Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

Elon Musk vs. The Terminator

The Terminator is baaaaaack.

In related news, Elon Musk is worried about this actually happening:

The Boston-based Future of Life Institute (FLI) today announced the selection of 37 research teams around the world to which it plans to award about $7 million from Elon Musk and the Open Philanthropy Project as part of a first-of-its-kind grant program dedicated to “keeping AI robust and beneficial”. The program launches as an increasing number of high-profile figures including Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking voice concerns about the possibility of powerful AI systems having unintended, or even potentially disastrous, consequences. The winning teams, chosen from nearly 300 applicants worldwide, will research a host of questions in computer science, law, policy, economics, and other fields relevant to coming advances in AI.

nature and mental health

From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science:

Urbanization has many benefits, but it also is associated with increased levels of mental illness, including depression. It has been suggested that decreased nature experience may help to explain the link between urbanization and mental illness. This suggestion is supported by a growing body of correlational and experimental evidence, which raises a further question: what mechanism(s) link decreased nature experience to the development of mental illness? One such mechanism might be the impact of nature exposure on rumination, a maladaptive pattern of self-referential thought that is associated with heightened risk for depression and other mental illnesses. We show in healthy participants that a brief nature experience, a 90-min walk in a natural setting, decreases both self-reported rumination and neural activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC), whereas a 90-min walk in an urban setting has no such effects on self-reported rumination or neural activity. In other studies, the sgPFC has been associated with a self-focused behavioral withdrawal linked to rumination in both depressed and healthy individuals. This study reveals a pathway by which nature experience may improve mental well-being and suggests that accessible natural areas within urban contexts may be a critical resource for mental health in our rapidly urbanizing world.

passive house

Here is a long article with some details on the passive house standard, which promises order of magnitude energy use reductions in buildings. It was invented in the United States, forgotten/ignored in the United States, adopted in Europe, and now is finally filtering back from Europe into the United States.

The passive house standard requires a tightly sealed and heavily insulated building envelope to ensure optimum energy efficiency. The minimum airtightness level allowed is 0.6 air changes per hour under 50 pascals of pressure. To ensure that a house is in compliance with this limit and that there are no leaks, the building’s designers conduct an on-site blower door test. “The biggest challenge is the sealing,” says Priputen, adding, “If you have a weak spot you have to make all of the other areas stronger in terms of insulation and air sealing.”

The other main pillar of passive house construction is a compact air and heat exchange system that conserves energy by transferring heat and/or moisture between incoming and outgoing streams of air. Designers specify one of two systems, depending on the site’s climate: heat recovery ventilators (HRVs), which transfer only heat, or energy recovery ventilators (ERVs), which transfer both heat and moisture.

revolution: the movie

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Yekra is a revolutionary new distribution network for feature films.

Revolution

Revolution is a feature documentary about opening your eyes, changing the world and fighting for something. A true life adventure following director Rob Stewart in the follow up to his hit Sharkwater, Revolution is an epic adventure into the evolution of life on earth and the revolution to save us.
Discovering that there’s more in jeopardy than sharks, Stewart uncovers a grave secret threatening our own survival as a species, and embarks on a life-threatening adventure through 4 years and 15 countries into the greatest battle ever waged.

Bringing you some of the most incredible wildlife spectacles ever recorded, audiences are brought face to face with sharks and cuddly lemurs, into the microscopic world of the pygmy seahorse, and on the hunt with the deadly flamboyant cuttlefish. From the coral reefs in Papua New Guinea to the rain forests in Madagascar, Stewart reveals that our fate is tied to even the smallest of creatures.

Through it all, Stewart’s journey reveals a massive opportunity, as activists and individuals all over the world are winning the battle to save the ecosystems we depend on for survival. Presenting the most important information on human survival and inspiring people all over the world to fight for life, Revolution is essential viewing for everyone. Startling, beautiful, and provocative, Revolution inspires audiences across the globe to join the biggest movement in history that’s rising to the challenge of saving our world.

Revolution premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and has already gone on to win ten awards, including the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Atlantic Film Festival, Most Popular Environmental Film Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Victoria Film Festival and the Social Justice Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

June 2015 in Review

Negative stories:

Positive stories:

artery-drilling robot

Happy July 4 to the Americans reading this. As we eat our cheeseburgers and hot dogs, here’s a robot designed to drill through your blocked arteries, modeled after…the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. The article says it’s about 5 years out, so given my age and health I should be able to start eating all the junk food I want right now, and this technology should be available well before my arteries start to get into serious trouble.

edible forest gardens

Now this truly is uplifting summer reading. It takes the idea of “perennial polycultures”, which are typical in the tropics, and asks whether they can work in eastern North America. I’ve spent some time in the tropics (Thailand in particular). Some people are worried about whether climate change will affect industrial agriculture in the tropics. But in my experience, people in the developing tropics are surrounded by more food than we are here in the developed temperate zone. Peoples’ yards are overflowing with mangoes, payapas, bananas, coconuts, peppers, eggplants and squashes of various sorts (mostly spicy sorts). Throw in some chickens foraging around, farm ponds full of fish, and bamboo for both food and timber, and you could really get by for awhile if the grocery store suddenly disappeared. Gardening there really doesn’t take much effort – once the plants are established. the effort is keeping the plants under control, if you are inclined to do that. If you don’t they just keep growing and producing food. Such is the amazing gift of solar energy.

It turns out we can grow fruit in the temperate zone too. Persimmons and pawpaws are native American trees, for example, but there are also hardy Asian persimmons and Asian pears, which are tougher than our native pears. There are hardy kiwis and yams that can grow here. There are “invasive” native wildflowers like Jerusalem artichoke that grow 10 foot tall stalks with edible, supposedly potato-like tubers. Not to mention some of our favorite perennials like strawberries and asparagus. The books go into a fair amount of detail on soil science, nutrient cycling, attracting pollinators, and other ecological topics, which is fun.

evil empires

Part of my light, uplifting summer reading program. The 80s were my grade school years. I certainly remember the Cold War being a big deal. But knowing that by 1989 it was pretty much over, and knowing about what went down in the 60s, I just always assumed that things were winding down by the 80s. This book has changed that perspective. By the 80s, the arsenals were  at an all time high, and communication was at an all-time low. What is really chilling is the picture painted about the Soviet paranoia in the early 80s – the leaders really were terrified that a U.S. nuclear first strike could come at any moment. The book describes how Reagan gradually came to realize this, that the Soviets could actually see the U.S. as the bad guys, and at that point he dropped the “evil empire” rhetoric and started talking with them. So although you can argue that he was recklessly belligerent early on, you have to give him some credit for at least partially defusing the situation. Then when Gorbachev comes along, he gets the rest of the credit. Another interesting sub-story here is how the KGB just completely got the best of the U.S. intelligence. And ultimately, that played a role in the U.S. being in the dark and misreading Soviet intentions throughout much of the period.

Even if there are no clear good or bad guys in this story, the Soviets are certainly not the good guys when it comes to biological weapons. They pursued them secretly, vigorously, and cynically for decades. It is truly chilling to think some of these weapons are still out there. Luckily, genetic engineering technology hadn’t really come into its own yet, so all they had to play around with was garden variety germs like smallpox and plague. Today of course, the technology is here and much more accessible to the average Joe Dictator or madman than back then. Even if there are no “evil empires” out there.

Los Angeles Stormwater Capture Plan

Los Angeles has a new stormwater capture plan out. They seem to focus mostly on the idea of using urban stormwater to recharge aquifers at the watershed to neighborhood scale.

The long term (by 2099) potential average annual capture volume was calculated for a conservative and aggressive scenario. Each was broken down by aquifer and between distributed capture and centralized capture. The fraction of the incoming flow to the City through direct precipitation, applied irrigation and run-on (831,400 acre-feet) that is currently captured in the existing baseline scenario is 11% (92,400 acre-feet). The fraction of the incoming flow to the City that could be captured ranges between 24% (197,300 acre-feet) and 33% (285,900), where the low value represents a conservative scenario and the higher value an aggressive scenario. This represents a captured volume of approximately double and triple the existing volume in the conservative and aggressive scenarios, respectively. As in the existing condition, most of the distributed recharge, and most of the increase in recharge, will take place in the San Fernando Valley and the Los Angeles Forebay area under all scenarios, reflecting well suited infiltration characteristics and the prioritization of Class 1 and Class 2 aquifers. It is important to note that the potential capture over the long term (to 2099) does not reflect the stated goals of the SCMP which will provide an implementation strategy for capture potential over the next 20 years.

This doesn’t really explore the idea of capturing and reusing more water at the site scale. If we really tried to close loops better at that scale, using a whole suite of water conservation, stormwater capture, and graywater tools, I feel like it could go a long way. You install waterless plumbing fixtures first (waterless urinals, composting toilets, urine-separating toilets), where practical, then the lowest-flow fixtures next (low flow showerheads and clotheswashers, dual-flush toilets). Then you capture stormwater in cisterns and rain barrels. Next is graywater – capturing and reusing water from clothes washers and showers. None of this is rocket science – it’s just plumbing, but the potential for creative and user-friendly designs just hasn’t been fully explored yet. People may think that the current generation of composting toilets and rain barrels is not worth the trouble even if they lower our water bills a little bit, so we need to design products that people want, like any other industry that competes for peoples’ attention and dollars.

 

Alaska wildfires

Climate Central has an interesting report on a trend of increasing wildfires in the Arctic region of Alaska.

In the past 60 years, Alaska has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the country, with average temperatures up by nearly 3°F. By 2050, temperatures are projected to climb an additional 2-4 degrees, with the Arctic region seeing the most dramatic increases. These rising temperatures are expected to increase wildfire risks in Alaska, just as they have in the rest of the western U.S. Wildfires have been on the rise across the western U.S. since the 1970s, at the same time that spring and summer temperatures have increased dramatically, and average spring snowpack has declined substantially. Fires in Alaska don’t often make news in the lower 48, but they threaten vast expanses of forest, parkland, and tundra that store immense quantities of carbon. The state’s growing number of large wildfires have the potential to damage these ecosystems, and the people and wildlife that depend on them, while releasing a significant amount of carbon into the atmosphere, further contributing to global warming. Wildfire emissions over these vast areas also threaten air quality in Alaska and beyond.

They attribute the trend to higher temperatures in May, June, and July, while at the same time there has been no clear trend in rainfall during these months. So it is getting hotter and, if not dryer, at least not any wetter. It makes sense that higher temperatures would dry out wood, dead vegetation, and organic soils, increasing the amount fuel available for fires. I don’t know what exactly starts the fires, maybe lightning. The scariest thing in this report is the idea of a self-reinforcing feedback loop between thawing permafrost, burning forests and organic soils, greenhouse gas emissions, and higher temperatures. I suspect if this is going on in Alaska, it is also going on in other parts of the Arctic – Canada, northern Europe, and Russia.