THE IMPACT OF LIFE LONG LEARNING ON MY LIFE
Introduction
The title of this conference is “50+ adaptation to life changes” and it is part of an EU-funded Life Long Learning Programme. This presentation is called “The Impact of Life Long Learning on My Life” because I worked for 25 years at the American Farm School which administers such EU funds, and on retirement I decided to follow EU advice. My continuing education has provided a number of insights which I would like to share with you. My talk is accompanied in writing so you can reflect on the presentation after the conference. Information is from books reviewed on our web site www.slowlivinggreece.com in the section “Articles/Blog” in case you would like to conduct your own research at greater depth.
Changes that are being imposed on us
As defined by the Copenhagen Consensus 2004 in Global Crises, Global Solutions the ten most serious challenges facing the world today are: climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts, access to education, financial instability, governance and corruption, malnutrition and hunger, migration, sanitation and access to clean water, and subsidies and trade barriers.
This talk considers three of these major challenges – financial instability, food, and climate change – and the changes Christine and I have chosen in response.
The importance of leadership from the 50+ group
All ten of the major challenges facing the world today have been created by humans and are the result of how we have run the world during the 20th century. They have been created by leadership that has placed personal, corporate or national interest above community/planetary interest. Such selfishness has to come to an end or our society will commit suicide. I and most of the older generation have to accept responsibility for creating these problems and the 50+ age group should play a leadership role in putting the world back on track. For some people retirement is the most productive and worthwhile period of their life.
Plan for the worst; hope for the best
This presentation is not a prediction of what will happen in the future. However, Christine and I consider it prudent to plan for the worst while hoping for the best. This is similar to taking out an insurance policy on your house. You hope that your house will never burn down, but for a small extra expense and a little extra trouble you have protected yourself should disaster hit.
FINANCIAL INSTABILITY
When the most recent financial crisis hit, Newsweek reported that there had been more than 120 financial crises in the last 30 years. The authorities are making every effort to overcome the problems that have arisen and we hope that they will be successful. However, it would be unduly optimistic to believe that they have now found the magic formula for economic stability, full employment and prosperity. In our case, planning for the worst assumes that my pension reduces in purchasing power and could be zero one day. We have therefore created a home-based business and hope that over the years our business income will increase to compensate for any pension loss. I have told our children not to depend on others to create an interesting, well-paid job for them; they should plan on creating their own business.
Our emphasis is on increasing our self-reliance and doing what we can to protect ourselves from the financial chaos that seems to be affecting everyone’s life. Christine and I have made our home in Greece, a country that has been much in the news in recent weeks because it has been spending more than it has been earning. Its people may be among the first to experience the “worst-case scenario” of the financial crisis.
FOOD
Gardening is the first step towards self-reliance
Robert Rodale in Our Next Frontier: A Personal Guide for Tomorrow’s Lifestyle, written in 1981, predicted much of what we are experiencing today and recommends gardening as the most convenient point of entry to the idea of self-reliance. I decided to take up gardening and to grow as much of our own food as possible. A section of our website is devoted to books on gardening and farming that I have found helpful.
Of the 2.2 million deaths in America each year, 1.8 million are diet related
Sally Beare’s 50 Secrets of the World’s Longest Living People drew my attention to the fact that: “Scientists agree that we could be living to around 120 years if we achieved our maximum potential life spans, having more energy whatever age we are. It is never too late too start. Even those who are tired, ill, and getting on in years can become biologically younger, reverse the damage, keep disease away, and add years, if not decades, to their lives.” “Ancient wisdom, thousands of authoritative studies, and recent groundbreaking research all indicate that the answer lies, above all, in what we eat. The U.S. surgeon general recently said that of the 2.2 million deaths in America each year, 1.8 million are diet related.”
Sally Beare strengthened my conviction that taking more control over our food would be a wise move.
People today should be the most vigorous and competent the world has known
In B17 Metabolic Therapy in the Prevention and Control of Cancer Philip Day quotes Sir Robert McCarrison, Chairman of the Post-Graduate Medical Education Committee at Oxford University: “I know of nothing so potent in producing ill-health as improperly constituted food. It may therefore be taken as a law of life, infringement of which shall surely bring its own penalties, that the single greatest factor in the acquisition of health is perfectly constituted food. Given the will, we have the power to build in every nation a people more fit, more vigorous and competent; a people with longer and more productive lives, and with more physical and mental stamina than the world has ever known.”
With the knowledge about food from our outstanding universities and research centers, there is no reason why we should not be the fine specimens McCarrison suggests, yet 4 out 5 Americans allow their food to kill them.
Making a comfortable living from a small piece of land
In Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management, M.G. Kains quotes Abraham Lincoln: “The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”
This quote became the foundation stone of our response to financial chaos and poor quality food. Christine and I conceived our own version of agro-tourism. “Our mission is to share with others our joie de vivre in making a comfortable living from a small piece of land. David grows much of our food. We live the Slow Philosophy in a rural setting outside Thessaloniki convenient for the Macedonia airport. Christine is a ceramic artist who gains her inspiration from ancient Greek and Byzantine pottery. She exposes guests to the incredibly warm and welcoming locals, lovingly prepared, slowly savored Mediterranean food and the uniqueness of ancient and modern Greece.”
Our website www.slowlivinggreece.com was born in January 2010. A weekly diary records progress in our endeavors, our successes and failures, and lessons learned along the way. We hope that it may be helpful to those of a like mind who decide to take out their own insurance policy by adopting Abraham Lincoln’s words, “The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”
Later in the programme Christine will talk about our progress in our endeavors.
Water scarcity: the biggest threat to global food production
Water scarcity is now the single biggest threat to global food production. In Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? Sandra Pastel points out that world-wide per capita irrigated area peaked in 1978. By 2020 it will be 25% below the 1978 peak. Between 1951 and 1985, Israel expanded its irrigated area fivefold with only a threefold increase in water use. Output per cubic meter nearly tripled and its value jumped 10-fold. Israel is the only nation to double water productivity in agriculture – something which every nation on earth would be wise to emulate.
We have installed storage tanks to collect rain water from the roof, have arranged that every drop of water entering our property is constructively used, and installed drip irrigation and use mulch to improve water use efficiency.
Pastel also notes that climate change adds a whole new dimension to the food and water challenge. History shows that climate wild cards can overwhelm a seemingly advanced society’s ability to cope.
CLIMATE CHANGE, GLOBAL WARMING, WEATHER EXTREMES
Amazingly there is much skepticism regarding humanity’s contribution to global warming and climate change. I provide information from two books: the first explains why the skeptics have the upper hand; and the second shows that there is a problem that we need to face up to.
Joseph Romm in Hell and High Water: Global Warming – the Solution and the Politics – and What We Should Do provides the following explanation of why the public has not been better informed about climate change. “Global warming is a problem of politics and political will. The great political tragedy of our time is that conservative leaders in America have chosen to use their superior messaging and political skills to thwart serious action on global warming, thereby increasing the chances that catastrophic climate change will become a reality.”
“Science and logic are powerful systematic tools for understanding the world, but they are no match in the public realm for the 25-century-old art of verbal persuasion: rhetoric. Scientific debates are won by those whose theory best explains the facts, not by those who are gifted speakers. After Carl Sagan became famous, he was rejected for membership in the National Academy of Sciences in a special vote. Every scientist is capable of recognizing the obvious implications for his or her self-interest.”
“Scientists who have been outspoken about global warming have been repeatedly attacked as having a “political agenda.” Not surprisingly, many climate scientists shy away from the public debate. At the same time, the Bush administration has muzzled many climate scientists working for the U.S. government. The Denyers and Delayers do not just have messaging skills superior to scientists (and environmentalists and most progressive politicians), they also have a brilliant strategy, a poll-tested plan of attack. A 2002 memo from the Luntz Research Companies explains precisely how politicians can sound as if they care about global warming without actually doing anything about it. It focuses in particular on casting doubts about the science. The memo can be found on the web, and anyone who cares about the future of America should read it.”
“In science, the facts are never completely in, making this a highly effective rhetorical strategy in any scientific debate. If we must wait until the painful reality of mega-droughts and rapid sea-level rise are upon us, the point of no return will have long passed. The White House’s constant call for more research is nothing but a smokescreen.”
“The Bush team has systematically worked to hold back the results of research, to censor the information about the real dangers of global warming that its own agencies are supposed to provide to the public. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative think tank funded in part by ExxonMobil, sued the Bush White House, under the little-known Federal Data Quality Act, to remove a comprehensive peer-reviewed study from circulation, labelling the report “junk science.” In 2003 it was revealed that the White House had secretly asked CEI to sue it to get the nation’s premier climate assessment withdrawn.”
“The White House heavily edited a 2003 report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, removing several paragraphs that described the dangers posed by rising temperatures. Every substantial conclusion in the EPA report was gutted. Even the sentence “Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment” was considered too strong to be left in and it was removed.”
“Rick Piltz has launched a website, www.climatesciencewatch.org that regularly reports on government censorship of climate research.”
The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery is just one of the many books reviewed on our website. A few snippets are provided for this conference.
My conclusions regarding climate change
Various parts of the world have already experienced weather extremes but no one can say for sure what the future holds. Applying the principle of “Plan for the worst but hope for the best” means for us learning the skills of self-reliance in case services that we take for granted are disrupted.
All authors of books reviewed believe that continuing with business-as-usual will result in a continuation of weather extremes and most believe that global food production will be adversely affected. Most also believe that there is still a window of time to avert the worst case scenarios and provide guidelines for action.
My conclusions regarding Life Long learning
We have only to look at our disastrous performance during the 20th century to realise that we must find a better way to run the planet. We have to do two things: learn the skills of survival should the worst case scenarios hit; and learn how to run the planet better so we don’t repeat the same mistakes of the 20th century. A Life Long Learning programme would seem to be a wise move for everyone.
THE WEATHER MAKERS
HOW MAN IS CHANGING THE CLIMATE AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR LIFE ON EARTH
TIM FLANNERY
ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS 2005
A few snippets for this conference
Use of fossil fuels
The 20th century opened on a world that was home to little more than a billion people and closed on a world of 6 billion, and every one of those 6 billion is using on average four times as much energy as their forefathers did 100 years before. The burning of fossil fuels has increased sixteenfold over that period. The power and seduction of fossil fuels will be hard to leave behind. In 1961 there was still room to maneuver. There were just 3 billion people and they were using only half of the total resources that our global ecosystem could sustainably provide. In 1986 we had reached a watershed, for that year our population topped 5 billion, and such was our collective thirst for resources that we were using all earth’s sustainable production. Ever since 1986 we have been running the environmental equivalent of a deficit budget, which is sustained by plundering our capital base. By 2001 humanity’s deficit had ballooned to 20%, and our population to over 6 billion. By 2050, when the population is expected to level out at around 9 billion, the burden of human existence will be such that we will be using – if they can still be found – nearly two planet’s worth of resources. Most of the increase in the burning of fossil fuels has occurred over the last few decades, and nine out of the ten warmest years ever recorded have occurred since 1990.
Magic gates
Global warming changes climate in jerks, during which climate patterns jump from one stable state to another. Climatologist Julia Cole refers to the leaps made by climate as “magic gates,” and she argues that since temperatures began rising rapidly in the 1970s, our planet has seen two such events – in 1976 and 1998.
The 1976 magic gate originated on the coral atoll of Maiana in the Pacific nation of Kiribati, where El Niňos are first detected, and manifested as a sudden and sustained increase in sea surface temperature of 1°F, and a decline in the ocean’s salinity of 0.8%. Between 1945 and 1955, the temperature of the surface of the tropical Pacific commonly dipped below 66.5°F, but after the magic gate opened in 1976, it has rarely been below 77°F. The western tropical Pacific is the warmest area in the global ocean and is a great regulator of climate, for among other things it controls most tropical precipitation and the position of the jet stream, whose winds bring snow and rain to North America.
The 1998 magic gate is also tied up with the El Niño-La Niña cycle, a two- to eight-year-long cycle that brings extreme climatic events to much of the world. During the La Niña phase, winds blow westward across the Pacific, accumulating the warm surface water off the coast of Australia and the islands lying to its north. With the warm surface waters blown westward, the cold Humboldt Current is able to surface off the Pacific coast of South America, carrying with it nutrients that feed the most prolific fishery in the world, the anchovetta. The El Niño part of the cycle begins with a weakening of topical winds, allowing the warm surface water to flow back eastward, overwhelming the Humboldt and releasing humidity into the atmosphere, which brings floods to the normally arid Peruvian deserts. Cooler water then upwells in the far western Pacific, and as it does not evaporate as readily as warm water, drought strikes Australia and Southeast Asia.
When an El Niño is extreme enough, it can afflict two thirds of the globe with droughts, floods, and other extreme weather. The 1997-98 El Niño was the year the world caught fire. Drought had a stranglehold on a large part of the planet, and fires burned on every continent. The 1998 event released enough energy to “spike” the global temperature by around 0.5°F. Some of the changes spawned were permanent, for ever since then, the waters of the central western Pacific have frequently reached 86°F, while the jet stream has shifted toward the North Pole.
Migration of species
Parmesan and Yohe found that since 1950, around the globe there has been a poleward shift in species’ distribution of around 4 miles per decade, a retreat up mountainsides of 20 feet per decade, and an advance of spring activity of 2.3 days per decade.
Krill catches
Dr. Angus Atkinson and his colleagues examined records of krill catches from the fishing fleets of nine countries working in the southwest Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean. The subantarctic seas are some of the richest on Earth and 60% to 70% of the krill reside there. While there was variation year to year for the period 1926-39, no overall upward or downward trend in abundance was evident. The Krill population was stable. Since 1976, the krill have been in sharp decline, reducing at the rate of nearly 40% per decade. With satellite coverage since the 1980s, annual changes in sea ice volume can be estimated. The northern boundary of the ice has shifted southward from 59.3°S to 60.8°S, corresponding to a 20% decrease in sea ice extent. The reduction in krill numbers coincided so closely with the reduction of sea ice over time as to leave little doubt that climate change is a profound threat to the world’s most productive ocean, and to the largest creatures that exist and feed there.
Dying trees
In places such as southern Alaska, winters are 4°F to 5°F warmer than they were 30 years ago. A run of mild winters in recent years has seen the numbers of spruce bark beetle rage out of control. Over the past 15 years it has killed some 40 million trees in southern Alaska, more than any other insect in North America’s recorded history. The spruce budworm is another threat to the trees, with female budworms laying 50% more eggs at 77°F than at 59°F.
Changes in Rainfall
For every degree of warming we create, our world will experience an average 1% increase in rainfall. But the critical fact is that this rainfall increase is not evenly distributed in time and space. Climate change will tip some regions into perpetual rainfall deficit, some into new Saharas, and make some untenable for human habitation.
The first evidence of such a shift emerged in Africa’s Sahel region during the 1960s. Computer models found a single climatic variable was responsible for much of the rainfall decline: rising sea-surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean, which resulted from an accumulation of greenhouse gases. The Indian Ocean is the most rapidly warming ocean on earth, and the computer study showed that as it warms, the conditions that generate the Sahelian monsoon weaken. As a result, by the 1960s the Sahelian “drought” had begun.
After 1975 in Perth, winter rainfall tended to fall in light showers that soaked into the soil and did not reach the dams – a cut of 50% of the city’s surface water supply between 1975 and 1996. Sydney’s water supply declined 45% between 1990 and 2003.
Between 1998 and 2002 waters in the eastern Pacific were a few degrees cooler than normal, while those in the central western pacific were warmer – around 86°F – than average. These conditions shifted the jet stream northward, pushing storms that would usually track at around 35° of latitude to north of 40°. It would be a mistake to assume that any region is safe from megadrought.
Rising sea levels
The Greenland ice cap contains enough water to raise sea levels globally by around 23 feet. In the summer of 2002, it, along with the Arctic ice cap, shrank by a record 400,000 square miles – the largest decrease ever recorded. Two years later, in 2004, it was discovered that Greenland’s glacier’s were melting ten times faster than previously thought.
The greatest extent of ice in the Northern hemisphere is the sea ice covering the polar sea, and since 1979 its extent has contracted 20%. The remaining ice is only 60% as thick as it was four decades earlier.
The melting sea ice will significantly change the Earth’s albedo. Ice, particularly at the Poles, reflects back into space up to 90% of the sunlight hitting it. Water reflects a mere 5% to 10%. Replacing Arctic ice with a dark ocean is a classic case of a positive feedback loop which will hasten the melting of the remaining continental ice.
In February 2002 the Larsen B ice shelf – at 1268 square kilometers it was the size of Luxembourg – broke up over a matter of weeks. In 2003 a study summarizing a decade of satellite data revealed the ultimate cause of Larsen’s collapse – the melting of the ice from below.
So swift have been the changes in ice plain science, and so great is the inertia of the ocean juggernaut, that climate scientists are debating whether humans have already tripped the switch that will create an ice-free earth. If so, we have already committed our planet and ourselves to a rise in the level of the sea of around 220 feet.
Energy
Coal is our planet’s most abundant and widely distributed fossil fuel. Brown coal is the most polluting of all fuels. More coal is burned today than at any time in the past. 249 coal-fired power plants are to be built worldwide between 1999 and 2009, 483 in the decade to 2019, and 710 between 2020 and 2030.
The Commitment
Researchers at the Hadley Centre talk of a “physical commitment to climate change.” This refers to the fact that the full impact of the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere will not be felt until around 2050. Most of the damage was done starting from the 1950s, when our parents and grandparents drove about in their fin-tailed Chevrolets and powered their labor-saving household appliances from inefficient coal-burning power stations. The baby-boom generation is most culpable: Half of the energy generated since the Industrial Revolution has been consumed in the last 20 years. Life is flexible and if given sufficient time it can adapt to the most extreme conditions. It is the rate, not the direction or overall scale of change that is important.
The Pack of Jokers
Earth’s systems sometimes snap, and a new world order is suddenly created, to which the survivors must adapt or perish. There are three main “tipping points” that scientists are aware of for Earth’s climate: a slowing or collapse of the Gulf Stream; the demise of the Amazon rain forests; and the release of gas hydrates from the sea floor.
Collapse of the Gulf Stream
In 2003 the pentagon commissioned a report outlining the implications for U.S. national security should the Gulf Stream collapse. A slowing of the Gulf Stream as a result of freshwater from melting ice accumulating in the North Atlantic would trigger a “magic gate” that would abruptly change the world’s climate. There would be persistent drought over critical agricultural regions and a plunge in temperatures of more than 5°F for Europe, just under 5°F for North America, and 3.6°F increases for Australia, South America, and southern Africa.
Mass starvation would be followed by mass emigration as regions as diverse as Scandinavia, Bangladesh, and the Caribbean become incapable of supporting their populations. New political alliances would be forged as a scramble for resources ensues, and the potential for war would be greatly heightened. With water supplies and energy supplies strained, Australia and the United States would focus increasingly on border protection to keep out the migrating hordes from Asia and the Caribbean. The European Union will either be unified with a focus on border protection or driven to collapse and chaos by internal squabbling.
The Gulf Stream is the fastest ocean current in the world; the volume of water is 100 times as great as that of the Amazon. At 46°F, its northern section is far warmer than the freezing waters that surround it. It warms Europe’s climate as much as if the continent’s sunlight were increased by a third. Between 12,700 and 11,700 years ago winter temperatures in the Netherlands plunged below -4°F, and summer temperatures averaged just 55°F to 57°F. Ice cores from Greenland indicate that, as the Gulf Stream slowed in the past, the island experienced a massive 18°F drop in temperature in as little as a decade.
Freshwater disrupts the Gulf Stream because it dilutes its saltiness, preventing it from sinking and thus disrupting the circulation of the oceans worldwide.
Collapse of the Amazon Rain Forest
Scientists have discovered that the plants of the Amazon effectively create their own rainfall, for so vast is the volume of water transpired by them that it forms clouds that are blown ever westward, where the moisture falls as rain, only to be transpired again and again. Plants don’t want to lose their vapor, but inevitably they do lose some whenever they open the breathing holes in their leaves (stomata), to gain CO2 from the atmosphere. As CO2 levels increase, transpiration will be reduced. And with less transpiration there will be less rain.
The ultimate outcome of the factors contributing to positive feedback loops is that by 2100 the earth’s atmosphere will have close to 1,000 parts per million of CO2 rather than the 710 predicted in earlier models. Surface temperatures will rise by 18°F rather than the 10°F predicted, rainfall in the basin will drop by 64%, there will be a 78% loss of carbon stored in vegetation and a 72% loss of soil carbon. If the model is correct we should see signs of forest collapse around 2040. What is so terrifying about this scenario is that it will greatly hasten climate change, making many of its most pernicious consequences inevitable.
Methane release from the sea floor
Clathrates refers to the structure of an ice-methane combination in which ice crystals trap molecules of methane in tiny “cages.” They contain lots of gas under high pressure. Massive volumes of clathrates lie buried in the seabed around the world – perhaps twice as much in energy terms as all other fossil fuels combined. The material is kept solid only by the pressure of the overlying water and the cold. If pressure on the clathrates was ever relieved, or the temperature of the deep oceans were to increase, colossal amounts of methane could be released.
We have seen the consequences of one such release in the North Sea 55 million years ago, but paleontologists now suspect that the unleashing of the clathrates may have been responsible for a far more profound change – the biggest extinction of all time. So vast was the input of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere that it was thought to have led to an initial rise in global average temperatures of about 11°F. This co-occurred with widespread acid rain caused by the sulphur dioxide, which released yet more carbon. Such was the total impact of the increasing temperature thereby generated that it triggered the release of huge volumes of methane from the tundra and clathrates on the sea floor.
Civilization
Our civilization is built on two foundations: our ability to grow enough food to support a large number of people who are engaged in tasks other than growing food; and our ability to live in groups large enough to support great institutions. Cities are central to civilization, and yet they are fragile entities vulnerable to the stresses brought about by climate change. It is therefore important to consider cities in relation to the provision of their basic needs – food, water, and power. A rapid shift to another kind of climate could place stress on our global society, for it would alter the location of sources of water and food, as well as their volume. Perth and Sydney sit on the knife edge in terms of their water supply, and doubtless more cities will join the list as water shortages increase around the world.
The peak in cereal reserves, of around 100 days, was reached in 1986, and fell to a low of 55 days in 1995. Although substantial wheat surpluses were recorded in 1999 and 2004, overall the trend in world food security has been a downward one. In future, crops will be stressed by higher temperature, more ozone at ground level, and changes in soil moisture, all of which will decrease yields. Thus, rather than an agricultural paradise, a CO2-rich world promises to be one in which crop production is lower than today.
Given the scale of change confronting us, I think that there is abundant evidence to support Lovelock’s idea that climate change may well, by destroying our cities, bring about the end of our civilization. Humanity, of course, would survive such a collapse, for people will persist in smaller, more robust communities such as villages and farms. If humans pursue a business-as-usual course for the first half of this century, I believe the collapse of civilization due to climate change becomes inevitable.
Hurricanes
As with all hurricanes, Katrina started as a mere thunderstorm. Tropical storms develop into hurricanes only where the surface temperature of the ocean is around 78ºF or greater. This is because hot sea water evaporates readily, providing the volume of fuel – water vapor – required to power a hurricane. During the summer of 2005 the surface waters of the northern Gulf were exceptionally hot – around 87ºF. The Gulf waters are deep, providing a large heat reservoir. Such waters yield vast volumes of water vapor, and during its 4-day passage through Gulf waters, Katrina grew and grew, until it reached category 5.
There is growing evidence that global warming is changing the conditions in the atmosphere and oceans in ways that will make hurricanes more destructive in the future. There is clear evidence that global warming is affecting the speed of the Gulf Stream. Both ozone depletion and greenhouse gas accumulation are changing the energetics of the tropopause in ways that can affect hurricane formation. The amount of water vapor – hurricane fuel – in the air over the oceans has increased by 1.3% per decade since 1988. Both the warmer ocean and the increased water vapor increase the energy available for transforming tropical storms into hurricanes and feeding category 1 hurricanes so they become category 5.
What is increasingly perplexing and astonishing meteorologists is that, we are seeing an increase in hurricane intensity and numbers far in advance of that suggested by computer modeling. The total amount of energy released by hurricanes worldwide has increased by 60% in the last two decades. Since 1974 the number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes recorded has almost doubled.