Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

“artificial rainforest” in Dubai

I continue to think that places like Dubai and Singapore with extremely inhospitable climates are preparing humanity for its future in space. They are creating cities that consist of climate-controlled high rise apartments, office buildings, malls, and indoor parks, all connected by subway lines, so there is really no reason to go outside. It’s not too hard to imagine transferring one of these cities to Mars.

the latest from James Hansen

James Hansen and an enormous number of co-authors have a new paper in Earth System Dynamics.

Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions

The rapid rise of global temperature that began about 1975 continues at a mean rate of about 0.18 °C/decade, with the current annual temperature exceeding +1.25 °C relative to 1880–1920. Global temperature has just reached a level similar to the mean level in the prior interglacial (Eemian) period, when sea level was several meters higher than today, and, if it long remains at this level, slow amplifying feedbacks will lead to greater climate change and consequences. The growth rate of climate forcing due to human-caused greenhouse gases (GHGs) increased over 20 % in the past decade mainly due to resurging growth of atmospheric CH4, thus making it increasingly difficult to achieve targets such as limiting global warming to 1.5 °C or reducing atmospheric CO2 below 350 ppm. Such targets now require “negative emissions”, i.e., extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere. If rapid phasedown of fossil fuel emissions begins soon, most of the necessary CO2 extraction can take place via improved agricultural and forestry practices, including reforestation and steps to improve soil fertility and increase its carbon content. In this case, the magnitude and duration of global temperature excursion above the natural range of the current interglacial (Holocene) could be limited and irreversible climate impacts could be minimized. In contrast, continued high fossil fuel emissions by the current generation would place a burden on young people to undertake massive technological CO2 extraction, if they are to limit climate change. Proposed methods of extraction such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) or air capture of CO2 imply minimal estimated costs of 104–570 trillion dollars this century, with large risks and uncertain feasibility. Continued high fossil fuel emissions unarguably sentences young people to either a massive, possibly implausible cleanup or growing deleterious climate impacts or both, scenarios that should provide both incentive and obligation for governments to alter energy policies without further delay.

the gates of hell

It’s October, time for a Halloween-related post or two. Here’s an interesting article on 11 places rumored to have entrances to the underworld. Most seem to be in exotic places, but it’s nice to see central Pennsylvania represented. I do think they have overlooked Centralia, Pennsylvania though, where people have been known to literally fall into pits of unquenchable underground fire. It is interesting that a wide variety of cultures and religions, from the Ancient Greeks and Romans to Christians and Buddhists and other Asian traditions, have had somewhat similar concepts of an underworld.

Zuckerberg vs. disease

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife have decided to set a modest goal of curing all disease.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, on Wednesday announced a $3 billion effort to accelerate scientific research with the wildly ambitious goal of “curing all disease in our children’s lifetime.”

The many components of the initiative include creating universal technology “tools” based on both traditional science and engineering on which all researchers can build, including a map of all cell types, a way to continuously monitor blood for early signs of illness, and a chip that can diagnose all diseases (or at least many of them). The money will also help fund what they referred to as 10 to 15 “virtual institutes” that will bring together investigators from around the world to focus on individual diseases or other goals — an idea that has the potential to upend biomedical science…

facts and figures on illegal immigrants

The Week has some surprising facts and figures on illegal immigrants in the U.S. Just for fun, I’ll state it in the form of a quiz:

  1. About how many illegal immigrants are there, and what percentage of the U.S. population is that?
  2. What percentage of illegal immigrants here now have been here for more than 10 years?
  3. Is the number of illegal immigrants increasing or decreasing?
  4. What percentage of illegal immigrants are Mexican?
  5. Obviously, “illegal immigrant” means they crossed the border illegally, right?
  6. What percentage work? What percentage pay taxes? What percentage are receiving public assistance?
  7. What percentage have committed criminal offenses?

Answers (and I’ll repeat the questions, because it would be annoying if I didn’t):

  1. About how many illegal immigrants are there [Answer: 11 million], and what percentage of the U.S. population is that [Answer: 3.5%]?
  2. What percentage of illegal immigrants here now have been here for more than 10 years? [Answer: 66%]
  3. Is the number of illegal immigrants increasing or decreasing? [Answer: decreasing, from a peak of about 12 million in 2007. ]
  4. What percentage of illegal immigrants are Mexican? [Answer: 50%]
  5. Obviously, “illegal immigrant” means they crossed the border illegally, right? [Wrong: about 60% did, but 40% entered legally and overstayed their visas]
  6. What percentage work? [Answer: 73%] What percentage pay taxes? [Answer: 50%] What percentage are receiving public assistance? [Answer: 0% of adults, although children who are not citizens may receive public schooling and emergency medical care]
  7. What percentage have committed criminal offenses? [Answer: 7.5%]

will E.T. ever phone (our) home?

E.T. was one of the first movies I remember seeing in a theater (I was terrified.) 34 years later, if I am counting correctly, we are still waiting for extraterrestrials to return our calls. The New York Times has a review of four new books on the subject, including one (partially) by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, in WELCOME TO THE UNIVERSE: An Astrophysical Tour (Princeton University, $39.95), revisits the Drake equation using contemporary data. The equation holds that the number of communicating alien civilizations is a function of seven variables, starting with the rate at which new stars are born in our galaxy, the fraction of these stars that host planets and the number of planets per star that are habitable. In 1961, scientists could fill in only one variable; the other six were sheer guesswork. With our advanced understanding of the cosmos, Tyson — whose book is written with the astrophysicists Michael A. Strauss and J. Richard Gott — is able to work out, in some technical detail, a more sophisticated estimate. The verdict? According to his calculations, we might expect to find as many as 100 alien civilizations in our galaxy communicating with radio waves right now. “So,” he concludes, “we have a chance.”

The unambiguous discovery of an alien signal, if it ever happens, would instantly be the biggest event in human history. It could happen tomorrow, or decades from now, or never. Then again, since we’ve had a few false alarms, we might not recognize or believe a real signal at first, only confirming it after some period of time has passed. I wonder, would we just shrug it off and continue with our lives, or would it really change the way we think about ourselves and our place in the universe.

September 2016 in Review

3 most frightening stories

  • The U.S. and Russia may have blundered into a proxy war in Syria. And on a loosely related war-and-peace note, Curtis LeMay was a crazy bastard.
  • The ecological footprint situation is not looking too promising: “from 1993 to 2009…while the human population has increased by 23% and the world economy has grown 153%, the human footprint has increased by just 9%. Still, 75% the planet’s land surface is experiencing measurable human pressures. Moreover, pressures are perversely intense, widespread and rapidly intensifying in places with high biodiversity.” Meanwhile, as of 2002 “we appropriate over 40% of the net primary productivity (the green material) produced on Earth each year (Vitousek et al. 1986, Rojstaczer et al. 2001). We consume 35% of the productivity of the oceanic shelf (Pauly and Christensen 1995), and we use 60% of freshwater run-off (Postel et al. 1996). The unprecedented escalation in both human population and consumption in the 20th century has resulted in environmental crises never before encountered in the history of humankind and the world (McNeill 2000). E. O. Wilson (2002) claims it would now take four Earths to meet the consumption demands of the current human population, if every human consumed at the level of the average US inhabitant.” And finally, 30% of African elephants have been lost in the last 7 years.
  • Car accidents are the leading cause of death for children ages 5 to 24. The obsession with car seats may not be saving all that many lives, while keeping children out of cars as much as possible would be 100% guaranteed to save lives. And one thing that would be guaranteed to help us create more walkable neighborhoods and therefore save children’s lives: getting rid of minimum parking requirements in cities once and for all. And yet you don’t hear this debate being framed in moral terms.

3 most hopeful stories

3 most interesting stories

  • Monsanto is trying to help honeybees (which seems good) by monkeying with RNA (which seems a little frightening). Yes, biotech is coming.
  • Some people think teaching algebra to children may actually be bad. Writing still seems to be good.
  • There have been a number of attempts to identify and classify the basic types of literary plots.

cyber warfare

Critical parts of the internet in the U.S. are being systematically probed by foreign government hackers, according to one security expert.

Recently, some of the major companies that provide the basic infrastructure that makes the Internet work have seen an increase in DDoS attacks against them. Moreover, they have seen a certain profile of attacks. These attacks are significantly larger than the ones they’re used to seeing. They last longer. They’re more sophisticated. And they look like probing. One week, the attack would start at a particular level of attack and slowly ramp up before stopping. The next week, it would start at that higher point and continue. And so on, along those lines, as if the attacker were looking for the exact point of failure.

The attacks are also configured in such a way as to see what the company’s total defenses are. There are many different ways to launch a DDoS attack. The more attack vectors you employ simultaneously, the more different defenses the defender has to counter with. These companies are seeing more attacks using three or four different vectors. This means that the companies have to use everything they’ve got to defend themselves. They can’t hold anything back. They’re forced to demonstrate their defense capabilities for the attacker…

Who would do this? It doesn’t seem like something an activist, criminal, or researcher would do. Profiling core infrastructure is common practice in espionage and intelligence gathering. It’s not normal for companies to do that. Furthermore, the size and scale of these probes — and especially their persistence — points to state actors. It feels like a nation’s military cybercommand trying to calibrate its weaponry in the case of cyberwar. It reminds me of the US’s Cold War program of flying high-altitude planes over the Soviet Union to force their air-defense systems to turn on, to map their capabilities.