Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

Lloyds of London is worried about food

Lloyds of London says we should be worried about the food supply. And yes, they have insurance for that.

Global demand for food is on the rise, driven by unprecedented growth in the world’s population and widespread shifts in consumption patterns as countries develop. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that global agricultural production will need to more than double by 2050 to close the gap between food supply and demand. As this chronic pressure increases, the food system is becoming increasingly vulnerable to acute shocks…

Sudden disruptions to the supply chain could reduce the global food supply and trigger a spike in food prices, leading to substantial knock-on effects for businesses and societies. The food system’s existing vulnerability to systemic shocks is being exacerbated by factors such as climate change, water stress, ongoing globalisation, and heightening political instability…

A shock to the global food supply could trigger significant claims across multiple classes of insurance, including (but not limited to) terrorism and political violence, political risk, business interruption, marine and aviation, agriculture, environmental liability, and product
liability and recall. These losses could be compounded by the potential for a food system shock to last for many years; and the ability of insurers to pay claims quickly is expected to be an important factor in post-shock recovery. More broadly, the insurance industry may also be affected by impacts on investment income and the global regulatory and business environment.

jeep hacker

Yes, hackers can really take over cars. Here’s a Wired article where it’s done on purpose.

Miller and Valasek’s full arsenal includes functions that at lower speeds fully kill the engine, abruptly engage the brakes, or disable them altogether. The most disturbing maneuver came when they cut the Jeep’s brakes, leaving me frantically pumping the pedal as the 2-ton SUV slid uncontrollably into a ditch. The researchers say they’re working on perfecting their steering control—for now they can only hijack the wheel when the Jeep is in reverse. Their hack enables surveillance too: They can track a targeted Jeep’s GPS coordinates, measure its speed, and even drop pins on a map to trace its route.

All of this is possible only because Chrysler, like practically all carmakers, is doing its best to turn the modern automobile into a smartphone. Uconnect, an Internet-connected computer feature in hundreds of thousands of Fiat Chrysler cars, SUVs, and trucks, controls the vehicle’s entertainment and navigation, enables phone calls, and even offers a Wi-Fi hot spot. And thanks to one vulnerable element, which Miller and Valasek won’t identify until their Black Hat talk, Uconnect’s cellular connection also lets anyone who knows the car’s IP address gain access from anywhere in the country. “From an attacker’s perspective, it’s a super nice vulnerability,” Miller says.

From that entry point, Miller and Valasek’s attack pivots to an adjacent chip in the car’s head unit—the hardware for its entertainment system—silently rewriting the chip’s firmware to plant their code. That rewritten firmware is capable of sending commands through the car’s internal computer network, known as a CAN bus, to its physical components like the engine and wheels. Miller and Valasek say the attack on the entertainment system seems to work on any Chrysler vehicle with Uconnect from late 2013, all of 2014, and early 2015. They’ve only tested their full set of physical hacks, including ones targeting transmission and braking systems, on a Jeep Cherokee, though they believe that most of their attacks could be tweaked to work on any Chrysler vehicle with the vulnerable Uconnect head unit. They have yet to try remotely hacking into other makes and models of cars.

James Hansen

We are expecting a “bombshell” new paper from James Hansen. According to Slate:

The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, brings new importance to a feedback loop in the ocean near Antarctica that results in cooler freshwater from melting glaciers forcing warmer, saltier water underneath the ice sheets, speeding up the melting rate. Hansen, who is known for being alarmist and also right, acknowledges that his study implies change far beyond previous consensus estimates. In a conference call with reporters, he said he hoped the new findings would be “substantially more persuasive than anything previously published.” I certainly find them to be.

To come to their findings, the authors used a mixture of paleoclimate records, computer models, and observations of current rates of sea level rise, but “the real world is moving somewhat faster than the model,” Hansen says.

Hansen’s study does not attempt to predict the precise timing of the feedback loop, only that it is “likely” to occur this century. The implications are mindboggling: In the study’s likely scenario, New York City—and every other coastal city on the planet—may only have a few more decades of habitability left. That dire prediction, in Hansen’s view, requires “emergency cooperation among nations.”

War and Peace and Obama

Here is Jeffrey Sachs on Obama’s war and peace legacy:

Viewed through the lens of history, the main job of US presidents is to be mature and wise enough to stand up to the permanent war machine. Kennedy tried; his successor, Lyndon Johnson, did not, and the debacle of Vietnam ensued. Jimmy Carter tried; Reagan did not (his CIA helped to unleash death and mayhem in Central America throughout the 1980s). Clinton mostly tried (except in the Balkans); George W. Bush did not, and generated new wars and turmoil.

On the whole, Obama has tried to restrain the warmongers, yet he has given in to them frequently – not only by relying on weaponized drones, but also by waging covert wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. Nor did he truly end the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; he replaced troops on the ground with US drones, air strikes, and “private” contractors.

Iran is surely his finest moment, a historic milestone that demands full-throated approval. The political difficulty of making peace with Iran is similar to that of JFK’s peacemaking with the Soviet Union in 1963.

natural capital

Here’s a slightly novel take on natural capital, as a charged battery.

Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid discharge of the earth-space battery foretells the future of humankind

Earth is a chemical battery where, over evolutionary time with a trickle-charge of photosynthesis using solar energy, billions of tons of living biomass were stored in forests and other ecosystems and in vast reserves of fossil fuels. In just the last few hundred years, humans extracted exploitable energy from these living and fossilized biomass fuels to build the modern industrial-technological-informational economy, to grow our population to more than 7 billion, and to transform the biogeochemical cycles and biodiversity of the earth. This rapid discharge of the earth’s store of organic energy fuels the human domination of the biosphere, including conversion of natural habitats to agricultural fields and the resulting loss of native species, emission of carbon dioxide and the resulting climate and sea level change, and use of supplemental nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar energy sources. The laws of thermodynamics governing the trickle-charge and rapid discharge of the earth’s battery are universal and absolute; the earth is only temporarily poised a quantifiable distance from the thermodynamic equilibrium of outer space. Although this distance from equilibrium is comprised of all energy types, most critical for humans is the store of living biomass. With the rapid depletion of this chemical energy, the earth is shifting back toward the inhospitable equilibrium of outer space with fundamental ramifications for the biosphere and humanity. Because there is no substitute or replacement energy for living biomass, the remaining distance from equilibrium that will be required to support human life is unknown.

 

Obama

Somehow Obama came and went within a block of my office today and I never noticed. Now I know why they call it the “Secret” Service. Anyway, while he was here he made a case for reducing the prison population and providing free college, among other things. Free college – it sounds like a utopian goal, right? I found one article that estimates how much that would cost the federal government – about $63 billion dollars a year, on top of what state and local governments are already spending. That sounds like a lot, except that according to this article the government is currently spending about $69 billion on higher education grants, work-study programs, and tax breaks. This is pretty astonishing if true – we might be able to spend less and get more. The only losers would be private and for-profit colleges. The obvious beneficiaries would be a more educated, skilled, and hopefully creative and innovative work force that we need for the coming decades and beyond.

Which left me thinking about Obama’s legacy. I think history may judge him kindly for many reasons, although there have also been some really bad things that have happened on his watch. Part of how history judges him will depend on whether the really bad things get worse from here, whether or not that is beyond his control.

First, the good stuff:

  • The economy did not fall apart completely after the financial crisis. I think history will eventually judge that he made some tough decisions that seemed unfair and unpopular at the time, but ultimately quelled the panic that could have otherwise threatened the viability of the system itself.
  • He got better financial regulation and limits on irresponsible risk taking in place compared to what we had before the crisis. As long as there isn’t another major crisis in the near future, I think history will say he made progress against tough odds and did the most he could possibly do politically. If there is another severe crisis, history will rightly point out that the reforms weren’t enough, and they were on his watch.
  • He helped us take a big step toward universal health care. Advanced, industrialized, civilized countries have universal health care. We do not, but now we are closer. It was a huge fight against incredible odds, and I think history will judge it kindly as finally breaking a decades-old deadlock and putting us on the right path.
  • He ended, at least kinda sorta more or less, major American involvement in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These were bloody, expensive, unpopular, and achieving nothing. I think history will judge this kindly.
  • I’ll put killing Osama bin Laden in the win column. It was justice. Although I found the euphoric response to his death a little sad.
  • Incredibly, he has defused both the Cuba situation and the Iran situation, two decades-old Cold War conflicts that have persisted until now for no obvious reason. History will tell us whether the Iran deal is a momentary pause in the Middle Eastern nuclear arms race, or the beginning of the end of it.
  • He’s taken some steps toward climate change regulation, nothing even close to sufficient but probably the most that was possible politically.

The bad stuff:

  • Riots in metro St. Louis and Baltimore.
  • The greater Middle East has turned into a massive blood bath, from North Africa to Afghanistan and Pakistan. History will tell us whether these conflicts spread, spawn international terrorism, or even go nuclear.
  • Relations with Russia and China have both soured considerably, to the point where a major war, or even a nuclear war, seems possible where it would have been almost unthinkable eight years ago.

The riots are just a little embarrassing, but you can probably say that racial and inequality issues in the U.S. were more on the surface and openly talked about during Obama’s presidency than during the previous couple decades, and you need to acknowledge and define problems before you can solve them. I don’t think history will blame him for creating these problems or making them worse.

The potential for serious geopolitical conflict and even nuclear war is a horrifying development that doesn’t bode well for our civilization, especially when we need to be coming together to deal with serious global emergencies like pollution, food, and climate change. Can we blame Obama for his response to any of this? I’ll admit he hasn’t been as good as his predecessors at brinksmanship. Leaders from Kennedy to Reagan to Bush were willing to play a massive game of chicken, convincing potential enemies that we would not hesitate to go to war at the smallest provocation, and that we were willing to accept the consequences however dire. You can argue they gambled recklessly and were lucky enough to win. Our enemies were generally terrified and backed down. Obama was less of a cowboy, and never even played one on TV. He has been more risk averse, weighing the consequences of military conflict vs. diplomatic and economic measures, and generally choosing the latter. These are tough decisions that take courage either way. Here again, I think his legacy depends on whether things calm down, or whether there are serious conflicts down the road with roots that can be traced back to decisions he made.

My summary: If there is not a major financial crisis or war in the next 10-20 years, I think we will look back at him as a good president who avoided those things and made a major course correction in the health care system. If major crises or wars happen, they will overshadow his accomplishments and he may ultimately get a share of the blame. It was a tough moment in history to be president, and I for one think he was a courageous and mature leader who did the most anyone could do within our constraining political system.

Asian water sensitive urban design

Here are a couple examples of water-sensitive urban design. First, Bangkok is not doing it right. The city is sinking a shocking 3 to 4 inches per year. The article conflates urban flash flooding with river and coastal flooding, but either way getting lower can’t be good.

Meanwhile, China supposedly is doing it right, building “sponge cities” with political and financial support from the central government. I’m a little skeptical of the public relations campaign after my time in Asia. Still, political and financial support for urban water management are in short supply here in the United States, so I can’t exactly take the moral high ground.

 

turn your lawn into a food forest

Mother Earth News tells us how to turn our lawns into food forests. Let’s do it!

Saturdays that could be spent harvesting berries and fresh greens are instead consumed in the toil of pushing a machine. Unless you are an avid yogi, baseball player or picnicker, lawns are a bit passé. And yet, we as a nation spend over $26 billion per year on lawns. How might we redesign our spaces to create edible abundance? …

A food forest has multiple layers which are able to coexist. Rather than have just the main fruit tree crop, a food forest is designed to have an upper story (large fruit trees), and secondary upper-story (dwarf fruit trees) a shrub layer (berry bushes) an herb layer (leafy greens and veggies) and a ground cover layer (strawberries and low herbs). In this way, one creates a dynamic polyculture that has diverse crops in production. This makes sense if our intention is to grow for our own community.

A food forest also plants the fringes. The gaps between production plants are great areas for nitrogen fixing beans and peas. These plants feed the soil and create a living mulch. The marginal areas can be planted in flowers and pollinator attracting native plants, serving as magnates that attract beneficial insects into the garden.

Joel Kotkin

Joel Kotkin has penned a transparently political anti-urban piece, so transparently political that it’s in Real Clear Politics rather than a major newspaper. He creates a picture of “forced densification” – I imagine people being marched into cities at gunpoint and into Soviet-style high-rise apartment blocks.

Roughly four in five home buyers prefer a single-family home, but much of the political class increasingly wants them to live differently… it has been decided, mostly by self-described progressives, that suburban living is too unecological, not mention too uncool, and even too white for their future America. Density is their new holy grail, for both the world and the U.S. Across the country efforts are now being mounted—through HUD, the EPA, and scores of local agencies—to impede suburban home-building, or to raise its cost.

Of course, people who actually choose to live in cities know this is absurd. Sure, there are high rise apartment blocks and some people choose to live in them. But many people choose to live in row homes, town homes, brownstones, etc. These are single family homes, Joel. Let’s think about land use for a minute. Density is defined by residents per square mile. Density allows infrastructure, open space, and economically productive space to be shared more efficiently by more people. It also allows more people to get around under their own muscle power, i.e. by walking and bicycling. This promotes physical health and mental health, social activity, creativity and innovation. Time spent “commuting” to work on foot or by bicycle is not empty, useless, or wasted time.

Once density drops to a suburban level, most people have to make most trips by car. Cars require enormous amounts of space, for driving but especially for parking. This space is wasted – it is not available for housing or for recreation. It is not economically productive. The infrastructure cost in the suburbs has to be much higher per person, and the economic production and tax revenue has to be much lower per square mile. The enormous amounts of time spent commuting by car are just wasted time – they are not economically productive, supportive of physical health, mental health, or families. Add air pollution and civilization-crushing greenhouse gas emissions on top of all this.

So what does all this add up to? Resources are being sucked out of the efficient denser areas, where they are generated, and used to subsidize the time-, land-, money-, and health-wasting lifestyle in the suburbs. And yet, contrary to what Joel would have you believe, not only are people not being forced into walkable, bikable, communities, but these choices are not available to most Americans.

Forcibly marching people into high-rise apartment blocks wouldn’t be American. Some people really want privacy and large private open spaces to themselves, and certainly those choices should not be taken away. But many people would love to live in truly walkable, bikable communities, and those choices have been denied most citizens of the United States. Giving people true equal opportunity and a free choice of lifestyles, and letting them choose to pay the true cost of their choices, would be very American. Don’t fall for the deceptive double-talk people are throwing out there to try to convince you to support having your choices taken away.