More on Cheap Shit from China

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Pika’s observation of train after train of cheap shit from China, and my even cheaper response, generated a fascinating data point from a correspondent who recently toured the Port of Long Beach as part of a class on globilization:

In 2004 it processed 7.4e6 TEUs of cargo — a TEU is a twenty-foot equivilent unit, the volume of a 20-foot long container. That is, the port is equivalent to a steady stream of containers end to end at 1.43 meters per second 24/7. It’s amazing, in a thought-provoking way.

Put another way, that’s a container for roughly every 40 people in the U.S. I figure there’s approximately 40 people living on my block (maybe a few more), so there’s the equivalent of a container of cheap shit from China, Korea, etc. for every Fleck-block-equivalent in America.

Today’s trash day in the ‘hood. We also have to go to a lot of trouble to cart the cheap shit off once we’re done with it.

ENSO: the Benefits of Predictability

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The conventional thinking is that the extremes of El Ni?o and La Ni?a are the times during the natural cycles of climate variability when climate causes the most damage. But an intriguing-sounding paper in the Journal of Climate by Lisa Goddard and Maxx Dilley offers intriguing alternative way of thinking about it. First (full disclosure here, I’ve only read the abstract, the full paper doesn’t seem to be on line) they argue, ” Contrary to expectations, climate anomalies associated with such losses are not greater overall during ENSO extremes than during neutral periods.”

Second, climate anomalies during El Ni?o and La Ni?a can be more readily forecast, allowing folks to prepare and therefore reduce the damage. “Thus, the prudent use of climate forecasts could mitigate adverse impacts and lead instead to increased beneficial impacts, which could transform years of ENSO extremes into the least costly to life and property.”

Technology and Intentions

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Ed Felten tells the interesting story of a nameless computer scientist who’s developed something useful, but… Well, I’ll let Ed pick up the story:

He isn’t sure he wants the public to find out about his research. He says this, even though his work would probably be of interest to many people, and could be useful to far more. The problem, he told me, is that if too many people find out what he has done and realize its value, some of them may start using it for illegal purposes. He doesn’t want that kind of trouble.

Shipping the Cheap Shit Back

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Pika’s recent observations of cheap shit from China being shipped by the trainload to the heartland may or may not be related to something I noticed more than a decade ago along the same rail line.

I was making relatively frequent visits to Clovis, New Mexico. We’d stay in the Holiday Inn, which was right across from the tracks, and we would see train after train loaded with stuff going west. Only west. I figured all the shit would eventually end up out in California, and they’d run out of stuff in the east and have to start shipping it back.

Clearly, given Pika’s observation, the whole thing was more international than I realized. That’s probably why it took so much longer than I expected. I wonder what sort of value has been added. Or did it just sit around in containers on the dock at Tianjin for ten years?

My Childhood

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Old school chum Kenna Ogg recently tracked me down, having found this:


John Fleck and some guy named Mike

That’s me on the right and Mike on the left, though Kenna and I are both at a bit of a loss as to Mike’s last name. It’s from David Mackintosh’s and Gigi Bailin’s birthday party during our freshman year in high school. You can see my unerring fashion sense has deep roots.

Testing

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Testing, testing. 1 2 3.

Can you hear me in the back?

Thanks. Look it’s great to be here. We’ve got a terrific show planned for you this evening. Blarg is here, so stick around. We’ll be right back.

Warming and La Niña

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There’s an interesting new paper in tomorrow’s Science by Rickaby and Halloran that supports the idea that warm conditions during the Pliocene were linked to a cool equatorial Pacific – a La Niña-like state:

Our Pliocene paleothermometer supports the idea of a dynamic “ocean thermostat” in which heating of the tropical Pacific leads to a cooling of the east equatorial Pacific and a La Ni?a?like state, analogous to observations of a transient increasing east-west sea surface temperature gradient in the 20th-century tropical Pacific.

This is relevant because of the connection between La Niña drought in the southwestern U.S.

This is an idea I first ran across last year in a paper by Mike Mann and some other folks. It also fits quite nicely with a paper last year by Ed Cook and some other dendrochronologists linking warmer temperatures during the Medieval with widespread drought in what is now the western United States.

I don’t know a lot about this, but apparently there have been folks who have argued in the past that a warming greenhouse climate could tilt toward El Niño-like conditions. This is the latest line of evidence to contradict that assertion.