Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman has a new book, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations. Here’s the description from Amazon:

A field guide to the twenty-first century, written by one of its most celebrated observers

We all sense it—something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your kids. You can’t miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are being transformed in so many realms all at once—and it is dizzying.
In Thank You for Being Late, a work unlike anything he has attempted before, Thomas L. Friedman exposes the tectonic movements that are reshaping the world today and explains how to get the most out of them and cushion their worst impacts. You will never look at the world the same way again after you read this book: how you understand the news, the work you do, the education your kids need, the investments your employer has to make, and the moral and geopolitical choices our country has to navigate will all be refashioned by Friedman’s original analysis.
Friedman begins by taking us into his own way of looking at the world—how he writes a column. After a quick tutorial, he proceeds to write what could only be called a giant column about the twenty-first century. His thesis: to understand the twenty-first century, you need to understand that the planet’s three largest forces—Moore’s law (technology), the Market (globalization), and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loss)—are accelerating all at once. These accelerations are transforming five key realms: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community.
Why is this happening? As Friedman shows, the exponential increase in computing power defined by Moore’s law has a lot to do with it. The year 2007 was a major inflection point: the release of the iPhone, together with advances in silicon chips, software, storage, sensors, and networking, created a new technology platform. Friedman calls this platform “the supernova”—for it is an extraordinary release of energy that is reshaping everything from how we hail a taxi to the fate of nations to our most intimate relationships. It is creating vast new opportunities for individuals and small groups to save the world—or to destroy it.
Thank You for Being Late is a work of contemporary history that serves as a field manual for how to write and think about this era of accelerations. It’s also an argument for “being late”—for pausing to appreciate this amazing historical epoch we’re passing through and to reflect on its possibilities and dangers. To amplify this point, Friedman revisits his Minnesota hometown in his moving concluding chapters; there, he explores how communities can create a “topsoil of trust” to anchor their increasingly diverse and digital populations.
With his trademark vitality, wit, and optimism, Friedman shows that we can overcome the multiple stresses of an age of accelerations—if we slow down, if we dare to be late and use the time to reimagine work, politics, and community. Thank You for Being Late is Friedman’s most ambitious book—and an essential guide to the present and the future.

restoring tropical peat swamps

Restoring tropical peat swamps might not seem like such an important thing, until you realize the extent of clearing and burning that occurs in places like Indonesia each year. The amount of carbon emitted is staggering even in comparison to that of the economic activities of a major developed country like Japan.

A common-sense approach to tropical peat swamp forest restoration in Southeast Asia

Tropical peat swamp forests (TPSFs) are found mainly in Southeast Asia and especially Indonesia. A total of 61% were lost between 1990 and 2015 and 6% remained in a pristine condition by 2015. Tropical peat swamps store vast amounts of carbon in their peat, but peat degradation, through drainage and fire, leads to high greenhouse gas emissions. This is gaining much international attention and, with it, policy initiatives and funding for restoration from local to landscape scales are being promoted. Unfortunately, although there is a now strong desire and need for TPSF restoration, methods are lacking. Ecological understanding is still at an early stage, and, even more so, in its applied use. There is an imbalance between the activities of TPSF restoration and sound ecological application. Furthermore, while many activities are underway and knowledge is being gained, these techniques are yet to be published. This article has been written to provide a common-sense, practical guide to tropical peatland forest restoration which summarizes what we know to date, while acknowledging the gaps in our understanding. Topics covered include species selection, land assessment, land selection, and appropriate nursery, transplanting, and monitoring methods. The authors make no apologies that in places this reads like a manual as, given the importance of tropical peatland recovery and the recent attention and funding opportunities available, it is essential we now provide techniques to restoration practitioners working on the ground, and a basic common-sense approach must be the starting point.

I actually did my masters research on subtropical peat wetlands, so I know a little bit about this. Peat is formed by organic matter decomposing slowly under anaerobic conditions under shallow standing water for long periods of time. Bacteria and other biological processes that turn carbon into carbon dioxide operate slowly under anaerobic conditions, and new organic matter is able to build up faster than it can be broken down and liberated into the atmosphere. The same plants that decompose into peat grow in the decomposing remains of their predecessors, so that new layers get added gradually over time. When you drain the water, conditions in the soil become aerobic, and especially under warm conditions the organic matter gets mineralized (turned into carbon dioxide gas) faster than it can form. This happens even outside the tropics and in the absence of fire (the Everglades for example have seen a lot of soil loss), but catch the organic matter on fire and you get a triple threat – a smoky mess that is very bad for human health, habitat loss, and liberation of enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Do this on an enormous scale and it is truly a catastrophe. The world is not making a whole lot of progress in slowing this situation down, let alone stopping it, let alone beginning to restore what is being lost.

100 million dead trees in California

USDA says more than 100 million trees have died in California as a result of drought.

The majority of the 102 million dead trees are located in ten counties in the southern and central Sierra Nevada region. The Forest Service also identified increasing mortality in the northern part of the state, including Siskiyou, Modoc, Plumas and Lassen counties.  Five consecutive years of severe drought in California, a dramatic rise in bark beetle infestation and warmer temperatures are leading to these historic levels of tree die-off. As a result, in October 2015 California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency on the unprecedented tree die-off and formed a Tree Mortality Task Force to help mobilize additional resources for the safe removal of dead and dying trees.

This year, California had a record setting wildfire season, with the Blue Cut fire alone scorching over 30,000 acres and triggering the evacuation of 80,000 people. In the southeastern United States wildfires have burned more than 120,000 acres this fall. The southeast region of the Forest Service is operating at the highest preparedness level, PL 5, reflecting the high level of physical resources and funding devoted to the region.  Extreme drought conditions persist, and many areas have not seen rain for as many as 95 days.

Longer, hotter fire seasons where extreme fire behavior has become the new norm, as well as increased development in forested areas, is dramatically driving up the cost of fighting fires and squeezing funding for the very efforts that would protect watersheds and restore forests to make them more resilient to fire. Last year fire management alone consumed 56 percent of the Forest Service’s budget and is anticipated to rise to 67 percent in by 2025.

vaccine for the common cold

According to Inhabitat, there may soon be an effective vaccine for the common cold.

Could the common cold soon be a thing of the past? Scientists have created a breakthrough nasal spray that could block the virus as it tries to enter through the nose, where more than 90% of pathogens get in. The vaccine is called SynGEM, and it treats Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), one of three viruses that cause 80% of common colds.

silicon-based life

Scientists can now synthesize proteins that could be incorporated in silicon-based life forms.

Directed evolution of cytochrome c for carbon–silicon bond formation: Bringing silicon to life

Enzymes that catalyze carbon–silicon bond formation are unknown in nature, despite the natural abundance of both elements. Such enzymes would expand the catalytic repertoire of biology, enabling living systems to access chemical space previously only open to synthetic chemistry. We have discovered that heme proteins catalyze the formation of organosilicon compounds under physiological conditions via carbene insertion into silicon–hydrogen bonds. The reaction proceeds both in vitro and in vivo, accommodating a broad range of substrates with high chemo- and enantioselectivity. Using directed evolution, we enhanced the catalytic function of cytochrome c from Rhodothermus marinus to achieve more than 15-fold higher turnover than state-of-the-art synthetic catalysts. This carbon–silicon bond-forming biocatalyst offers an environmentally friendly and highly efficient route to producing enantiopure organosilicon molecules.

Russian election hacking in Ukraine

Russia, or hackers in Russia, tried to hack an election in Ukraine in 2014 and got caught, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Only 40 minutes before election results were to go live on television at 8 p.m., Sunday, May 25, a team of government cyber experts removed a “virus” covertly installed on Central Election Commission computers, Ukrainian security officials said later.

If it had not been discovered and removed, the malicious software would have portrayed ultra-nationalist Right Sector party leader Dmytro Yarosh as the winner with 37 percent of the vote (instead of the 1 percent he actually received) and Petro Poroshenko (the actually winner with a majority of the vote) with just 29 percent, Ukraine officials told reporters the next morning.

water in Asia

There may not be enough water to go around in Asia, according to Brahma Chellaney writing in Project Syndicate. Key points of conflict are rivers originating in the Tibetan Plateau, controlled by China, the Brahmaputra, which flows from China into Bangladesh and India, the Indus, which has driven contention between Pakistan and India, several rivers flowing from China in Central Asia and Russia, and the Mekong, which feeds important rice growing regions in Southeast Asia.

Asia has less fresh water per capita than any other continent, and it is already facing a water crisis that, according to an MIT study, will continue to intensify, with severe water shortages expected by 2050. At a time of widespread geopolitical discord, competition over freshwater resources could emerge as a serious threat to long-term peace and stability in Asia…

The consequences of growing water competition in Asia will reverberate beyond the region. Already, some Asian states, concerned about their capacity to grow enough food, have leased large tracts of farmland in Sub-Saharan Africa, triggering a backlash in some areas. In 2009, when South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics Corporation negotiated a deal to lease as much as half of Madagascar’s arable land to produce cereals and palm oil for the South Korean market, the ensuing protests and military intervention toppled a democratically elected president.

The race to appropriate water resources in Asia is straining agriculture and fisheries, damaging ecosystems, and fostering dangerous distrust and discord across the region. It must be brought to an end. Asian countries need to clarify the region’s increasingly murky hydropolitics. The key will be effective dispute-resolution mechanisms and agreement on more transparent water-sharing arrangements.

street tree survey using Google Street View

An automated analysis program can produce street tree data using Google Street View.

Google Street View shows promise for virtual street tree surveys

Geospatial technologies are increasingly relevant to urban forestry, but their use may be limited by cost and technical expertise. Technologies like Google Street View™ are appealing because they are free and easy to use. We used Street View to conduct a virtual survey of street trees in three municipalities, and compared our results to existing field data from the same locations. The virtual survey analyst recorded the locations of street trees, identified trees to the species level, and estimated diameter at breast height. Over 93% of the 597 trees documented in the field survey were also observed in the virtual survey. Tree identification in the virtual survey agreed with the field data for 90% of trees at the genus level and 66% of trees at the species level. Identification was less reliable for small trees, rare taxa, and for trees with multiple species in the same genus. In general, tree diameter was underestimated in the virtual survey, but estimates improved as the analyst became more experienced. This study is the first to report on manual interpretation of street tree characteristics using Street View. Our results suggest that virtual surveys in Street View may be suitable for generating some types of street tree data or updating existing data sets more efficiently than field surveys.

November 2016 in Review

Sometimes you look back on a month and feel like nothing very important happened. But November 2016 was obviously not one of those months! I am not going to make any attempt to be apolitical here. I was once a registered independent and still do not consider myself a strong partisan. However, I like to think of myself as being on the side of facts, logic, problem solving, morality and basic goodness. Besides, this blog is about the future of our human civilization and human race. I can’t pretend our chances didn’t just take a turn for the worse.

3 most frightening stories

  • Is there really any doubt what the most frightening story of November 2016 was? The United Nations Environment Program says we are on a track for 3 degrees C over pre-industrial temperatures, not the “less than 2” almost all serious people (a category that excludes 46% of U.S. voters, apparently) agree is needed. This story was released before the U.S. elected an immoral science denier as its leader. One theory is that our culture has lost all ability to separate fact from fiction. Perhaps states could take on more of a leadership role if the federal government is going to be immoral? Washington State voters considered a carbon tax that could have been a model for other states, and voted it down, in part because environmental groups didn’t like that it was revenue neutral. Adding insult to injury, WWF released its 2016 Living Planet Report, which along with more fun climate change info includes fun facts like 58% of all wild animals have disappeared. There is a 70-99% chance of a U.S. Southwest “mega-drought” lasting 35 years or longer this century. But don’t worry, this is only “if emissions of greenhouse gases remain unchecked”. Oh, and climate change is going to begin to strain the food supply worldwide, which is already strained by population, demand growth, and water resources depletion even without it.
  • Technological unemployment may be starting to take hold, and might be an underlying reason behind some of the resentment directed at mainstream politicians. If you want a really clear and concise explanation of this issue, you could ask a smart person like, say, Barack Obama.
  • According to left wing sources like Forbes, an explosion of debt-financed spending on conventional and nuclear weapons is an expected consequence of the election. Please, Mr. Trump, prove them wrong!

3 most hopeful stories

3 most interesting stories

Bjorn Lomborg on food

Bjorn Lomborg, who is known for not being a big fan of controls on carbon emissions, is concerned about the food supply.

Affordable, nutritious food is one of people’s top priorities everywhere, and one in nine people still do not get enough food to be healthy. With today’s population of 7.3 billion expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050, food demand will increase accordingly. Along with more mouths to feed, stresses on food supplies will include conflicts, economic volatility, extreme weather events, and climate change…

Investment in research and development is vital. According to research conducted for Copenhagen Consensus, which I direct, investing an extra $88 billion in agricultural R&D over the next 15 years would increase yields by an additional 0.4 percentage points each year, which could save 79 million people from hunger and prevent five million cases of child malnourishment. Achieving these targets would be worth nearly $3 trillion in social good, implying an enormous return of $34 for every dollar spent.

Scientific breakthroughs also play a key role in fighting specific nutritional challenges such as vitamin A deficiency, the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness. Robert Mwanga was awarded this year’s World Food Prize for inspiring work that resulted in the large-scale replacement of white sweet potato (with scant Vitamin A content) by a vitamin A-rich alternative in the diets of Uganda’s rural poor.

More R&D seems like a great idea. But I wonder if Bjorn is making the mistake of just projecting past trends linearly into the future. In the past, crops were often limited by the availability of water and nutrients. Once you solve those problems, you can work on breeding plants that make maximum use of the sun’s energy to produce plant parts that humans and animals can eat. Once you solve that problem, the next limit would seem to be sunlight itself, which you can’t increase.