisis.

Screen shot from Esther Kim's tweet

BTW, the "news" that Coronavirus does not spread in warm weather is totally false. It has spread plenty in warm places.

In times like these, I am livid that not all workers get paid sick leave and that we do not have universal and affordable access to health care.  Fight on, but maybe from home?  ;-)

Beware of false moral equivalence

Speaking of recent bullshit, I am surprised by the lack of pushback in the media with respect to false moral equivalence. For instance, consider this article about the taking down of a confederate monument in Hollywood.  (I added the bold face.)

A spokeswoman for the Daughters of the Confederacy explained the group’s decision to remove the monument this way:

“I was afraid to leave it overnight,” said the spokeswoman, who asked that her name not be used for fear of reprisal. “We have had the cemetery remove it until we decide what to do.”

Those calling for the monument’s removal are “erasing history,” she said.

“I do not believe in slavery — no sane human would believe in that today,” she said. “But back then, they did.”

She condemned the violence in Virginia and expressed sorrow for those killed and injured.

“We weep for the people who are involved in all of the things that are going on in our country — on both sides. We find hatred among white supremacists, we find hatred among Black Lives Matter,” she said. “We should all come together and become one under the United States of America.”

On both sides?  ON BOTH SIDES?

Why didn't the LA Times reporters press this unnamed spokeswoman for the Daughters of the Confederacy to clarify what kind of hatred from the BLM movement she is referring to?

One side wants to celebrate the treasonous people who went to war for the right to enslave other people.  All BLM wants is for the police to stop killing them.

There is no both sides about this.  There is no moral equivalence.

There was a concerted social media effort to portray the BLM movement falsely.  A great deal of money was spent to smear BLM so that they would lose public support..  Zeynep Tufekci ably explained how this was done in Twitter and Tear Gas.  Read it!

[Addendum: ZT has posted a free pdf version of Twitter and Teargas but I hope you support her and buy a copy.]

Learn more about the Russian propaganda tool, 'whataboutism,' that is widely used by authoritarians, climate deniers and the right around the world.

Los Angeles Weather and Climate

I was so shocked when I read this, it took me a while to figure out how to respond. I choose #sciencenotsilence.

 While I am aware that I have political differences with this sewing blogger, I had been prepared to look at our commonalities instead of our differences. I even took her on a tour of the Olmstead District in Old Town Torrance and introduced her to Momen+ fabric.

I'm not going to link to her blog, because that would drive up the reputation ranking of these #fakefacts. I'm just going to share a screen capture so you can see what I am talking about.

Deep breath here.  I read her blog because she is an extremely prolific and skilled sewer, knitter and photographer.  She is highly competent in her areas of expertise.  I read her blog so I can learn and be inspired.

I don't want to hurt her feelings, but I cannot let lies go unchallenged.

My blog is not glossy and professional.  I do not sew prolifically.  I sew and blog late at night.  I take photos with my phone or a compact point and shoot--often with poor lighting.  Why should you believe me and not her?

I work as a data specialist at one of the world's premier weather and climate data archives.  Prior to this, I earned a BA in Mathematics and a BS in Chemistry.  Then I earned a PhD writing models to compare theory with precision physical measurements.   The expertise I developed led to a job in an Air Force research lab running weather models and performing weather satellite Cal/Val (calibration and validation.)  I have also run climate models, but only at an introductory classroom level.  I eventually landed in my current position.   I am working in my third national lab.

I could earn much more money using my math, statistics and computer skills to spy on your web behavior to influence you to buy stuff you don't need.  Instead, I'm busy trying to preserve the best quality data available for future generations.

I am proud to be part of the global weather and climate enterprise.  It takes a huge amount of international cooperation to study our planet for our common safety and good.  I would never take part in an international conspiracy to lie to everyone.   It's absolutely ludicrous.

The reason that scientists are so alarmed about global warming is because it is a threat to all life on earth.  We're all going to fry together unless we work together to change our behavior.

So let's unpack the statements:

I don't believe in global warming

Neil deGrasse Tyson said, "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."  He's right in that the planet is frying whether or not you believe in it.  But it's not a good thing.

or climate change or whatever they are calling it these days.

Don't blame the scientists. Blame the political appointees in the Bush 43 administration that forbade federal scientists from using the term, "global warming." Our scientific findings and reports were even scrubbed by fresh out of college political science majors with no science expertise whatsoever but fantastic partisan bona fides. But that is another rant.

The Obama administration did not renew that rule and some scientists drifted back to using global warming, while others use climate change. The planet does not warm uniformly, so there are good reasons to use CC when referring to some effects.

To me, it’s all weather, in some ways it’s predictable, in others it’s not.

This sows confusion.  "Oh, well.  We don't know for sure so let's ignore it."  No, we cannot ignore it and it is not confusing at all.

Actually, weather and climate are different things to scientists. The simplest definition is "Weather is what you get; climate is what you expect."

Edward N Lorenz wrote a classic explanation.

Weather is on a short time-scale and we are really good at predicting it. In fact, a 10-day forecast today is as accurate as a 3-day forecast was 20 years ago. I've written about Verification Statistics for my work blog. Weather verification is ongoing and published openly on the web. We got nothing to hide.

Climate models are similar and also very different from weather models. They have all the same physical models of how air, water and trace gases behave. But, they also vary in their external forcings (e.g. sun) and boundary conditions. Both types require millions of lines of computer code.

Early weather and climate models were not so good but both experienced continual improvement. Weather models are easier to verify and improve because of their short time-scale. I'm not going to live to see the verification statistics of 2100 climate simulations.  I'm going to have to trust that, because climate models verify well with the past, they will preform similarly well in the future.

What has been happening these last few years in California is predictable and following a pattern.

I don't know what she means by this. Is she referring to the El Nino/La Nina cycle that reverses every year of two? Or is she referring to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a similar warm/cool ocean pattern that occurs on much longer timescales?

When the cool phase of the PDO lines up with La Nina, rainfall plummets in southern California.  We expected a few very dry years and we got them.  We got a longer dry spell than we were expecting and there is much research about why that occurred.  Overall, scientists were less surprised than the media.  I don't know if you can blame the scientists or the professional weather communicators who are hired more for ratings rather than scientific accuracy.

This next paragraph took me a long time to unpack.

Simply put, we get rain in the winter, then we get a few years of drought, we always have fires, but at some point, we have massive fires all over the state. The following winter we will have an abundance of rain and snow, then come the mudslides. Maybe back to regular rain for a while and then the cycle repeats.

Have you studied rhetorical devices? It's useful to understand how people try to persuade you, even when the facts aren't clear.

Consider the false dilemma. They set up an either or situation. If A is right, then B is wrong. But the fancy talk obscures that there is no real logical connection between A and B.

Yes, California's normally dry summers would qualify as a drought practically anywhere else. That's just our climate. Fire is a perpetual hazard in the American west. Burned areas are prone to mudslides the following winter. All that is true.

Just because weather and seasons are cyclical does not mean that the climate is not changing.

2016 was the hottest year globally in modern history.  Higher temperatures cause more water to evaporate both directly and indirectly through evapotranspiration of plants.  Even with the same amount of water, high temperatures will create drier and more combustible forests.  We are already seeing this.  The fire season is starting earlier and ending later.  We are experiencing wildfires in January!

Just because it rains in the winter, does not mean that our climate is not changing.  No one is saying that climate change = no seasons.  In fact, we expect more weather extremes in both precipitation and temperatures.  That is exactly what we are experiencing.

The Sierra snowpack is a complex and highly alarming subject that deserves its own post at a later date.

Next, I plan another post about kettle logic and how it is weaponized to confuse people about science.

I haven't sewn anything since early December so I might as well blog about science.  #resist

Burda 6919 for my daughter was a success.

More statistical nonsense

I'm bereft that Serena lost today.

There's also the matter of a presidential candidate suggesting or joking that people assassinate his opponent and the judiciary.

Let's talk about something that makes me mad, but only mildly so.  This also gives me a chance to jump up and down on my soapbox about bad data crunching.

Exhibit A, this piece of click bait from the NY Times with a tone of schadenfreude toward engineering majors:

I clicked and read these counter-intuitive numbers.

This doesn't jibe with my personal experience. Physical scientists that I know are very, very civically engaged. How could we be such slackers when it comes to getting to the voting booth when I see "I voted" stickers on everyone in lab on election day?

Do I know a very atypical set of physical scientists?  I had a hunch that, perhaps, it is because (outside of school and student jobs) I have always worked in national labs that require US citizenship?

I did a little research.

First, I went to The National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) website and read about the project. There appears to be a database accessible from that website. Because I'm not a participant in the research, I lack access to it.

There also appear to be some scholarly articles, which might have the summary data cited by the NY Times.  Again, I lack access to the articles.  (I'm not going to pay $41 for 24 hours of access to an article that may or may not have the data I seek.)

Search for "The National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement report". I was able to find several, including reports for Columbia and Long Beach Community College students.

In each report, I saw that the figures for % of eligible students voting by major was calculated using IPEDS and the same percentage was applied to all majors at a school, given the schools' overall demographics.

This is based on the percentage of non-resident aliens reported by your institution to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), and is more reliable than the demographic data campuses provide to the Clearinghouse at this time.

Do you see the statistical flaw? The reports gave the numbers with this caveat at the top:

Your students broken down by field of study. Please note that we are not able to adjust these voting rates by removing non-resident aliens.

The NY Times' poorly-researched and reported listicle did not include any methodology or context.

OK, now let's read what the National Science Foundation has to say about Higher Ed in Science and Engineering.

• About 60% of all foreign graduate students in the United States in 2010 were enrolled in S&E fields, compared with 32% at the undergraduate level.
• Foreign students earned 57% of all engineering doctorates, 54% of all computer science degrees, and 51% of physics doctoral degrees. Their overall share of S&E degrees was one-third.
• In 2009, temporary visa students earned 27% of S&E master's degrees, receiving 46% of those in computer sciences, 43% of those in engineering, and 36% of those in physics.

Moreover, physical science and math students are vastly outnumbered by business and other students; the US graduated 19 business majors for every math or statistics major in 2011.

Let's list what we know:

• Statistics tying individual students majors and voting behavior are difficult to obtain for privacy reasons.
• They had to make estimates based upon school-wide statistics.
• Each school reported the % of their students that were not on temporary visas.
• NSLVE then applied the same % to all majors, even though they know this is inaccurate. They reported that this is a source of error.
• They also removed students that were younger than 18 and not eligible to vote.
• The % of students studying STEM is quite low compared to other majors, particularly business.   That gives larger error bars to STEM voting numbers, even without the eligibility estimation.
• STEM students as a whole make up ~20% of the total undergraduate (UG) population, but 30% of the foreign UG student population; their voting participation is underestimated by the NSLVE methodology.
• This means non-STEM students are more likely to be US natives; their voting participation is overestimated by the NSLVE methodology.
• Foreign-born permanent residents are a wild card.  They do not need a temporary visa.  Yet, they cannot vote.  They are also disproportionately likely to be studying STEM.
• Foreign students make up a disproportionate share of STEM students at every level, but particularly so at the graduate level.  They dominate in many STEM fields.  Thus, their voting participation is VASTLY underestimated by the NSLVE methodology.  (That 40% of physical science students could very well be 90% of eligible students.)

I found all sorts of interesting information, especially at the National Center for Education Statistics:

• Degrees conferred by sex and race
• Most popular majors I double majored in two of the most unpopular majors!
• Table 318.20. Bachelor's, master's, and doctor's degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970-71 through 2011-12
• Table 322.10. Bachelor's degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970-71 through 2013-14
• NSF: Chapter 2. Higher Education in Science and Engineering
• Voting Behavior Among College Students Broken out by gender, race, political ideology, school selectivity and Freshmen vs Seniors.

Anyway, after examining the data, I think it is very, very likely that physical science students that are eligible to vote do so at higher rates than journalism students.  I'm sure The average physical science student is better with data than the average journalism student.  We might even be better than the average NY Times journalist.

Another piece of bullshit debunked.

Good-night.

Harley Quinn sadness

Remember the Harley Quinn costume I made for my daughter?

And my ambivalence about the hyper-sexualization of females in comics?

Check out the slide show about Harley Quinn cosplay in the LA Times. Look at the difference in (un)dress between the male and female cosplayers.

Then check out this tweet from David Helder pointing out the sexism at #defcon, a computer security conference. Please note, this is happening in 2016.

Hacker Jeopardy. Category is "Dicks". Men play. Women give them beers. Why aren't there more women in security?

Click to see the questions on the screens. To play this game, you have to have encyclopedic knowledge about p@rn.

Scroll down to read the discussion.  This is the state of one corner of tech.  I am not sure other areas of tech are any better.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Why are we spending so much time talking about bathrooms and not talking about clean and safe water?

I'm supposed to attend a work conference this summer in North Carolina.  Rather than prepare for the conference, I'm figuring out if I should go and changing my travel plans because the venue changed from a state (university) to a private conference center.

My bullshit detector wonders why the chatter cycle is so focused on bathrooms for transgendered individuals and not on issues that impact a larger swath of society.

I've written before in It's a girl! Maybe about how male/female gene expression is a tricky business. In short, XY=Boy and XX=Girl is sometimes wrong. If the Y gene is very damaged, the child may appear as a female. If the Y gene is slightly damaged, the child may appear outwardly as a male, but with complications.

Erroneous Gender Identification by the Amelogenin Sex Test reported that a common gender test is commonly wrong.

The amelogenin gene, located on the X and Y chromosomes in humans (1), produces a protein important in the development of the tooth enamel matrix (2). Using specific amelogenin PCR primers, different bp fragments are amplifiable from the X and Y chromosomes, respectively (3). Hence, it has been a central system to differentiate males from females especially in forensic casework and prenatal diagnosis

Under electrophoresis, the amelogenin gene originating from X and Y chromosomes are resolvable due to differing weights/sizes. An XY sample should have two bumps (two types/weights), and an XX sample should have one bump.  A male soldier showed one bump, at the place where female versions of the gene usually fall.

The occurrence of this phenomenon has been reported as an 0.018% observed sex test failure rate in the Austrian National DNA database (9), 1.85% observed sex test failure rate in Indian males (10), 0.6% frequency of sex test failure attributable to deletion from 350 specimens from all around the world (11), and 8% (2 out of 24) samples of unrelated Sri Lankan males (11).

With the finding of our first mistyped amelogenin result on a male out of a total of 96 samples, we can report the failure rate of this test as 1.04% in Israel. Moreover, the failure of two different primer sets, to amplify the Y chromosome DNA, suggests that this sample contains a deletion in the relevant area.

Huh?!?!?!?!?!?!

What causes this gene deletion? Could it be that different populations evolved differently over time? Or could environmental factors be at play? Do you also notice a correlation between countries with high pollution and high sex-test failures?

What about sperm counts? Industrial chemicals and heavy metals can depress sperm counts.   Sperm counts are holding steady in some countries, and dropping in others. 

It is well-known that Chemicals in Water Alter Gender of Fish and the Pesticide atrazine can turn male frogs into females. Pesticides are a large contributor to the collapse of frog and fish populations around the world. What are their effects in mammals, including humans?  There is a lot that we don't know.  But we won't learn more unless we focus attention to those problems.

Isn't it funny how the North Carolina bathroom controversy has pushed the Flint water crisis (and other stories about aging water infrastructure) and industrial/agricultural water pollution out of the news?

We're allowing ourselves to be distracted by a side show about bathrooms instead of examining the prevalence of poisons in water supplies world-wide and what that is doing to the genetically vulnerable among us.

Asides:

I'm deeply offended and disappointed by the NIH gender dysphoria web page.

The cause of gender dysphoria is unknown. Hormones in the womb, genes, social and environmental factors (such as parenting) may be involved.

Let's blame the parenting, usually mothers, instead of the hormone disrupting chemicals in our water.

A transgender 9-year-old tells her story in the LA Times.

Last weekend, I saw The Edge Theater Company's production of Casa Valentina. It is a good production of a good play. I highly recommend seeing it this weekend (the closing weekend of the show.)

My problem with Facebook and Instagram

Have you read Dave Carroll's Facebook's Privacy Problem with Parents?

Apparently, I am one of the first people on Earth to carefully inspect the latest Facebook data policy because I found several broken links, blank page dead-ends, and the most astonishing form I have ever come across as a parent. I promptly tweeted it. It immediately went viral in collective disbelief and general outrage.
...
It’s both chilling and telling that the company forces a parent or guardian to hire a lawyer to draft a notorized statement to “establish guardianship rights” in order to opt their child out of ad settings on Facebook which include using their name to endorse unknown products and services to other users, should they experience any trouble finding, understanding, and using this screen in their child’s account settings.

I'm not going to paraphrase it here, because Prof. Carroll does a very able and thorough job explaining why this is so dangerous and alarming. Read it!

I left the Facebook platform because I was unhappy with the way they used private medical data gleaned, not from public posts, but from private messages between FB users*. Anyway, now I wonder if I should leave Instagram.

What do you think?

* It's difficult to find the news stories that criticize FB practices.  FB likely pays a lot of money to make sure those search results appear far, far down--or disappear altogether.

Groundwater Awareness Week 2

I have so many things I want to say about groundwater, it won't all happen during #GroundwaterAwarenessWeek.

You can go over to LA Observed to read my post, Superbugs? Toilet to tap is safer than surfing. I'll wait until you come back.

A couple of weeks ago, the California media ran many stories along the lines of California drought: How will we know when it's over? that focus on rainfall. Some stories also included reservoir status with this data visualization from California Water Resources.

There's one big problem with all of this.  How much of our freshwater can we see?  USGS kindly compiled the data for us.  We're fixating on the what we can see (rivers, lakes), while there is 100 times more water that we can't see (groundwater).

Freshwater lakes hold 0.26% of the world's freshwater compared to 30.1% in the aquifers. 

Some people might rightly point out that this is a global average.  What about developed water in California?  That's a valid point.  California has more infrastructure to store and move surface water than the global average.

However, groundwater accounts for 40-60% of water used in California.  We don't know how much for sure because the farm and golf course lobbies don't want to meter and report how much water they are pumping out of the aquifers that we all share.

Most (urban and suburban) Californians get their groundwater through water agencies that do have to report their pumping activities.  I wonder what the objectors have to hide?

Remember the Resnicks?

Years ago, they gained control of one of the largest underground water reservoirs in the nation, the Kern Water Bank on the edge of California's Central Valley. This vast holding system—built with public funds in 1999 to help buffer the effects of droughts—stores water from California's aqueducts and the Kern River; it's estimated to be worth more than $180 million on the open market and has allowed the Resnicks to double their acreage of fruits and nuts since 1994, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The southern San Joaquin valley is a desert.  Storing water above ground would lead to huge evaporative loss, making underground storage the right solution.  We built a water storage system and bought water to fill it.

But, the current laws allow any land owner above an aquifer to pump the hell out of it.  Of course the Resnicks planted ever more permanent crops on their land atop the water bank.  They made their billions buying worthless desert land, lobbying government to bring water to them, then selling the water, either literally or embedded into nuts.

The Resnicks' court battles are much more interesting than Kim Kardashian's Twitter wars, but you wouldn't know it from media coverage.

Read how farmworkers in the San Joaquin Valley had their water privatized.

OK, what about climate change? I found this illustrative cartoon in The Impacts of Climate Change on Global Groundwater Resources (Part 3 of 4).

As the planet warms, rain will fall less frequently, but more intensely. In the southwestern US, this will be felt more acutely and total annual rainfall, will continue to drop precipitously. (I couldn't resist the pun.)

We can't do anything about the rain (or lack of it) unless the whole planet decides to emit less CO2.  But, we can control how well we capture that rain and store it underground for a sunny day.  Basically, we need to engineer our environment to move that upper curve upwards to increase groundwater recharge and reduce run-off.  We can't build stupidly any longer.

Links

• EPA video about Stormwater run-off
• Southwest sliding into drier normal
• Colorado River flows reduced by warmer spring temperatures (another 10% of CA's water usage)
• The Impacts of Climate Change on Global Groundwater Resources (Part 3 of 4)
• How farmworkers in the San Joaquin Valley had their water privatized
• The ecology of the NFL stadium

Benchmarking government

I'm still processing the terrorist killings around the world right now.  I'll leave discussions about that to people who understand it better than I do.

Right now, I want to shed light on a little corner of the universe that I do know better than most.  Hopefully, the amount of understanding in the world will go up a little bit because of what I write.

I am a data specialist in a geophysical data archive so I follow news about geo-referenced data more than the average citizen.  Actually, I'm a bit obsessed with how data searches work or don't work and why.

This editorial appeared in my customized news feed and I was completely flummoxed by the ignorance displayed by the editorial board of a purportedly top-tier newspaper.

The LA Times Editorial Board was incensed by Governor Brown's request to the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources--just days after the governor had appointed their new chief--to supply him with a report on the mineral history and the potential for mineral extraction of his family's ranch in rural California. The editorial said:

It's inappropriate for the governor to call the head of an agency for help with personal business, especially someone he had just installed in the job nine days before. It also was wrong for his aides to follow up with the agency to ensure that there would be a map and other specific information. State employees are paid to do state business, not take care of the governor's personal matters. Brown received his report within a couple of days after he asked for it — an uncommon alacrity in state government — and also received a satellite map drawn up especially for him.

When I read that, I was shocked, but not for the reason the editorial suggested.

I was impressed that Governor Brown, a 77 year-old philosophy major, understood the scientific method and how to apply it to data problems.

Whenever you tinker with a system, you run benchmark tests before and after.  If you install a new chief of a department, you measure his effectiveness by testing response time and job quality for a common task required by the department.  Moreover, you run this test for a case that you know well, so you can assess the accuracy of the results.

Asking for all the info on oil and gas extraction in the past, and potential for the future, for the family farm is a great idea.  His family has owned that land for more than 150 years.  If there had been oil and gas exploration on the land in the past, he would have known about it.

I asked my husband, a field scientist, what he thought of the story.  He said that you always test in an area you know really well, so you can gauge the quality of your measurements, before you go to an unknown area.  So that's two scientists who were impressed with the governor's grasp of the scientific method.

The governor got the correct answer in 24 hours, according to this later story with more details.

The wire service story said that "after a phone call from the governor and follow-up requests from his aides," the regulatory agency "produced a 51-page historical report and geological assessment, plus a personalized satellite-imaged geological and oil and gas-drilling map" of the area.

You know, just like any ordinary citizen would expect to receive.

But the characterization of the service appears to be a stretch. Except for a one-page personal memo, all the material collected for the governor amounted to merely a pile of old letters sent other property owners, historic data from yesteryear and some oil field maps.

"Everything is available on the [state] website," said Nancy Vogel, chief spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Agency, the umbrella entity for these regulators. "If you know how to find it.

"They did not do a formal assessment. That would have been many weeks of work."

The governor got back his answer within 24 hours. "The potential for significant oil or gas in this area is very low," the memo read. As for mining, that potential also "is exceptionally low."

Steve Bohlen, Brown's appointee as chief regulator, said the governor asked him about the geology of the land, past oil or gas production and potential for any future production. "I said that was easy to do," Bohlen told me. "It wasn't like 'drop everything.'"

Two petroleum experts who aren't necessarily Brown fans confirmed to me that all this stuff is available on the state's oil and gas website.

That "just like any ordinary citizen would expect to receive," is a low blow. Ordinary citizens in this data-driven era should be able to look up the mineral history of their land (or surrounding land) as that is the best predictor of future mineral development.

The Center for Public Integrity gave California a C- in their 2015 State Integrity report card.  The grade was largely brought down because of an F on Public Access to Information.

Making public information easily available to citizens should be a high priority and the governor should appoint public officials who are committed to improving data processes and data access for citizens.  Running a benchmark test at the start of a new department chief's tenure was the right thing to do.

Let's hope that this media 'gotcha' campaign doesn't deter him from running the 'after' benchmark test to see if they turn up more (or less) data faster (or slower) after Bohlen has been on the job for a while.

Background:

Geophysical data is extremely difficult to search for many reasons.  Records are messy, inconsistent, and often came from the pre-digital era.  So many things can get lost in the translation--or get plain lost.

We are so accustomed to nearly instantaneous searches on the internet, we forgot how much work goes into making this magic mundane.

For instance, do you know how much software and data engineering went into creating this data order form?

Do you know the international treaties that enable the sharing of this data? The small army of people who worked to clean up and standardize this global dataset? It took a whole lot of work to make this look easy. But it was anything but easy or simple.

Related:

I explain why this issue is important in Benchmarking fracking.

Interpreting the Water Footprint of Food

I've read some discussions of the LA Times Water Footprint of Food interactive feature, mainly expressing surprise about the comparatively large water footprint of pulses, dried legumes.

When you look at these plots, a beef burger looks only slightly indulgent compared to a falafel (chickpeas).  What's the harm in a burger?  Or the Atkins diet in general?

Water footprints of protein sources calculated by the waterfootprint.org.

I scratched my head when I saw that graphic as I understood that beef is a highly inefficient source of protein compared to plant sources (but several magnitudes more efficient than tuna!).  How was this calculated?  Is the methodology valid?

This weather and climate data consultant dug deeper.

The folks at The Water Footprint Network explain their methodology here.  The LA Times article said, "Below you can see the U.S. water footprints of selected foods as measured by gallon of water per gram of protein produced or per calorie."

So is this country-specific data?  How can you compute the water-intensity of the US chickpea crop when there is nearly no commercial chickpea production in the US?

Later, in the LA Times coverage, they quote Mekonnen and Hoekstra:

"The average water footprint per calorie for beef is 20 times larger than for cereals and starchy roots," they note, referring to global averages, not U.S.-specific figures. "The water footprint per gram of protein for milk, eggs and chicken meat is 1.5 times larger than for pulses," a group of legumes that includes peas, beans and lentils.

Perhaps the LA Times reported GLOBAL (not US) water intensity in US units of gallons? The article wasn't clear.

I searched and found that the EU compiled and mapped some statistics they downloaded from McGill University.

Global acreage used for chickpea production.

Global production of chickpeas in tons per square km.

If the LA Times reported US statistics, then the chickpea data is highly suspect.  It's the classic "statistics of small numbers" problem.  The smaller the sample size, the more variable and unreliable the statistic.

Suppose the LA Times did report the GLOBAL water footprint, then it is important to look at the hydrologic cycle of the areas where chickpeas are farmed.

Luckily, I work at a weather and climate data archive and have access to stuff like this classic paper about the terrestrial seasonal water cycle by Willmott and Rowe.  See and download the Willmott and Rowe data.  I give you permission to play with your food data.

First page of Willmott and Rowe.

Recall that chickpeas are mainly grown in India, the middle east and sub-Saharan Africa.  Hmm, look at the evaporation in those regions in the early summer.  If most of the chickpeas are grown in India, and ground-level evaporation is exceptionally high there (and moderately high in other regions where chickpeas are also grown), then the global water footprint for chickpeas will be high.

Evaporation climatology 1950-1979.  Notice the extremely high evaporation in chickpea-producing areas of India and central America during monsoon season. 

Did the LA Times report rely on a small and unreliable dataset (US chickpea production) or report global statistics and label them as US statistics? I don't know. Either way, their reporting is extremely suspect.

People need protein.  Plant-based proteins such as chickpeas are largely grown and consumed in regions where the resources (land, water, labor) cannot support animal sources of protein.

The water and carbon intensity of crops vary greatly by location.  That's why I don't eat an entirely locavore diet.  Our family enjoys CSA boxes grown with reclaimed water from the Irvine waste treatment plant.  But, we occasionally eat lamb chops imported from New Zealand, where the sheep are raised on rainfall-watered pasture.

Yes, sheep meat has a large water footprint.  But New Zealand has abundant rainfall and doesn't need to artificially irrigate their pastures.  If the lamb is frozen and then shipped via ultra-efficient container ships to a harbor < 15 miles from our home, then the carbon footprint of that lamb chop is much, much lower than a beef burger from the Central Valley of CA.

Early summer evaporation in the American west.  Note the hot spot in the Fresno area.

I took a closer look at the evaporation in California.  Download the data and the Panoply data viewer and play with the data yourself.  Scroll through the months.

The Willmott and Rowe data is based solely on 1950-1979 ground-based station data.  Later datasets rely on satellite data, but WR gives monthly averages, which is important because row crops are not grown year-round.

It's important to note that the evaporation measured by the ground stations are influenced by temperature, winds and water availability.  Water availability depends on both natural sources, e.g. precipitation and surface stream flow, and irrigation.

See that bright yellow hot spot near Fresno, California?  100 kg per square meter is 100 mm or ~4" of water.  Look at Fresno's climatology.  That's nearly all irrigation with water from elsewhere or  groundwater.

This is old data.  The numbers today, with millions of acres planted with permanent tree crops that can't be fallowed during droughts, would be even more scary.

This is why California's central valley is sinking.  This is a slow-motion environmental catastrophe.  It has to stop now.

Don't be bamboozled by big agribusiness PR bullshit

The media is being flooded with PR factoids planted by PR flacks working for big water robber barons. I just about choked when I read a news story that repeated the line about how walnuts now use 1/3 less water per calorie than a decade ago.

A serious journalist would have reported on the wasteful baseline irrigation techniques or about the growth in nut grove acreage in the period. But, this factoid was repeated with no background reporting whatsoever.  Let us now have a moment of silence to contemplate the slow death of serious environmental journalism in the MSM.

Then let us fight back against the PR flacks and help the inexperienced newbies that staff newsrooms around the country for peanuts.  BTW, peanuts are not nuts and not the permanent tree crops I am railing against here.

The western states' water crisis did not have to be a crisis.   Some have seen it coming and have warned against it.  Mostly, we were ignored or called not very nice names.  I'm a mother of a teenager and have pretty thick skin.  So let me wade it.

Nut groves were being watered by the ancient practice of flood irrigation (USGS info page).  Below, you can see the reflections of the almond trees on the surface of the water flooding the grove.  They pump this much water out of the aquifer to make almond milk.  Vegan cuisine is not without environmental harm.

Flood irrigation of almond grove picture courtesy of Grist.org

Another USGS page on irrigation technologies explains that flood irrigation wastes more water at the edges of the field, but loses less to evaporation than sprinklers.  That is also true.

But, let's talk about the total evaporation loss budget.  Water is lost at every step in the process: evaporation from the water surface, evaporation from the sprinklers, evaporation from the soil and evapotranspiration through the plants.  It's one big clusterf*ck of evaporative water loss.

Moreover, these water-intensive crops are being grown in one of the world's driest regions with the highest potential evaporation.

Global mean monthly potential evaporation via Arid Lands Research Sciences at U of Arizona.

If you use a clothesline, you will notice that your laundry dries more quickly on hot days or when the air is drier. If you have lived both at sea level and high altitude, you may also know how much more quickly laundry dries at high altitude (and low atmospheric pressure).

Now, you may ask, why would someone be planting ever more nut orchards in the extremely hot (> 100 F in the summer) desert basin of the San Joaquin valley or in the hot foothills of the Sierra Nevada (~3,000 feet elevation, 90 F in the summer)?  Where do they get the water for this boondoggle?

The answer is that they rob the earth by dipping their straws/wells into ancient aquifers in a race to use it all up before someone else does.

There are many unsavory characters in the CA water wars.  But, meet two of the biggest players, the Resnicks.  They are the minds behind Pom and Fiji water, two health and environmental scams that deserve their own posts someday.

I hope this whets your appetite to parse some data on your own.  May I suggest one of our fine datasets that contain potential evaporation fields, including the NOAA/Cires 20th Century Reanalysis, V2c.

Simplicity 1621 in the wild

As promised, I wore my new linen shell out to the beach for a photo-op. I took the voile shirt off for the picture, but quickly put it back on for sun protection. This is what passes for print-mixing chez BMGM.

In the photo below, you can see that we ate a ginormous brunch at Uncle Bill's Pancake House before our walk.  In the photo above, you can see wee evidence that I have started lifting weights again.

I pinched out about 1/2" in the center back neck.  This is a common alteration for me as my upper chest is wider than my upper back.  The back fits ok, but I think a center pleat would give me the floaty effect I was after.

I couldn't get a photo of the top's twin.  The pattern is drafted for a B-cup.  The recipient of the other top is a C-cup.  Her top fits well in the full bust, but is a bit too loose in the upper chest.  If I made her another one, I'd cut one size smaller in the shoulders and do a pivot and slide alteration to make room for the full bust.

LA's heat wave--90 F at the beach in March--is abating.  We've been walking at the beach every day, as have a huge number of Angelenos.

 As we were descending the stairs from the pier to the beach, a lifeguard pulled up in his jeep and ran up the stairs to the restroom.  The lifeguards were busy all weekend.  They estimate that as many people visited the beach last weekend as on a typical July 4th weekend.

The real-life vehicles look very similar to the ones on the Baywatch TV show, but the costumes do not; the swimsuits on TV are much skimpier.

The real lifeguards are also generally older and more ethnically diverse than the TV cast.  That's true for every TV show or movie set in LA.

Bad Dad is more interested in power walking than sewing.