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I’m beginning to think that unmanned aerial vehicles—usually referred to as drones—are going to be next year’s must-have Christmas gift after their stunning Christmas-time performance at London’s Gatwick Airport.

For those who missed the excitement, mysterious drones appeared at Gatwick last week and shut down the entire airport for three days as security officials could not be certain what threat they posed. Those officials finally deployed “unidentified military technology” to protect the airport, and they have since arrested a man and a woman, neither of whom have been identified.

We might have guessed that giving civilians access to drone technology for fun and profit would lead to problems. After all, their initial use was military for spying on enemies and then assassinating them when desired—extrajudicial killings with a Jetsons-like twist.

It is indeed fun to think about a Jetsons-like world in which our packages are delivered by friendly drones (already being pioneered by Amazon). But anyone who gets a drone next Christmas could decide to park one near your home and take pictures from a discreet distance.

Gatwick is lucky to have a gaggle of security people to counter drones that threaten it. What could you do in your home? Would you even notice a drone hovering several hundred feet away?

An irate neighbor armed with a drone might decide to surreptitiously drop dog poop on your front steps. If the same neighbor is a little crazy, he might mount a gun on the drone and shoot you from a safe distance. How will anyone know who even shot you?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Uber, Moore’s Law and the limits of the technofix

December 10, 2018

Uber, Moore’s Law and the limits of the technofix

Uber remains a darling of the tech world. It is regarded as a disruptive upstart that recognized the unused capacity of privately-owned automobiles and their owners. It unleashed that capacity on cities worldwide using cellphone technology to provide discount rides to customers, ones who might otherwise have taken traditional taxis or public transportation.

It’s a truism that startups burn through money like bonfires burn through tinder. But nine years in after becoming a worldwide company, Uber is still burning cash—$1 billion in the most recent quarter and $4.5 billion altogether in 2017.

To understand how Uber continues to enchant the investment and tech worlds despite its miserable financial record requires a little background. The dominant metaphor in the tech world is Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law is named for Gordon Moore, a semiconductor pioneer, who noted the doubling of transistors on an integrated circuit about every two years. This rapid progress led to rapid increases in the capabilities of computers in terms of speed, memory and computational power even while prices were coming down dramatically. That progress is also seen in the capabilities of practically everything containing circuits including cellphones, cameras and other digital devices.

As Wikipedia will tell you, Moore’s Law is not a law of physics; it is simply an observation about an historical trend in the semiconductor industry. But so pervasive has been the effect of Moore’s Law on the digitization of our daily lives—for instance, our cellphones have become powerful, portable miniature networked computers with cameras—that we are inclined to believe that Moore’s Law is a kind of mystical force unleashed by the tech industry on modern society.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Australia’s drought, climate change and the future of food

November 18, 2018

Australia’s drought, climate change and the future of food

There’s a reason that few people are thinking about world grain supplies. Last year saw record worldwide production of grains and record stocks of grains left over.

But this year worldwide production slipped about 2 percent, owing in large part to the plunge in Australia’s production caused by an ongoing severe drought. Production is expected to fall 23 percent. Fortunately, in our globalized grain markets, this hasn’t affected overall supplies or prices very much as grain stocks are high and supplies are mobile and shipped all over the world as needed.

But Australia is the world’s fifth largest wheat exporter, accounting for nearly 9 percent of the total in 2016 according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In fact, the top five wheat exporting countries account for 56 percent of world wheat exports. The rest of the world is highly dependent on these exporters to make up the difference between what they grow and what they eat.

But it’s not just wheat. For rice the numbers are even more striking. The top five rice exporting countries supplied nearly 80 percent of total world exports. For corn (called maize in most countries) the number is a bit higher. The top five corn exporting countries supplied almost 81 percent of all exports.

Why is this important? First, about 80 percent of all calories consumed come from grains, either through direct consumption (46 percent) or indirectly through livestock in the form of meat, milk, eggs and other animal products (33 percent). Second, as climate change begins to scorch the major grain growing areas of the world, the large exporters may find themselves with much less to export or even begin competing for imports.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Connected and vulnerable: Climate change, trade wars and the networked world

November 12, 2018

Connected and vulnerable: Climate change, trade wars and the networked world

The increasing connectedness of the global economic system has long been touted as the path to greater prosperity and peaceful relations among nations and their peoples. There’s just one hitch: Complex systems have more points of failure and also hidden risks that only surface when something goes wrong.

For example, our dependence on cheap shipping to move commodities and finished goods has resulted in a system vulnerable to environmental disruption, particularly climate change, and to rising political and military tensions.

The extreme drought in Germany last summer, the warmest ever recorded in the country, has resulted in such low water in the Rhine River that shipping has been greatly curtailed. Ships can only be loaded lightly so as to avoid running aground. Consequently, many more barges and other vessels have been pressed into service to carry the lighter but more numerous loads along the river. This has driven up the cost of shipping considerably. In addition, fuel tankers have not been able to reach some river ports resulting in scattered fuel shortages. Some industrial installations along the river have had to reduce operations.

The natural inhabitants of the river have also suffered as die-offs of fish and other marine life have spread along the river.

A world away trade tensions between China and the United States are resulting in an unexpected threat to the preparedness of the U.S. military. The neoliberal program of free trade embraced by one U.S. president after another regardless of party has resulted in curious vulnerabilities for the military.

Because of the hollowing out of American manufacturing—as much of it migrated to China’s low-cost labor market—the military can no longer fulfill certain needs from U.S. or even European manufacturers. Instead, the only place to source certain supplies is China, a country many now consider a potential military adversary of the United States.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is the “world” actually getting better? Depends on your definition of “world”

November 4, 2018

Is the “world” actually getting better? Depends on your definition of “world”

A frequent critique of the daily news flow is that it is filled with negative events. This is partly a product of the human nervous system. We react very quickly to perceived threats and more slowly to hope of gain or pleasure. Editors and reporters know what will grab people’s attention which is why the old adage—if it bleeds, it leads—still applies.

There are, of course, heartwarming stories about miraculous recoveries from illness and injury, rescued animals, and saintly persons doing amazing charitable acts. And, then there is a sub-genre of the feel-good story which I’ll call the you’ve-been-living-in-opposite-land-things-are-actually-getting-better story.

Now as an antidote to the relentless negativity of the news, this kind of story gets attention. And, sometimes we need to be reminded, for instance, that life expectancy continues to rise, child mortality continues to decline, and smoking remains in decline. Humans are capable of making progress by certain measures.

“By certain measures” is the key phrase because what we typically measure when we say that things are getting better are measures of human well-being. Those who tell us not to fret about the doomsday predictions of environmentalists very craftily conflate two categories: the state of the natural world and the state of human well-being by telling us that the “world” is actually getting better.

Well, “world” in its primary definition means the planet. Other definitions are narrower and some include only humankind. If you are not paying attention, you will miss this sleight-of-hand used by apologists for the destruction of the natural world who tell us that the “world” is getting better—while carefully omitting any mention of the natural world or cherry-picking a few narrow and misleading trends concerning the environment.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Shale oil becomes shale fail (and a nice subsidy for consumers)

October 28, 2018

Shale oil becomes shale fail (and a nice subsidy for consumers)

I’m tempted to say the following to the writers of two recent pieces (here and here) outlining the continuing negative free cash flow of companies fracking for oil in America: “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

But apparently their message (which has been true for years) needs to be repeated. This is because investors can’t seem to understand the significance of what those two pieces make abundantly clear: The shale oil industry in the United States is using investor money to subsidize oil consumers and to line the pockets of top management with no long-term plan to build value.

There is no other conclusion to draw from the fact that free cash flow continues to be wildly negative for those companies most deeply dependent on U.S. shale oil deposits. For those to whom “free cash flow” is a new term, let me explain: It is operating cash flow (that is, cash generated from operations meaning the sale of oil and related products) minus capital expenditures. If this number remains negative for too long for a company or an industry, it’s an indication that something is very wrong.

Only nine of 33 shale oil exploration and production companies reviewed in the report cited above had positive free cash flow for the first half of 2018. This is even though prices had risen all the way from a low of around $30 in 2016 to the mid-$70 range by the middle of this year.

To get an idea of just how bad it has been even through periods when the price of oil averaged above $100 in 2011, 2012, 2013 and most of 2014, here are the annual free cash flows in dollars of those 33 companies combined since 2010 and they are all negative: -14 billion (2010), -21.9 billion (2011), -37.8 billion (2012), -16.8 billion (2013), -33 billion (2014), -34.4 billion (2015), -18.3 billion (2016), -15.5 billion (2017).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The risks of synthetic biology in the information society

October 21, 2018

The risks of synthetic biology in the information society

Knowledge is power. The instructions for making viruses from synthetic strands of DNA are on the internet. And, the strands themselves are available for purchase online. It’s called synthetic biology. Right now it’s not easy to get the strands to you need to make dangerous viruses or to put them together. But it is becoming easier.

That’s the issue that exploded concerning the synthetic construction of an thought-to-be extinct horsepox virus. The problem is that the instructions for making horsepox are distressingly useful for constructing a smallpox virus, a virus responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths in the 20th century alone until its eradication. Smallpox, you’ll recall, was eradicated through a successful worldwide effort led by the World Health Organization. After 1980 it was no longer necessary to vaccinate people against the disease and very few people alive today have been vaccinated against it.

Not surprisingly, an outbreak resulting from, say, the inadvertent or possibly intentional release of a synthetic smallpox virus from a lab could prove devastating worldwide.

Synthetic biology perhaps most clearly illustrates that the benign assumption most modern people share about new technology is dangerously misguided. We have many other examples. Recently, we’ve learned that propagandists and true believers alike have exploited Facebook to propagate obviously misleading information and outright falsehoods, an outcome that shouldn’t be all that surprising given the open nature of the platform.

We’ve now been disabused of the notion that social media will always and everywhere be a force of liberation and enlightenment. Facebook’s ongoing purge of what it regards as “fake news” and unreliable information continues; but this purge is accompanied by howls of protest from those affected who don’t agree with Facebook’s assessment, some justifiably so.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate catastrophe: The median is NOT the message

October 15, 2018

Climate catastrophe: The median is NOT the message

Anyone who has followed the climate change issue in the last 30 years knows that official forecasts provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are quickly upended by developments and have often been obsolete before they were issued.

The latest report from the IPCC is the first, however, to abandon the measured tone of its previous ones and foretell what it considers a climate catastrophe for human civilization unless the world makes an abrupt U-turn and begins dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions almost immediately.

And yet, even this forecast is probably too conservative in its pronouncements. That’s according to Michael Mann, a climate researcher whose famous “hockey stick” graph has been central to understanding the rise in global temperatures and has been replicated again and again using other measures of historical worldwide temperatures.

What is little understood by the public is that humans have been underestimating the pace and impact of climate change since Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius first suggested in 1896 that the globe was warming due to emissions of carbon dioxide.

Which brings me to a broader point: The public tends to hear most often about the median values or middle-of-the road scenarios in any forecast, sometimes called the reference case. (Very little emphasis is put on the range of possibilities. For example, the IPCC in 2000 forecast that global average temperature could be 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Centigrade higher than the 1990 level by 2100.)

Today, we find ourselves fretting that going beyond a 1.5-degree increase from pre-industrial times will spell catastrophe involving global agriculture, severe weather, sea-level rise, and disease epidemics. Previously, 2 degrees was thought to be the threshold for severe irretrievable consequences resulting from climate change.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

U.S. government embraces climate catastrophe, but is it a ‘crisis’?

October 1, 2018

U.S. government embraces climate catastrophe, but is it a ‘crisis’?

The United States government has now officially embraced climate change as a catastrophe in the making. Only it contends that the catastrophe is now inevitable no matter what humans do…and so, we should do nothing at all since whatever we do won’t matter much.

That, at least, was the justification offered for freezing fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles after 2020. For the National Transportation Safety Board which issued a report containing the justification, the phrase “Every little bit helps” has morph into “Every little bit won’t matter.”

The problem, of course, is that if this becomes the attitude of everyone trying to mitigate climate change, almost nothing will get done.

But the report does highlight one very important problem for those who desperately want to address climate change: Climate change is no longer a “crisis.” As French thinker Bruno Latour reminds us in his book Facing Gaia, climate change is not really a “crisis,” at least not anymore. A crisis comes and goes. Climate change isn’t going anywhere except toward a place which is much worse. It isn’t going to pass. It is going to endure.

That is the hard part about it. Addressing climate change does not mean taking temporary emergency measures which can be relaxed after the crisis has passed. Addressing climate change means making profound and permanent changes in the way we live. That is, of course, why doing much of anything is opposed vehemently by interests dependent on fossil fuels for their livelihoods such as the auto industry and, of course, the oil industry. There’s no going back to the way things were after the crisis passes because it’s not going to pass.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The problem with models…is getting stuck on just one

September 24, 2018

The problem with models…is getting stuck on just one

Alfred Korzybski, the father of general semantics, first uttered what must now seem like a well-worn phrase: “The map is not the territory.” And yet, I don’t think this view has yet been well-incorporated into human culture.

In a time when social media outlets are trying to sort what is “fake” from what is “genuine” or “true,” very little thought is being put into what we even mean by “fake,” “genuine” or “true.” Facebook, for example, has resorted to third-party fact-checkers, a mix of news organizations and fact-checking nonprofits. It is also hiring thousands of new employees to check what it calls “non-news” information posted on Facebook pages.

A lot of checking revolves around whether someone said or did what is claimed. That’s not too hard. The next level involves the effect of a policy or position. That’s more difficult since some of the policies in question aren’t in effect and even for those that are, it is always hard to trace cause and effect from a policy to a specific result.

Then, there are what I’ll call “model” questions. Some claims fit into one model, but not into another. So, it’s very important to know what model one is using. In physics what’s true in our everyday experience isn’t true in the world of quantum mechanics, the domain of the very small. For example, it takes time for information, say, in the form of electrical signals through a cellphone network, to travel from where I am in Washington, DC to a client in Eastern Europe. We notice ourselves overlapping in our conversation sometimes because of the delay.

In an actual experiment of quantum effects, electrons that were a mile apart influenced each other with no time delay, suggesting that information at this level somehow travels instantaneously from one place to another. It’s a weird result, but consistent with the theory.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘The Expanse’ is a story about systemic ruin

September 17, 2018

‘The Expanse’ is a story about systemic ruin

“The Expanse” is a popular science fiction television series (based on a book series of the same name) that at first seems to follow a predictable storyline: essentially the Cold War revisited, only in this case with warlike Mars (previously settled by people from Earth) pitted against Earth as the two planets vie over the resources of the asteroid belt (which is a stand-in for today’s so-called less developed countries).

But quickly we are drawn into a mystery that implicates a non-state actor with interests so important that that unknown actor has its own warships which are superior to those of Earth and Mars. While I made some fun of “The Expanse” previously for its assumptions about energy, after watching the entire series I’ve come to appreciate the nuanced manner in which it deals with the systemic risk that unfolds as the story progresses.

Here I must issue a spoiler alert for those who have not seen the series and wish to see it unhindered by foreknowledge of the plot.

Those who’ve seen the series know that the systemic risk results from the discovery of what comes to be known as the “proto-molecule,” an alien life form first encountered on one of Saturn’s moons. The proto-molecule has the miraculous power to transform anything living that it touches, remaking and reorganizing it from the ground up. (Later it learns to transform inanimate matter as well.)

The life form is initially controlled by a large conglomerate which immediately sees the proto-molecule’s potential as a weapon, one that could be sold to the highest bidder in the solar system. (The parallels to current-day genetic engineering and bioweapons seem obvious.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A kinder, gentler GMO; what could possibly go wrong

September 9, 2018

A kinder, gentler GMO; what could possibly go wrong?

The so-called CRISPR technique for editing the genes of plants and animals is being hailed as a more acceptable face of genetic engineering. After all, it doesn’t rely on the insertion of genes from one species into another—which is what previous techniques allowed and what alarmed critics.

No, this technique can cut out precisely an offending gene and let the cell sow things up like new afterwards. No chance of strange interspecies complications. No random mutations created by gene guns that can never shoot straight by design. Just a little editing of an existing gene to subtract what we do not want from a plant or animal (including ourselves).

Hence, the breathless coverage.

But as with practically every biologically driven endeavor these days, we are forgetting first principles as explained by pioneering ecologist Garrett Hardin who tells us that “[t]he science of ecology is founded on this generalization: We can never do merely one thing.”

Not surprisingly, it turns out that CRISPR may not be as accurate as advertised. A recent studyrevealed that “in around a fifth of cells, CRISPR causes deletions or rearrangements more than 100 DNA letters long. These surprising changes are sometimes thousands of letters long.” Oops!

The linked article continues: “So why have the thousands of teams using CRISPR failed to discover this before? Because they have been looking for small mutations in a narrow region around the target site. If that whole region is deleted, this approach makes it appear as if there have been no mutations at all.” As the author of the study noted, “You find what you look for.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate change, water and the infrastructure problem

September 2, 2018

Climate change, water and the infrastructure problem

I was watching an episode of the science-fiction noir thriller “The Expanse” recently. Set hundreds of years in the future, the United Nations has now become the world government and its main rival is Mars, a former Earth colony. The UN is still in New York City and a new fancier UN building is now tucked safely behind a vast seawall that protects the city from rising water resulting from climate change.

It’s a world that looks like an extension of our own, but one that has survived the twin existential threats of climate change and resource depletion. But will it be so easy to update our infrastructure to overcome these threats?

The naive notion that we can, for example, “just use more air conditioning” as the globe warms betrays a perplexing misunderstanding of what we face. Even if one ignores the insanity of burning more climate-warming fossil fuels to make electricity for more air-conditioning, there is the embedded assumption that our current infrastructure with only minor modifications will withstand the pressures placed upon it in a future transformed by climate change and other depredations.

That assumption doesn’t square with the facts. Take, for instance, the Miami, Florida water system. One would think that Miami’s first task in adapting to climate change would be to defend its shores against sea-level rise. But it turns out that the most troublesome effect of sea-level rise is sea water infiltration into the aquifer which supplies the city’s water.

Once that happens the city would have to adopt desalination for its water supply, a process that currently costs two and one-half times more than current water purification processes. And, of course, desalinating water for a city as large as Miami, a city of more than 400,000 who consume 330 million gallons per day, would require a huge, expensive new infrastructure.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Seawalls for oil refineries and other ironies of climate change adaptation

August 27, 2018

Seawalls for oil refineries and other ironies of climate change adaptation

A friend of mine includes a saying with each of his emails that goes like this: “It shouldn’t be easier to imagine the end of civilization than the end of air conditioning.” But in most depictions of the end of civilization at the cinema these days, the air conditioning (or heat, if it is winter) is going full blast until the very moment of civilization’s demise.

What he is alluding to, of course, is that we can’t imagine ourselves giving up much of anything even in the face of the biggest man-made threat to human survival ever, namely, climate change. To make sure that we don’t have to, the oil industry is championing a plan that will use federal money to build a seawall along the Texas coast in order to protect—you guessed it—oil refineries, a large number of which are located near the water’s edge.

It will protect a lot of other stuff as well. But the irony is not lost on the reporter of the linked piece who in droll understatement writes: “But the idea of taxpayers around the country paying to protect refineries worth billions, and in a state where top politicians still dispute climate change’s validity, doesn’t sit well with some.”

Elsewhere, efficient use of water, especially in agriculture, is deemed wise policy as water demand rises and water supply becomes more uncertain in the face of climate change. The U.S. Department of Agriculture states the following on its website:

Agriculture is a major user of ground and surface water in the United States, accounting for approximately 80 percent of the Nation’s consumptive water use and over 90 percent in many Western States. Efficient irrigation systems and water management practices can help maintain farm profitability in an era of increasingly limited and more costly water supplies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Artificial intelligence, fake images and crumbling trust in our narratives

August 19, 2018

Artificial intelligence, fake images and crumbling trust in our narratives

In a piece I wrote in 2014 I opined, “If you want to corrupt a people, corrupt the language.” I added, “Once it becomes impossible to say the truth with the language we have, it will ultimately be impossible for us to adapt and survive.”

In that piece I was complaining about what I dubbed “oil Newspeak,” an Orwellian lexicon created by the oil industry to deceive policymakers, investors and the public.

Of course, back then I concerned myself only with words. But with the increasing power of artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced software which is now available to average computer users, practically anyone can alter and/or create images and audio recordings that seem real, but which are entirely concocted. It means that comedian Richard Pryor’s famous line—”Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”—may very well morph from a joke into a serious question.

Humans understand the world by narrating it. Our narratives are always approximations of reality; we cannot know objectively our reality because we are inside of it and limited in the scope and modes of our perceptions—modes that are shaped by evolution to help us survive, but not necessarily plumb the depths of the universe.

Still, those narratives must be reasonable approximations of the dangers and opportunities we face or they will lead us in the wrong direction. Words can be powerful and images even more so. The power of the iconic is so great that it can easily bypass our logic and slip directly into our minds.

Draftsmen, painters and sculptors have long created images for us to dwell on, many of them filled with mythic animals, immortal beings and historical and non-historical personages.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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