The Red Paint People, Doggerland and my DNA.

Over the last couple of months I have been putting up the occasional post on my own family tree, as it is becoming defined by DNA analysis, and at the same time have been looking at some of the early arrivals of Indians in Maine and the North East American continent. (My interest in the latter was initiated by the question of when Europeans first arrived on the continent in enough numbers to influence facial features of the locals).

Two weeks ago I was fortunate to be able to attend a lecture by Bruce Bourque, the Curator of Archaeology at Maine State Museum, and the authority on the Red Paint People, of whom I have written earlier with a follow-up post on their travels. His talk, and the book he just recently released (The Swordfish Hunters) provides much more detail on a people that have largely been neglected by “the archaeologists of Harvard,” who have tended to disregard significant developments this far north of Boston.

The Red Paint People are also called “the Moorehead Phase”, after Warren Moorehead, who first identified them as the “Red Paint” people, because of their custom of burying red ocher with the bodies in their cemeteries. They flourished in a small part of Maine, and their cemeteries have been found along the banks of local rivers. There is, however considerable evidence that they harvested fish and sea-food (their cemeteries have been found in large shell middens), with a peculiarity that they also hunted, ate and used the bones and rostra (the “sword”) of local swordfish. The latter, in particular, was used to provide a stiffened mount behind the harpoon and spear tips used in hunting. They appear to be the first to hunt swordfish, which would have been a dangerous prey for early Holocene man, since they have a nasty habit of attacking the boats of those who have just stabbed them with a harpoon.

Figure 1. Red Paint Cemeteries in North-East America (The Swordfish Hunters)

The book is a fascinating story of detective work, and archaeology as it builds a picture of a people that began around 5,000 years ago and suddenly disappeared around 3,800 years ago. Dr. Bourque points to evidence that it does not fit within an overall unified culture which has been described as the Maritime Archaic, but rather stands on its own, and emerges from the “Small Stemmed Point” tradition that preceded it. But is totally separate from the Ceramic period that follows.

One of the intriguing parts of the story lies in the thousand-mile link with the Ramah Peninsula in Labrador, that I discussed in a previous post, and Dr. Bourque also points to close similarities between the findings in Maine, and those at the Port au Choix site. One identifying characteristic lies in the development of stone gouges, for use in hollowing out the inside of dugout canoes.

Figure 2. A Stone Gouge from Maine, and an artist’s rendition of how it would be hafted. (The Swordfish Hunters).

The gouges, as the book argues, show that the Red Paint Peoples were building substantial canoes and boats around 4,000 years ago, that were substantial enough for voyages of a thousand miles, and that this would also make them viable for use in harpooning swordfish (an art in itself as the book illustrates).

The climate change around the time that this culture was flourishing in Maine is not seriously discussed in the book, but I think that it is worth looking at, in context, because it ties in a little with what was happening across the Atlantic, where the culture that built Stonehenge had moved into Britain.

Figure 3. Climate swings in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 10,000 years (the Holocene) (Consulting Geologist)

The significance of these temperature variations is often significantly discounted as climate scientists today would rather emphasize the point of the effects imposed by man, rather than the natural effects we cannot control. Yet the higher temperatures that did exist, even as recently as the last (Medieval) Warming Period are evidenced, for example, by the recent uncovering of an Eskimo village which has been buried under a glacier for the past 500 years. The inhabiting tribe of Yup’ik Eskimo lived, among other things, on caribou and lived at Quinhagak in Alaska. Without the protective ice cap that has covered the site from the time that the Yup’ik left there at the beginning of the Little Ice Age, the site is now rapidly being eroded into the Bering Sea (a fate that is similarly threatening the sites in Maine, where coastal erosion and sea level changes have covered most of the Red Paint People’s locations). But it indicates that we are only now reaching the temperatures at that site that prevailed in the Medieval Warming Period.

The Red Paint People lived at the beginning of what is now referred to as the Minoan Warming Period. And, from data obtained from the Greenland Ice Cores, it is possible to note a couple of facts about the time that the tribe appears to have vanished. First, if the temperatures, as derived from the Ice cores recovered from Greenland are examined in a little more detail:

Figure 4. Temperatures in the region over the last 5,000 years (from the Greenland GISP2 Ice core)

Perhaps more to the point, if the extent of sea ice at the time is considered (from the same source) it fell to an historic low during the Minoan.

Figure 5. Sea Ice extent over the Holocene (The Ice Chronicles ) (Note the plot has been flipped, relative to the original, in order to conform to the consistency of showing the older period to the left of the plot in the rest of the post).

With this considerable warming the ice retreated from the shores of Greenland, and it became an even more hospitable place that it was at the time almost 3,000 years later when Erik the Red came calling. This warming had another consequence, because it led to a steady rise in the levels of the sea. This is shown in the book as it affects Maine, important since it shows how the shoreline dwellings from the period have since been inundated.

Figure 6. Sea levels off the coast of Maine over the Holocene (The Swordfish Hunters)

But in Europe that sea rise from the beginning of the Holocene had another consequence. It flooded the land-bridge (known as Doggerland) between what became the isle of Britain and the continent.

Within the British Isles, by 4,000 BP the country had been colonized for about a thousand years by the arrival of an agricultural movement that displaced the earlier hunter-gatherers and, in turn. rapidly changed from a “slash and burn” land clearance into the development of a “celtic arrangement of fields. Colin Burgess in "The Age of Stonehenge" has noted that the settlements towards the end of that transition were already being constructed defensively.

A more recent unmarked burial pit at Fengate contained three disarticulated burials and one, crouched, the latter with a leaf-shaped arrowhead still sticking between the eighth and ninth ribs.

The warmer clime was conducive to the spread of agriculture and an increasing density of population. The cutting of the land bridge, and the slow flooding of what later became the Dogger Bank, in the North Sea, had a personal consequence.

Figure 7. The location of Doggerland about 7000 BP (Bryony Coles via doggerland)

My Y-chromosome has been designated as R1b1b2a1a1d*, which is a variety of Celt, that, as I have mentioned in an earlier post, had come down from Cro-Magnon man. The analysis that has evolved over the past few years (apparently starting at 23andme suggests that this a “Freisian” variety of Celt and there is a body of thought moving to the conclusion that they were the inhabitants of Doggerland that were driven to Britain when the final inundation occurred around 5500 years ago, just before the first circles at Stonehenge were constructed. (And here I now discover that maybe I wasn’t the first of my lineage to work on a Stonehenge).

The first circles at Stonehenge were developed about 5,000 years ago (at the left side of Figure 4). But around 2150 BC or some 4000 BP the Beaker People arrived. In contrast with those, maybe us, who had first developed the site and were moon worshipers, they worshiped the sun. What made the Stonehenge site become what it did was that the simple markers already there to align critical lunar phases could, by moving around the circle ninety degrees, also align to the major solar alignments at mid-winter, mid-summer etc. The ruling elites of the time became more powerful, and with the warmer climes helping sustain agricultural production, society became more static. And the more powerful had enough manpower available to develop, over the next millennium or so, the full glory that became Stonehenge. They also grew into the Wessex Culture with its elaborate and rich graves.

The Beaker People were Celts and still, at the beginning of this time, used stone axes and flint-shaped arrowheads. But copper daggers are found even in the earliest graves and this was the time where the culture was moving into the Bronze Age in Britain, some time after it had developed elsewhere in Europe.

Given that the Red Paint People were aware of native copper deposits, (and were starting to make small ornaments with them) had they known of the metal forming traditions developing in Europe then metal objects would have shown up in the graves. They did not, and even to the time of Champlain stone tools were in use.

So it is logical to conclude that seafaring though the cultures were on both sides of the Atlantic they did not communicate at this time, at least not well enough to teach metal craft, at a time when it might have been easier to travel, from one side of the Atlantic to the other. On the other hand, it might be possible to conjecture an explanation for the long and narrow bayonet points which Dr. Bourque points out as a significant feature of Red Paint burials. He notes that these are too weak to have any great utilitarian value in society, because they were made of stone. He therefore suggests that they had only a ceremonial aspect that has been lost. But it could be that they were an attempt to copy the spear heads that were beginning to be developed in Britain at the time, but which were made utilitarian only by being made of metal. And that would suggest some form of communication between the two societies.

There remain a couple of additional thoughts, both about the ability of early societies such as these to travel long distances, and the mysterious disappearance of whole societal segments. But they arise in events in Greenland that happened during the Medieval Warming Period; the migration of the Thule from Alaska to Northern Greenland in 1000 AD, and the abandonment of the Western Settlement of the Viking in Greenland. Since this is a different time period I will therefore leave those topics to a subsequent post.

The Native American Peoples of the Red Paint/Cemetery Complex/Maritime Archaic/Moorehead Phase and the Maasai

Browsing through Howard Terpening’s “Tribute to the Plains People”, his “Passing into Womanhood” caught, and held my eye. Not just from the theme, nor the way he creates a realistic sense of what might be. No, it was the small bowl of red ochre that sits by the mother’s feet, and the red paint that covers the young maiden as she moves through the ceremony.

Howard Terpening “Passing into Womanhood,” 1989.

Back in the time that Europeans arrived in the Americas for the last and culture-changing time, the first Native Americans that they met wore little more than a coating of red paint, the Beothuk, being one such example. It is a tradition that Robert Griffing has used in his paintings of the period.

2. Face painted warrior (After Griffing – Logan’s Revenge)

The use of red ochre – mixed with or applied over a grease is not, however, novel to the American tribes of the more recent past. 80,000 years or more ago South African archaeologists believe that the native inhabitants of the Blombos Cave were using red ochre for body paint.

The tradition has descended to its use by the Maasai in Kenya to the present time. So when did the tradition arrive in the Americas? It does not seem to have been a tradition with those that came across from Siberia via Beringia, and thence into Western America.

Instead those known as the Red Paint People now more scientifically referred to as the Maritime Archaic, appeared in the New England and Atlantic regions of Canada between 6,000 and 3,000 BP (years before the present). They first came to prominence when a local farmer turned up pockets of red ochre, and it was then discovered, first that there were polished stone tools within the pod of paint, and then further discoveries also found human remains, showing that the bodies had been buried with pots of ochre in the grave. Paeo-Indians are believed to have lived in Maine since around 11,000 BP,(pdf), with the change from the chipped flint to ground stone tools occurring with the transition to the Archaic Period. With that tradition also came the use of the ochre paint, and the initial naming of the culture as the “Red Paint” people. The ochre was generated by grinding local haematite ore. As well as being called the Maritime Archaic, the culture is also referred to as the Moorehead Phase. Cemeteries have been found only between the Kennebec and St John’s rivers in Maine. They include the Turner Farm site in Maine, and the Blue Hill Falls site with the Nevin shell midden.

Figure 3. Cemeteries if the “Red Paint” People in Maine. (Massachusetts Archaeological Society )

However, as investigators have looked for and found other sites, they have, to date, established that the earliest site was at L’Anse Amour site in Labrador. The site was occupied from 9,000 to 2,000 years ago, but the buried individual was a child laid to rest some 7,500 years ago.

The body had been covered with red ochre, wrapped in a shroud of skins or birch bark, and placed face down, head pointed west, in a large pit 1.5 metres deep. Evidence also indicates the use of ceremonial fires and the cooking and consumption of food. Offerings were made of tools and weapons made of stone and bone. These included a walrus tusk, a harpoon head, paint stones and a bone whistle.

. The burial grounds at Port au Choix in Newfoundland lie fairly close to this coastal site, and have the advantage of also including residual material from the nearby community. The site is younger than that at L’Anse Amour, dating to around 2000 to 1200 B.C.

More recently Red Paint burials have been found in Wisconsin, dating from between 1,000 and 400 BC. The later dates are about the time of the shift to the Early Woodland period of American history, when pottery was introduced. Grave sites have also been found in Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio. So it would appear that, as with the Clovis Points, the concept started in the East and spread Westward.

Where did the idea come from? Well starting with the African culture cited above, Europeans have been burying people with ocher paint from the time of the “Red Lady of Paviland Cave.” That skeleton was, as it turned out, actually that of a young man, dating from around 30,000 years ago, back when there were still glaciers in the UK. It is the oldest “Modern human” skeleton found in the United Kingdom.

Given that, of one puts this chronology into sequence, this gives an African-European-Eastern American progression, there is an implication (through the L’Anse Amour connection) that, as with the Clovis Point, there was a European connection to North America along the Northern perimeter of the Atlantic.

L’Anse Amour also introduces funeral monuments to North America with the suggestion that it took at least a week for the local hunting band to build the mound, using local stone and boulders.

Figure 4. Artist’s Impression of the L’Anse Amour burial (Canadian Encyclopedia )

The mounds that followed, moving down into Maine seemed to be more incidental, since some of the burials were found in the large shell middens that were built as the community harvested and consumed the local shellfish over many years. At the Turner Farm site, built around 5,000 years ago, the shells are mainly of clams with the advantage that the shells reduced the acidity of the local soil, so that bones could be preserved.

This site has the oldest dates for human occupancy in Maine.

Two reasons have been proposed to explain the lack of older coastal sites. The first is that the sites were drowned or eroded as sea levels rose during the past 11,000 years (Sanger and Kellogg 1989; Kellogg 1995). The second is that the early Gulf of Maine was not highly productive, a result of low tidal amplitude and poor circulation, and that there were scant resources to support people in a maritime adaptation (Sanger and Belknap 1987). Evidence for the first scenario may be found in the rare artifacts that have been dragged up by fishing boats in the Gulf of Maine and associated estuaries (e.g. Spiess, Bourque, and Cox 1983; Wilson 1997). The second reason is much harder to confirm.

One conclusion from Maine coastal research is that the timing of the earliest visible occupation varies significantly along the coast, a result of localized rates of sea level rise and differential erosion rates (Sanger and Kellogg 1989). Another factor contributing to the pattern is that certain locations only became available for habitation when sea level had risen enough to make access possible and to create clam flats.

Research conducted to date shows that the oldest extant Maine shell middens are in Penobscot and Frenchman Bays, where soft-shell clams were procured as early as 5,000 B.P. In Casco Bay, the earliest dated occupation, about 4,000 B.P., was associated with oyster shells at the base of a large midden on Great Moshier Island (Yesner 1984). Basal deposits in the oldest Casco Bay shell middens are routinely composed of oyster and quahog (Loomis and Young 1912; Sanger and Kellogg 1989; Yesner 1983), species indicative of warmer waters and a lack of intense sedimentation. A decline in the rate of sea level rise, increasing sedimentation, and colder surface temperatures have been proposed to account for intensive coastal settlement and the formation of soft-shell clam middens after 2,000 B.P. in Casco Bay (Yesner 1983).

Interestingly the shell midden site at Taft’s Point at West Gouldsboro, ME, also included iron pyrite associated with the fire pits, the use of the pyrite as a fire starter is also considered a marker for the culture. The pyrite provided an early version of the steel which, when struck with a flint, was the source of sparks for the flint-lock rifle in later years, and historically provided the spark which was caught on tinder to provide the basis for a fire. Otzi, the remains of a man found in the Alps who lived 5,300 years ago used flint and pyrite as his fire starter.

At Blue Hill, which lies at the mouth of the Penobscot River, the Nevin shell midden was the first to be found that included human remains. Remains of a total of 19 separate individuals have been identified at the site, which covered the period from 4,500 to 3,800 BP, at which time the culture seemed to “disappear.” However shell middens continued to grow as coastal settlements continued to consume the local bounty, and the use of ochre in graves seemed to move West, as noted above. The change in cultures appears to be marked with the introduction of pottery.

Was this assimilation, or, as with later tribes, did the growth of the population cause the original inhabitants to “move on” as stronger cultures displaced them? We may never know, but – to return to the original motive for this short series – it does provide another point at which European customs appeared in an American setting, suggesting, from the chronology, that there may have been a European arrival perhaps 5,000 to 6,000 years or so ago. UPDATE The date is roughly about the time that there was a culture change in Britain, with the arrival of the Celts, the change from a worship of the moon to worshiping of the sun, and the start of construction of the stone circles, the most famous of which was Stonehenge. And, of course, there were druids and body painting, although, as those who remember the movie Braveheart will recall, the paint was wode, which is blue, rather than red.

OGPSS - Pipelines and Eastern Canada

I wrote, last time, about the projected pipelines that are being anticipated to take advantage of increased production from the oil sands in Alberta, Canada with the intent that I would use that to lead into a review of the oil sands operation itself. However Gail has raised the issue of the proposed reversal of the pipeline (Line 9) that runs from Sarnia in Ontario to Montreal so that oil would flow to the Suncor refinery in Montreal, rather than the current flow which runs the other way. (Sarnia is right by Detroit). The pipeline reversal is planned to continue beyond Montreal, to include reversing the flow of a supply pipeline from Portland, ME so that the oil from Alberta might also supply northern New England. The project has been called “The Trailbreaker” and had been postponed two years ago when demand declined.

The overall question of the relative role of exports and imports on the Canadian oil supply equation was also raised in comments on the previous post. As a result I am going to look a bit more into the overall Canadian picture, and particularly that in the East Coast, and will postpone the oil sand piece a week (sorry Neil). To begin it helps to look at the current projects that Enbridge have in mind for pipelines.

Overview of the Enbridge planned pipeline projects (Enbridge)

The Ozark pipeline, which is shown running from Cushing to Wood River was closed on Friday, Sept 30th, when the pipeline was found to be exposed as it ran across the bottom of the Mississippi River. It carries around 240 kbd and the shut down is precautionary, since there has been no leak detected.

The dark green arrow from Cushing to Houston will be known as the Wrangler pipeline and would carry up to 800 kbd from Cushing to the refineries along the Gulf, competing with the Keystone XL, which is planned to bring an additional 500 kbd down from Alberta (about 500 kbd flows through existing connections). The intent is to move the oil away from Cushing where it is proving to be a bit of a glut.

With this surplus, and the ability to move oil around the Mid-West, the need for additional feed down from Montreal dissipates, and thus the argument for the reversal of flow so that crude from Alberta can be sent back up that pipe to the refineries in Eastern Canada. At present oil comes by tanker to Portland, ME and then enters the Portland-Montreal Pipe Line (PMPL) system. The oil flows through either an 18-inch or 24-inch line up to Montreal, a distance of 236 miles, with flow then continuing to Sarnia. A certain increase in energy security would thus be achieved for the East Coast of North America, if the oil refined on the East Coast was produced in North America, instead of coming from Russia and the Middle East. At present flow would be reversed in only one of the pipes, the 18-inch, coming from Portland. At present some 200 tankers a year offload in Portland, and send around 95 kbd up to Montreal. (The pipeline came into being in 1941 to avoid exposing oil tankers moving into Quebec to U-boats).

Portland Montreal Pipe Line (Wikipedia)

If one looks at the overall flows of oil in Canada, the increasing reliance on Albertan oil can be appreciated.

Flows of Canadian crude oil in thousand cubic meters/day – (multiply by 6.3 to get kbd) in 2009 (Canadian NEB)

Canadians consume around 1.5 mbd, of which half is gasoline, and 30% diesel. I discussed their exports in the last post.

Interestingly the largest exporter of gasoline from Canada to the US lies further East, where it comes from the Irving Oil refinery in St John New Brunswick with the 300 kbd refinery shipping 75% of the gasoline it produces into the Eastern United States.

There are two other refineries in the region, the Dartmouth refinery at Halifax in Nova Scotia refines 82,000 bd of crude, largely for the Eastern provinces of Canada. The crude is off-loaded from tankers, refined and then loaded onto smaller coastal tankers for delivery.

Yet further East is the Come by Chance refinery, now the North Atlantic Refinery in Newfoundland. In its time it was one of the largest bankruptcies in Canadian history, but it now refines some 115 kbd that arrives in 320,000 ton tankers at the nearby ice-free port. It suffers from that bankruptcy in that a subsequent sale was commensurate on the product not being sold in Canada (outside of Labrador and Newfoundland), which means that the products largely ship to the United States.

Yet one must go even further East to find the oil fields of the Eastern Canada Sedimentary Basin. And unfortunately while the nearest refinery might be near an ice-free port, the fields themselves are not.

Eastern Canadian Sedimentary basins and hydrocarbon fields (Center for Energy )

The fields include White Rose which is expected to yield around 230 milllion barrels, at around 120 kbd, with a life of 12 – 15 years. First oil was in 2005.

Terra Nova is estimated at 406 million barrels. With a production of around 125 kbd it is anticipated to last 18 years. Production began in 2002.

Seasonal floating ice in these parts varies from 1.6 to 5 ft thick and an average wind speed of around 20 mph. also leads to ice buildup on the tankers and superstructure making it a consideration in operations, as are icebergs. (Remember the picture of the tug pulling an iceberg). That was taken around here.

Hibernia is also producing at around 126 kbd, and by August 2010 had produced 704 million of the 1.4 billion potentially recoverable oil from the field, Approval has now been given to extend development to the south.

Current plans to develop Hebron, some 6 miles N of Terra Nova include also the fields of West Ben Nevis, and Ben Nevis. Production is expected to begin in 2017, at a rate of around 150 – 180 kbd of oil and 200 – 350 kbd of water. Reserves are considered to be in the 400 – 700 mb range.

Although these numbers are significant, and will provide for a considerable fraction of the need in this part of the world, and further south, they do not constitute the promise of sustained increased levels of production that are required for significant help against the declining production seen in many of the worlds major oilfields. For some help in that direction it is necessary to head West. And so it is time for the review of the oil sands.

There is however, considerable controversy over the operation of the oil sands in Alberta, particularly from those objecting citing the mess that is made of the landscape. In general the illustrations of oil sand operations that are used, show the site during mining, where the black color of the sand tends to make for a dismal picture. It might be more informative to show what the sites are like afterwards. And so, as a prelude to more discussion, here is a photo of some reclaimed land. It is here that the wood bison (as opposed to buffalo) roam.

Reclaimed land after the oil is removed from the sand (CAPP )

The Temperature fall and the Chickadee

Yesterday (Monday) I was reading the Boston Globe and came across an article by David Abel about a recent report by the Audubon Society on their Breeding Bird Survey, and how it was showing that the changes in the climate was influencing bird ranges and populations. The surveys, which looked at the state of Massachusetts, only went back to 1965, and so, being curious, I wrote to Mr Abel pointing out the drop in temperature (about 4 deg F over 1950 - 1965) for the state that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. I was, sort of hoping that he might look at the survey data before that date, and see if the bird populations had fallen with that temperature drop. Also I wanted to know if the numbers had returned the the 1950 level. However he merely sent me a note thanking me for my note.

But I was now curious to know the answer, and so I had a look for the data on which the Audubon article and the resulting newspaper story were based. And it turns out that the reason that the data only went back to 1965 is that when the BBS started to be implemented). So where could I go to get earlier data?

The answer turns out to be the Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC) But the count is very species specific, and since I have only a limited amount of time I decided that I would just pick one bird (at least initially) and see what the results showed. And if the story was about Massachusetts, then it seemed sort of logical to use the state bird, which turns out to be the Black Capped Chickadee .(And as it happens, though not told until tonight by the Bishop, this is also the Maine State Bird - about which more anon .)

So the first thing to do was to get the basic information on the population with time, looking at the annual counts for the different states along the Atlantic shore from the Audubon site. And that showed the answer to one of my questions. Let me begin by repeating the temperature plot for Massachusetts over the last hundred years from my look at the state. (I am using the USHCN numbers for this particular study) so that you can follow how I got there.

Average temperature as a function of time for the state of Massachussets

You can see the significant drop in average state temperature that occurred in the 1950 - 1965 time frame. So how did the bird population respond?


It has only been in the last few years that the state has returned to those 1950 temperature, so did the bird population change, and has it made it back? The Audubon page allows you to plot a graph:

Black Capped Chickadee population in Massachusetts using the Audubon CBC

The count doesn’t look that valid before 1940, and when I checked other states I had the same problem, so I am going to restrict the rest of this to the years after 1940.

You can see that there was a drop in the count at around the period that the temperature fell, and this was confirmed when I looked at the numbers for the other states sitting close to Massachusetts. But, as you can see, the question that I had asked David Abel as to whether the numbers had returned to the values back before the temperature fell, was answered with a Yes!

However we can now go on from there. Having numbers and a temperature plot, the question can be answered as to whether the population was affected by the temperature, as the two plots above seemed to indicate. So I re-plotted the data as count versus temperature. And this is what I got for the state:

Chickadee count as a function of average annual Massachussets temperature

The plot showed, when I fitted a polynomial, that there was an optimal temperature for the population. I checked this with similar plots for the states along the Atlantic that I covered in the earlier post. Some states didn’t get that warm, and some didn’t get that cold. But for New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and perhaps New York, the data plots showed about the same peak in population at around 51 deg F.

Here is the plot, for example, for Connecticut:

Chickadee count as a function of average annual Connecticut temperature

And similarly for New Jersey

Chickadee count as a function of average annual New Jersey temperature

So with Massachusetts temperature hovering around that level at the moment (as back in 1950) we’ll have to hope for no more change in state temperature, since too much fluctuation either way may cause the population to drop.

So the next question would be whether the population drop is because the birds died off, or moved, if the temperature fell off. I don’t have enough data to answer that part of the question, but I have an indication. If one looks at North Carolina (below which the more Southern states don’t see this species apparently) then when that cold spell hit, further North, the state suddenly saw birds appear. (And having discovered the state they came back when it was colder up North).

Black Capped Chickadee counts for North Carolina (Audubon Society CBC)

So it appears that, not only did I get an answer to my question, I also discovered another temperature index through the birds, and so maybe I’ll do some more correlations from time to time. (I was thinking about doing wild turkeys since they are common around much of the country, but there is the problem that they are harvested also so that the numbers are more artificial).

Oddly the plot of optimal temperatures for the Chickadee did not work for Maine, where the temperatures are cooler. Wonder if the Maine version is turning into a slightly different creature – given that it is the Maine state bird too.

Black Capped Chickadee counts for Maine (Audubon Society CBC)

OGPSS - Natural gas pipelines and regulation

In the last post on this topic I covered some of the earlier developments in the use of natural gas (NG) as a lighting source, and began to discuss its evolution into a widely used fuel. That use, and the international marketing of NG has largely come about as the increasing use of pipelines has made it easier to move NG from places where it is overly abundant, to those where it is not. A recent example of this has been the Rockies Express Pipeline (REX) which carries NG from Colorado to Ohio, and thence to points East. Out in the West NG is still abundant and so well head prices are low – in 2009 for example it averaged $3.21 per kcf in Colorado. That same year in Maine the residential price was $16.43 per kcf. (against $8.80 in Colorado). The well head price in Ohio fell from $7.88 per kcf, in 2008, the year before the pipeline was completed, to $4.36 in 2009.

The Rockies Express pipeline (Kinder Morgan )

As new fields, such as those in the various shale layers that are now becoming popular, are opened they only become significant as the gas that is produced from the well is connected into a distribution network. Pipeline costs have been estimated as around $1 to $1.5 million per mile. After the pipe is in place it is often hard to see where it runs, in the USA at least.

Pipeline route over the Marcellus Shale, after installation

In 2009 the US used some 22 trillion cubic feet of NG (Tcf) moving ahead of Russia to again become the world’s largest producer and consumer. In that year the greatest production came from five Western states.

Top Gas Producing States in 2009 (NEED )

The need for a network to supply other states, less fortunate in this resource, has largely been met, with new pipelines being installed as needed. However it should be noted that just having the production does not, in itself, create nirvana, since earlier this year New Mexico and the Southwest suffered from shortages since demand exceeded available supply due to an unexpected cold spell.

Natural gas pipeline network around the United States (EIA )

This network has made it much easier to ensure that gas is available to customers, when they need it. And while this has recently become more of an issue, as natural gas turbines are installed to provide back-up power to more intermittent power generators, such as wind and solar farms, NG fueled electric power stations have been the most, in fact almost the only, new power construction in the United States for several years.

As the experience in New Mexico showed, just having a network of pipes in place is not, in itself enough. The first need is that the gas must travel down the pipes to the customers at a given volume, and this requires that it be pumped under pressure. Rather than creating the driving pressure purely at the input end, the pipe travels through a series of compressor stations that raise the pressure along the pipeline length, as friction would otherwise reduce it to below viable levels. For safety reasons gas pressure is reduced as the pipes travel through urban areas, and the normal operating pressure can thus vary between 200 and 1,500 psi. For those that forget Boyle’s Law from high school science, at constant temperature, raising the pressure by a factor of 6 will cause an equivalent reduction in the volume of the gas that is being pumped.

However, if you consider the network as a schematic you will note a couple of additional features.

Flow Diagram of the US Gas Distribution Network (EIA )

The two additions are for temporary storage of gas for use at times when demand is high (Oops none in the Southwest - tsk !). The gas can be stored either as a gas, or it can be cooled to a liquid (which reduces the volume by a factor of 600 and stored in that form. The LNG facilities need a re-gasifier, and, if they are taking the gas from a pipeline, also a liquefaction unit to do the initial conversion. By using these facilities that are dotted around the country, pipelines don’t have to be as large to ensure that there is enough gas for the consumer at the high demand locations around the network.


Locations of storage facilities for natural gas including LNG import terminals (EIA )

I have used a map that shows the location of LNG import terminals, since this is an additional source of NG for the United States. Again the volume that is involved is a function of price, though often, to justify the cost of the parts of the supply train, there is a concurrent long-term commitment to a given price schedule, so that spot prices are not necessarily that valid, and what is paid in Japan, for example, is not indicative of prices elsewhere. That is particularly true at present since the loss in power from the nuclear reactors in Japan is expected to result in a long-term increase in LNG demand to replace the lost power.

Variation in the price of LNG in Japan (Mongabay )

As I write this the current quoted import price for LNG into the United States is $6.78 per kcf some $1.71 over the quoted Henry Hub price for NG.

One of the most powerful drivers in the growth of demand for natural gas has been as a result of its increased use in generating electricity. This is particularly evident as it takes market share from coal-fired power stations due to concerns over the emission of greenhouse gases.

Nationwide, coal-fired electric power generation declined 11.6 percent from 2008 to 2009, bringing coal's share of the electricity power output to 44.5 percent, the lowest level since 1978. Coal consumption at U.S. power plants paralleled the decline in generation, dropping 10.3 percent from 2008.

In sharp contrast, natural gas-fired generation increased 4.3 percent in 2009, despite the 4.1-percent decline in overall electric generation. The natural gas share of generation increased to 23.3 percent—the highest level since 1970. Electricity's share of the total U.S. natural gas consumption has also risen rapidly, growing from 17 percent in 1996 to over 30 percent in 2009

There is a greater capacity for gas-generated power than these numbers reflect, since the utilities still tend to use coal over NG for longer-term operation as the costs are lower.

The growth of this market developed after the Second World War, and the development of a distribution network. However in the years immediately after the war the industry was heavily regulated, both in terms of price and volume, in much the same way as the Texas Railroad Commission had regulated oil. But because the gas entered and left inter-state pipelines it was regulated under the Natural Gas Act of 1938 which among other things forbade the construction of a new interstate pipeline into a state that already had one. In 1954 the Supreme Court voted that the FPC should set wellhead prices for NG. This removed some of the incentive to develop new wells, and from then until 1968 production and prices remained relatively steady. In 1968 however reserves fell from 20 Tcf to 12 Tcf, and in 1969 they were down to 8 Tcf. With the industry still controlled, reserve additions failed to keep up with demand for the next 12 years. However the Arabian oil (and gas) embargo imposed in 1973 led the price of NG to multiply 750% between 1972 and 1976. Consumption fell at these higher prices, and the market re-equilibrated until 1980. But the over-regulation of the industry led to serious problems.

The interstate pipeline experience during this period was an unmitigated disaster. To deal with the shortages in the interstate market, interstate pipelines submitted curtailment plans to the FPC describing how they would determine who got gas and who did not. The plans gave top priority to residential consumers. Boiler fuel users, such as electric utilities, were given lowest priority. Users who experienced curtailed deliveries could either shut down their operations or switch to alternate fuels. During the winter heating season of 1977-1978, gas deliveries in New York and New Jersey were curtailed for everyone except residential consumers. Commercial users received only 94.3 percent of requirements, industrial users only 79.2 percent of requirements and electric utilities only 13.5 percent of requirements.

Just as the regulations were being changed to help resolve these problems, and de-regulate wellhead pricing, the Shah of Iran was overthrown, and prices took off again. This encouraged new drilling and in 1981 for the first time since 1968 more gas was discovered than was consumed that year. Unfortunately this happened just as the rise in prices was moving consumers out of the product. The result was a drop in demand, which bottomed out in 1986. With the increase in supply this generated a “gas bubble.” In 1986 the Texas Railroad Commission changed the rules to ease sales of the gas to end users rather than just the pipeline companies, at the same time the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission began the series of changes that, by 1992, meant that you no longer had to own a pipeline to be able to buy natural gas.

I’ll write about where that took us, and the evolution of the gas producers and market as I continue with this short topic next time.

Maine Temperature information

This is a part of a continuing look at state temperatures, and, since time is a bit short today, and since this was written in Maine*, I thought I would look at the temperatures there, rather than doing California, which with over 50 stations will take a little longer. Maine also provides an interesting contrast to Nevada, having some of the coldest temperatures in the contiguous United States, rather than some of the hottest. The process is the same as that I started with, and so I will be comparing the dozen USHCN stations in Maine with the single station that GISS uses. I wandered around trying to check that Caribou was the valid GISS site, as Chiefio listed. Along the way I bumped into the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN).

When fully deployed, the USCRN will consist of approximately one hundred stations nationwide at locations selected to capture both the national and regional climate trends and variations for temperature and precipitation.

The reason that I question the GISS use of Caribou, is the same as that which gave me problems when looking at Nevada. The temperature data from the site does not go back to 1895, as the USHCN data does, but in this case only starts in 1948, making a true comparison over the period of record impossible.

So, again being curious, I looked for a listing of the USCRN stations, which turn out to be different from the one provided by Chiefio. There are two stations on this USCRN list for Maine, one at Limestone (20020920) and one at Old Town (20020913). And this gets even more confusing since the data for Old Town from GISS only run from 1949 to 1972, and that for Limestone doesn’t apparently exist (the town has 1,415 people in it.) Perhaps it is a new station that is being installed? Maybe I should find out what is going on? But the record hasn’t been good on folk getting a response from those responsible (see the Climategate e-mails). So, given the confusion, I think that I will just stick with the Caribou station for now, since it does, at least have a significant length of time over which there is a record, that can be compared with the USHCN data.

However, by using this station I do invalidate one of the hypotheses that has been evolving from data from the last five states. For this is the first state where the GISS station temperature is lower than that of the average of the USHCN stations. Plotting the difference between the two, this really doesn’t appear to have changed over the time interval where there are records for both:

In Maine there has been a steady increase in state temperature over the past 114 years:


Now I had a second hypothesis that I was going to test, and this was that the influence of the sea would be evident in a warmer temperature near the coast, which dissipated as the stations moved west, and both away from the coast and higher. Well that one was wrong, at least in regard to it becoming cooler as the stations were further west and higher:


However there is a caveat to this result, in that the coast of Maine runs at an angle of about 45 deg along the bottom of the state, so it might be that we need to filter out the effects of latitude and altitude before having a closer look. Also, as I will note again later, there are only a limited number of stations in the state and two of them are sensibly on the coast.

The linear correlation with Latitude that has been detected for all the states so far, has persisted:


As has the linear inverse temperature correlation with Elevation above the sea, even though, in this case, the heights are not that great:


The change in standard deviation over time follows the pattern that we have seen in many of the states, starting out rising, and then, as automated temperature recording was introduced, reducing.


And so I now adjust the data by adjusting each station data to the latitude for the Center of the State, given as 45.250556, -45.250556.

Then I tried adjusting the data to the value if the station was located at the average height above sea level for the state of Maine, which is 600ft. And discover that this doesn’t work for all stations, since those that are below 100ft above the ocean tend to be dramatically overcorrected.

This comes back to the point that there are only a few stations in the state, and that there are only two that are that close to sea level, and we don’t have enough data at this time to draw a conclusion. Which means finding a state with more stations at the coast. . . . .

In the meantime to round out the usual set with a variation, here is the mid-state average temperature (i.e. adjusting each station for latitude as though it were at mid-state, and then taking the average – without Caribou – though it made very little difference). (To do this I subtract the constant term from each temperature based on the temp v latitude graph, then I multiply by the latitude of the center of the state, divide by the latitude of the station, then add the constant term back in).


And then to look at the effect of population, though again using the temperatures adjusted for latitude:


And we can still see that stronger sensitivity to population at small town sizes, that has been consistent across the states examined to date – but then they have all had relatively small population sizes.

* A series of problems that began with problems in getting onto the internet at the hotel, through having to change the router on our system when we got home, ends up with this also being completed on a new computer a week after the vast majority of the post was first written, sigh!

P19. Pick Points

Half-a-dozen or so stories of interest.

Well the Russian:Ukrainian dispute may be over, though nobody is as yet certain that the agreement will hold. The expectation is that the deal will help Prime Minister Tymoshenko’s image, as she runs for the Presidency this year, and so they cut the price of gas by 20%, though holding Ukraine to the same transit fee for the gas. (On the other hand the NYT is reporting that Ukraine will only pay somewhere around $230 per tcm). The fate of the $700 million that Ukraine owes for gas is not mentioned, however, and the deal requires the two national gas companies (Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy) sign an agreement – supposedly on Monday, both Prime Ministers will be there. Ukraine is still saying it needs 8% of the transmitted gas in order to run the compressors on the pipeline. Speaking of which it is reported that the valves that remained closed last week were actually in Russia. And the fear in Ukraine grows that Gazprom’s ultimate objective is to gain control of the Ukrainian pipelines.

Oh, and given that some of the gas comes from Turkmenistan, it should be noted that the President thereof has just fired a third of his Cabinet, including the head of the state oil company . The Slovaks are now getting natural gas from the Czech Republic . Bulgaria, on the other hand is getting emergency supplies from Turkey and Greece. Russia is planning on supplying Bulgaria through the South Stream pipeline in future, and sweetened the deal that puts another nail in the Nabucco pipeline coffin, by also agreeing to build a nuclear power plant for Bulgaria (which is in the EU). The pipeline will go from Bulgaria up into Hungary.

As an aside, you may remember that I mentioned that Putin was painting – well the painting went for $1.1 million.

In the ongoing problems of under-developed power supplies, and consequent drop in power that South Africa can supply to nearby countries, Zambia is increasingly being courted by Indian and Chinese investors, both of whom realize that to maintain supplies and power in their own countries, they must find a reliable exporter of coal, in the meanwhile the country has started exploring for oil and natural gas, is improving the generators at Kafue Gorge hydro-electric plant, and is looking to expand the coal-fired power generation in the country; all to reduce the current load shedding that has been required by the cut back on South African supplies.

In the short term it does not look good for wind generated power supplies for Maine. Aroostook Wind Energy which as trying to get transmission lines so that it could connect into the Maine Power Grid has filed a letter stating that it will stop system impact studies due to the changes in the power market making the project currently uneconomic.

Meanwhile in Utah a federal judge has blocked the exploration leases on federal land that had previously been agreed by the outgoing Bureau of Land Management folk. To become final the Bureau of Land Management had to cash the checks for the bids, but that has yet to happen. Originally the BLM wanted to sell leases to much more of the land, but this was scaled back from 360,000 acres to the current 110,000 acres in 77 land parcels. The delay is for several weeks, and gives time for the Administration to change in Washington. At present natural gas production in Utah is valued at $5 per 1,000 cu. Ft. (to compare with the stories on Russian gas that is $135 per tcm.) Compressed natural gas, which is used to fuel vehicles in the state, has just seen a price rise to $1.14 a gallon with a further rise to $1.43 coming in July.


There are more stories over on the Energy Bulletin, or on Drumbeat at The Oil Drum