Looking Indian and Red Paint Peoples - additional thoughts

Before moving on to the next period of possible European:Native American interaction, there are a couple of things to add to the narrative that has been compiled to date. First I had a short discussion with the lady behind the desk, while visiting the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor. I had commented on their lack of identification of the Red Paint People, and she commented that they felt that using the term diminished the tribe, and made it easier to disassociate current Wobanaki (the collective tribe of North-East America) from their ancestors, and thus diminish any political clout they might have. Having picked up Frederick Wiseman’s Book “Reclaiming the Ancestors” in the museum shop, it provided additional information relative to my last post, and so I will return to the Wobanaki issue in a minute.

But the second point that I wanted to touch on was one made by Senator Scott Brown, in his first debate with Elizabeth Warren in this election cycle. He made the comment

“Professor Warren claimed that she was a Native American, a person of color, and as you can see, she’s not,” said Brown. . . . . .

Now this is where this series began. Because what does an Eastern American Indian (as the Cherokee and Delaware were) look like? I rather think that the good Senator is being either somewhat perhaps racist, or perhaps just ignorant? For the reality is that the average Native American of the Eastern seaboard look like the average American. The lady behind the counter, who from our conversation is likely Wobanaki had the appearance of a typical American teenager/college student. The five basket weavers whose work is featured in the museum at present are Indian but look no different from your average American. In fact the second from the left looks a little like the good Senator.

Figure 1. Indian Basketweavers whose superb work is on display at the Abbe Museum (Abbe Museum)

So Tsk! Tsk! Senator, perhaps you ought to have a good look at your constituents. (Note that this comment has now been picked up at Talking Points Memo).

To return to the Wobanaki, and Professor Wiseman’s book. (He is incidentally Wobanaki himself). One of the premises on which the series to date has developed lies on the assumption that there was communication between European and some of the first populations of America (the First Nations) possibly dating from the time period of the PaleoIndians, and also possibly at the time of the Red Paint People. Dr. Wiseman gives a First Nations view of the topic.

In addressing the first of these points, Professor Wiseman noted that at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, PaleoIndians were using stone obtained from Ramah Bay in Northern Labrador. The significance of that, at the time I first read it, escaped me. But the distance from Ramah Bay to Maine is about a thousand miles and at the time of the use of the stone there was the remnant of a glacier still sitting over most of Eastern Canada, down to the coast.

Figure 2. Suggested trade route from Maine to Ramah Bay. (Google Earth and Frederick Wiseman.

The upshot being that the First Nations had seagoing craft, and that the “technology” therefore existed to allow communication along the lower edge of the ice sheets and glaciers, from America to Europe.

Figure 3. Alternate route to Ramah Bay (Stephen Loring via Georgiabeforepeople )

Wiseman suggests that the boats were hide covered, much as are the current umiaks used by the Inuit to move groups and their belongings over distance. Although if they were venturing long distances, I imagine they might have provided some cover for the passangers, and a variant of these has been around for millennia.

One addition that Wiseman brings to the cemeteries of the Red Paint People is that, in some cases the bodies were cremated. He cites the burials near Amoskeag Falls in New Hampshire, and also notes that as the culture moved from Early Archaic to Middle so the groups, which had originally only been the 20-30 individuals, the characteristic size of hunter-gatherer groups now grew. With the fish and marine harvests larger groups came together, and were able to construct fish weirs across the rivers, giving a much greater harvest, for less ultimate effort. Larger weirs use wooden stakes to guide the fish into the traps, while smaller ones, such as the Allman fish weir, were constructed of large stones. The weir acts to guide the fish into a trap, usually made of net or wood. The oldest of these is the Sebasticook Lake Fish Weir(pdf). When the larger weirs were placed in rivers such as the Penobscot, Wiseman notes that it might take perhaps more than a hundred man-days to construct the weir, since the staves had first to be shaped, and then held in place with stones.

Figure 4. Stones arranged across a stream to build a weir or guide so that the fish have to follow the narrow channel to the upper left of the stream, where traps can be set to catch them. (National Park Service)

I used the example of the Allman weir because it is a relatively shallow construction and was re-constructed by just one man. The more conventional weirs are made of wood, and are set into the river bed, albeit in roughly the same shape, but require much greater labor to construct, with the advantage that, where the waters are tidal, the yield can also be much greater. The stakes would then be connected by a wattle (woven branch) construction to direct the fish. Miller notes that the Sebasticook Lake weir was made up of some 630 wooden stakes. Wiseman notes that single hunter-gatherer groups, which might consist of up to 6 “families” would “work” over an area that might extend from 3 to 19 miles in distance, using different regions as the seasons changed. Moving to the construction of weirs with their provision of longer-lasting food supplies then became a pre-cursor to the subsequent shift into an agronomic lifestyle.

One additional facet of stone tool design also appears in the region during the time of the Red Paint People, and that is the ulu knife. These probably originated in the Inuit communities several thousand years ago and have a distinctive shape. Their presence in Maine confirms the likelihood of communication between the First Nations in the lower 48, and the Inuit who were living along the Arctic Coast.

Figure 5. Modern Ulu knife shape (Ulu factory )

The great warming that occurred during the time of the Red Paint People, taken with their increasing development of larger communities, and deeper water fishing, leads Wiseman to suggest that rather than Europeans coming to America, it is equally possible that exploring Wobanaki were the ones to cross the Atlantic, and brought back as, perhaps, a bride someone with the X variant in the mtDNA that then began its spread west. It is an interesting point of view, and one that is shared by the Curator at the Penobscot Museum at Lake Isle.

The direction of the communicating vessels will come up again in later posts.

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)

Massachusetts combined temperatures and a summary

With New York completed last week I have actually got a collection of states that runs from one ocean to the other, but to make the Eastern connection more significant I am going to look at the temperatures in Massachusetts this week. Given the number of stations that there were in New York, it is a bit of a relief to find that there are only a dozen USHCN stations in the state. There is also, according to Chiefio’s list, only one GISS station in the state, in Boston. So that should make the initial data download relatively painless.

There was one snag in finding the Blue Hill Observatory, but it turns out (using Google Earth) that it is in Canton, MA, whose data I used. Having driven West from Boston in the past, I remembered that the road climbed almost all the way to the New York border. And, yet there seemed to be few stations with higher elevations, so I looked a bit more closely and there were only 2 stations in the western half of the state, and only two whose elevation was above the average. The rest of the stations had an elevation below 65 m, while the average elevation of the state is at 150 m. Given, as I will show that there is a strong negative correlation between temperature and elevation, the station locations are weighted to those closer to the sea.

Having said that I am going to use the TOBS plots to show how the temperatures have varied in the state over the last 115 years, and to look at the usual suspects (Latitude etc) to see how these affect the numbers. And because I have gone from one coast to the other, I thought I would tabulate some of the data that I have been plotting.

So firstly, how accurate is the GISS temperature in modeling average temperatures in the state.


As you can see, even with the average being taken from stations at lower altitudes, reading the GISS temperature at Logan Airport in Boston, which is sensibly on the sea, gives a temperature that is, on average 2.48 degrees warmer than that average, though it is going down a little.

For the state, as a whole, the temperature has been rising over the past 115 years, at a rate of around 2 deg per century.


However the temperature rise seems a little steeper pre-1950 than it has been since. The homogenized data that the USHCN generates suggests that the temperature rise has been somewhat higher, at 2.77 deg per century, with a higher R^2 of 0.43.

Looking at the effects of station location, the change in latitude continues to have an impact, though not nearly as significant as it has been in other states. This could, in part have been due to the two highest average station temperatures being for stations relatively close to sea-level. At the same time there are not that many stations in the state. (Interestingly the homogenization improves the R^2 value in this case, to 0.122, with a higher coefficient of -1.98, which is interesting if one looks at the table toward the end of the post).


The drivers of the eastern most stations being on the coast, and those further west being higher, means that there was a strong correlation with longitude:


Although the correlation is quite strong, I still feel that this is more due to the other factors that just longitude, and though the correlation with elevation is not quite as good (because of the higher temperatures of the two stations down at the coast) yet that also provides much of the explanation.


The homogenization of data reduces this correlation down to an R^2 of 0.33, one of the problems, I am beginning to think , of the process that they are using.

And the correlation with population continues to exist – note that the two highest temperatures are with the two largest cities.


Having now examined the states from Massachusetts to California, I thought to put the coefficients (as in temp = a x property + b, and tabulating the values of “a” and the R^2 values for the different states along the line. For population values, it should be remembered that the property has been converted to a log value first. (see the figure immediately above).


It can be seen that there is some consistency in the values for latitude, elevation and population, but not as consistent a set with longitude – bearing out my conjecture that there are other factors in play that influence the longitudinal correlation.

Oh, and one final thought – I did plot the difference between the homogenized data that the USHCN provides and the TOBS raw data, here it is.

A new Massachusetts Senator and energy policy changes

The fate of coal fired power plants is one of those questions that continues to have answers hidden in the fog of their political future. And the election tonight of a Republican Senator from Massachusetts raises some interesting questions about that future. Not the least of these will be the fate of cap and trade legislation, which was already in some trouble in the Senate. And one wonders if it will have any impact in the ongoing debate about the Cape Wind project. This project, to raise a wind farm in the area off the coast of Massachusetts that the late Senator Kennedy and his family apparently sailed in, has been stalled for some nine years since it was first conceived. The process recently ran into another bump with the National Park Service agreeing that the area is eligible for listing as a historic site.

The 560-square-mile area is the first swath of ocean to be determined eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. That decision Monday, based on the sound’s cultural and spiritual significance for two Wampanoag tribes, means the 130-turbine Cape Wind project and all future activities in the Sound that require a federal permit will now have to consult with the Native Americans and try to minimize the impact of projects on the protected area. That consultation will be required even if the sound is never actually formally listed on the register.

The Secretary of the Interior has now met with the Indian tribes, and the proponents of the plan and has promised that there will be a decision before the end of April. The eligibility ruling is apparently somewhat unusual, and has additional consequences relating to fishing and the use of ferries that go well beyond the wind farm issue, and no doubt tonight’s result may also have some impact. But we should find out before the end of April what that might be.

Not all political futures are as quickly resolved. One of those that has been dragging on is the one I started with, that of cap and trade, and Foreign Policy in a major review of the accomplishments of the Obama Administration in the energy field have not been overly kind in their review. And while the election may move cap and trade even further from a Senate vote, the article goes into considerable more depth in considering some of the other perceived failures of the past year.

Here is the back story of how the Obama administration dramatically raised and then dashed America's -- and the world's -- hopes that 2009 would be a pivotal year for remaking our collective energy future.

It has a much more realistic view of the consequences of actions to date, and while it considers that Secretary Chu is a voice of reason in the debate on the energy future, considers that he is a lone voice, and a largely unsuccessful one against the “partisans of the past.”

Virtually every other key policy role was filled by environmental regulators -- former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Carol Browner as climate czar, former Browner aide Lisa Jackson as EPA administrator, and Nancy Sutley as chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The authors feel that the emphasis on energy conservation – a major plank in the immediate future – is part of “magical thinking” of the future where desired outcomes will occur almost at the cost of merely wishing them so.

In this view, energy efficiency pays for itself, solar and wind power are already nearly cost competitive with fossil fuels, and both can quickly and cheaply reduce emissions. This Pollyanna view of fossil fuel alternatives and efficiency, which makes going green seem cheap and easy -- little more than the cost of "a postage stamp a day" -- has provided the justification for green-policy advocacy that has overwhelmingly focused on pollution regulations and carbon pricing while ignoring serious investment in energy research and development.

Some of the roadblocks to the anticipated “magical change” in the energy supply of the country are already evident. The resistance to a wind farm in Massachusetts from the Democratic Establishment there; the blocking of sites in the Mohave Desert that would contain solar and wind farms by Senator Feinstein - to give examples on both coasts – illustrate some of the problems that the reality of renewable energy provision must get through in order to continue to increase the percentage power that it provides to the nation. (And it is still not nearly as much as the public perception of its impact has been, I suspect).

Unfortunately that is not the sum of the national woes. For in reading the Foreign Policy piece, what struck me was the lack of understanding on the part of the authors of the potential future problems of overall energy supply.

The grip of the “greens” on short-term energy policy will likely make it increasingly difficult to build new coal-fired power stations. Secretary Chu, driven in part I suspect by his own view of Climate Change, is focusing on finding long-term solutions to the provision of electric power, with the benefit that dealing funds to that aim helps his constituency in the National Labs. But in the process neither side pays much attention to the possibility of nearer term problems of energy supply.

But there are some warning signs (apart from the ones that I write about in most posts relating to the coming difficulty in producing enough oil to meet global demand – which Goldman Sachs now expects to happen next year). And these concerns are illustrated by example. For in the United Kingdom the power companies are requesting that some of the coal-fired and nuclear power stations be kept around after the European Union regulations require that they be closed.

"Given that the issue we are trying to grapple with is climate change, there is a question mark over keeping one or two of these oil or coal fired plants mothballed to secure supplies for a few days per year when we get these conditions," Golby (chief executive for E.ON UK) said.

"It might be a small economic and carbon premium worth paying for security of supply and getting us through this transition to a low-carbon energy system. It's something we have talked to the government about."

Golby's view is privately supported by many UK power station operators who fear a looming energy gap in a few years when old coal and nuclear plants have been closed but new reactors, clean coal plants and wind farms have not been built.

So the new Senator enters an arena where the debates, actions, and inactions of the next year or so may have a very significant impact on whether or not there is sufficient power in this country after 2015. Let us hope that he understands that.

P51. Pick Points

Half-a-dozen or so stories of interest:

The energy lobby is not thrilled about the latest plans to increase taxes on the industry and is now forming a group to speak up for the industry. As an alternative North Dakota is thinking about putting 25% of the oil generated income into a trust fund. While Ecuador is going after some unpaid taxes that it claims Perenco, a French oil company, owes due to the “extraordinary profits” the company has made. Michigan’s Governor is asking for a gas tax to fix the crumbling roads in the state. The intent is to shift the rate from a per gallon, to a percentage of the price. Because state and federal revenues from existing taxes are no longer enough the Congress is also looking at ways to restructure the system to raise more revenue, one of the thoughts being considered is a mileage charge. Massachusetts has a similar problem, and are considering a 25% increase in the state gas tax (which would bring in about $650 million), as is Oregon.


Ugo Bardi has his post on “Fire and Ice” up on the main TOD board, (it was on TOD Europe before) and just for the historical record, it was I (not some guy from the USGS) who disagreed with Dave Rutledge down at ASPO 2007 – which did not stop the pair of us, with a group of others, adjourning to the bar to discuss the topic thereafter.

Speaking of conferences the MIT student Energy Club just held their conference at which the Swedish company Vattenfall said that they would be carbon neutral by 2050. Sweden has previously said that it will wean itself from oil within the next fifteen years . Sweden gets most of its electricity from nuclear and from hydro, so that the major use of fossil fuels is in transportation. I should be in Sweden this weekend (there will be a slight hiatus since it is a long flight and I am going to work) so I will post on what I hear.

At the start of an Energy Conference in Qatar the Exxon CEO has used their success with Qatar (they will have doubled the LNG production to 62 million tonnes this year, leading to the establishment of fourth and fifth LNG trains). Half the vessels for the 4th train are now delivered, and 5 of the 6 for the 5th train. The LNG is coming into a market that is currently seeing (outside of South Asia) a surplus of natural gas (hence all the rig closures in the US) and the LNG entry is likely to soften the market further. However if the predictions of a drop in US well production hold up, then the LNG will be coming on market just as it would otherwise tighten. China, which currently uses 13 million tonnes of LNG , with imports from Russia and Kazakhstan, is also aiming for a target of 60 million tonnes a year by 2020, with some of that to come from Qatar. A local shortage of natural gas is also causing Saudi Arabia to fast-track the development of two off-shore gas fields.

Development of the Arabiyah and Hisbah gas fields, which are not associated with oil production, would supply around 1.8 billion cubic feet per day, MEES reported. The projects were included in Aramco's expansion plan through 2014, it said.

"Bringing these fields on line would make sense," one industry source in the kingdom told Reuters yesterday. "They really need the gas."

Success offshore has not been matched with equivalent searches for natural gas on land, and particularly in the Empty Quarter.

Utility operators in the United States continue to be concerned over the future of coal, and are scrapping even more plans for expansion, part of the problem lies in the uncertainty over future regulation. Just this past week a utility in Montana has given up on the fight with local environmentalists and will now be installing a gas-fired plant, even though the costs may be higher. There are still, however, some 28 coal-fired plants under construction. To prevent more ash dam failures, EPA is seeking the necessary information on the sites where such impoundments exist. There may be as many as 300. Idaho Power, having seen the writing on the wall, has also changed its mind, and instead of a coal-fired plant will be installing a 300 MW plant in Payette county. The site is close to an existing gas pipeline, and an existing 230-kV transmission line. Now all they need to worry about is the long-term availability of the fuel.

A small note, it appears that having not had them built for very long, China has already filled the current round of tanks for their Strategic Petroleum Reserve and is thinking of adding more storage using tankers. (Which suggests they don’t think prices will stay down much longer, either). They currently have 34 days of supply in storage., but this may not count the 100 million barrels in the reserve. China is actively chasing after oil, and trying to ensure supplies when the price is right. And there are still those who think that the floor of the market has not yet arrived and that prices can sink some more.

And Pakistan has decided to go ahead with a gas pipeline from Iran, without having Indian participation.

More stories can be found at The Energy Bulletin and Drumbeat at The Oil Drum.