Earth Overshoot Day falls on August 1 this year, which is two years earlier than last year. This is another way of communicating the ecological footprint concept, which stands at 1.7 Earths (ergo, we use the equivalent of 1.7 times the Earth’s annual production of ecosystem services, meaning we are withdrawing natural capital that we will eventually deplete if the trend continues.)
Category Archives: Web Article Review
cosmogenesis
Here’s a fascinating article about the possibility of creating a new universe in a laboratory (or many of them). This is not about virtual reality or artificial intelligence, this is about creating a wormhole to an actual new physical baby universe. A number of physicists think it is theoretically possible and take it seriously. This has any number of mind-bending implications. First, our own universe could have come about this way, whether created by a deity as some of us imagine or by some intelligent but fallible mortal being out there. Second, and the article goes into this, the creator of such a universe might be able to observe it but would have no control over it (although at least in theory, they might be able to actually travel to it.) Third, and the article doesn’t mention this, let’s say humanity somehow manages to survive the billions or trillions of years it would take for our own universe to run its course and begin to collapse (assuming that is going to happen), maybe this creates the possibility that our species could exist forever. Well, we have a lot of things to figure out between now and then obviously. One final thing I learned from this article is that physicists also have a theory of how our universe could have arisen completely spontaneously from nothing at all and without intervention by any external intelligent being. Even that has implications – if it could happen once, does it just continue to happen every now and then somewhere in space and time? The interesting implication there could be that intelligent life has always existed somewhere out there and always will.
There is science fiction about this of course. Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon comes to mind, and of course The Matrix. And of course, Lisa Simpson. There must be others.
fish
Fishery policy might seem like a fringe issue, but it is another disturbing example of ignorant politicians disrupting science- and evidence-based policies. This is from Pew:
When a fish population falls below a certain level, it is classified as overfished, and the MSA requires regional managers to create a plan to rebuild the species with a date for meeting the recovery goal. That timeline is based on science and accounts for environmental conditions and biological factors that can influence rebuilding, such as how long it takes the fish to reach reproductive age.
Critics of the MSA claim that the law is rigid in requiring a short timeline, but the facts say otherwise: The average timeline for rebuilding plans is close to 20 years, and most plans have recovery timelines longer than 10 years. H.R. 200 would alter the law to allow exceptions to setting science-based rebuilding timelines. It would open the door for political and other considerations to influence a major element of recovery plans, allowing managers to set arbitrary timelines that could postpone the benefits of fully rebuilt stocks indefinitely. That’s why extending rebuilding timelines would be shortsighted and counterproductive…
To prevent overfishing, the MSA requires managers to set science-based annual catch limits. H.R. 200 would exempt more fish populations from the requirement to establish science-based catch limits—which would increase the risk of overfishing.
Fisheries are a poster child for introducing complex systems. They are a straightforward physical system that is just a little complex. And yet, it is easy for a normal intelligent person to have misconceptions about how they will change over time. This is because there are lags and non-linearities in the system. Fish take a while to grow to maturity and reproduce. You can fish a seemingly abundant fish population at a high rate for awhile, but then it will seem to crash without warning and take a long time to recover. This seems unpredictable to people uneducated in systems (who may be perfectly intelligent, literate, and numerate otherwise), but is fairly easy to grasp and predict once you understand the relatively simple theory and dynamics behind it. So the fact that politicians and the population at large aren’t able to grasp this is just a failure of our education system.
Real fisheries are just a bit more complex than what I described above. This podcast from Fresh Air describes how removing the small fish species that form the base of the food chain, rather than just overfishing of larger commercial species, may have led to the Cod collapse off New England in the 1980s.
Novichok
A toxicology expert at Michigan State University says Russia (or Russians) may have used a class of extremely deadly weaponized nerve agents called Novichok to kill people inside the UK.
Novichok has been implicated in the poisoning of two couples in Great Britain, causing the death of one woman. The chemical structures of Novichok agents are not known for sure, but they bind more tightly and rapidly to their enzyme target, called acetylcholinesterase, found in nerves and muscle cells than other nerve poisons such as sarin or tabun. This causes death within minutes by making normal nerve-muscle, nerve-gland, and nerve-heart function impossible.
The deaths have been attributed to Russia, either the country’s intelligence service or a rogue who obtained them illegally. Russia vehemently denies either involvement in the poisonings or development of the Novichok chemicals…
First, the chemicals are reported by Soviet chemists to be the most potent agents ever made, with potency between 6-10 times higher than VX, the chemical used to kill the half brother of Kim Jong-Un, or sarin, the prototypical poisonous nerve gas the Iraqi government allegedly used in 1989, and which was used Syria last April. Thus extremely low doses, powder or liquid, the exact concentration of which remains unknown, are lethal.
The Hangman
air pollution causes diabetes
In addition to all the other problems it causes, there is now pretty strong evidence that air pollution is a factor in diabetes.
The mainstream media is not providing wall-to-wall coverage on the Trump administration’s attack on benefit-cost analysis. So let me just point out that a lot of the benefits used to justify regulations are based on air pollution, where the benefits appear to massively outweigh the costs of the regulations. Trump is attacking the methods used by government agencies to make these estimates. They probably can use some updates based on the latest science and risk management approaches, but I don’t think the basic conclusions are likely to change.
I happen to be in the water pollution regulation business, and I happen to know that the benefit-cost case for further regulation on the water side can be a bit flimsy in terms of human health. A few reasons for this are that a lot of progress has already been made in recent decades, drinking water treatment technology is pretty good and not as dependent as you might think on source water quality, and other than a few sandy ocean beaches the public is just not recreating in natural water bodies all that much. None of this is to say that we can afford to roll back the progress we have made, or that we have come close to restoring anything like the highly diverse and productive aquatic ecosystems of the past, which have simply disappeared from memory. We are all worried about chemicals in our water and food and want to be cautious, but again there is not overwhelming evidence that the low levels of useful chemicals in them are doing us more harm than good. But air pollution is not like this. It is absolutely unambiguous that the benefits of reducing air pollution outweigh the costs by a huge margin. Don’t believe any propaganda or disinformation you hear to the contrary.
CIA World Fact Book: U.S. vs. Russia
Is the U.S. vs. Russia really a contest of equals? Well no, other than nuclear arsenals, it shouldn’t be. Here are some facts and figures from the CIA World Factbook, with China thrown in for good measure.
GDP (purchasing power parity)
- USA: $19.36 trillion
- Russia: $4 trillion
- China: $23.12 trillion
GDP per capita (purchasing power parity)
- USA: $59,500
- Russia: $27,900
- China: $17,000
Military budget
- USA: 3.29% of GDP ($637 billion)
- Russia: 5.4% of GDP ($216 billion)
- China: 1.9% of GDP ($439 billion)
So compared to the U.S., China has a slightly larger overall economy spread out over a lot more people, but directs less of its economic output to the military and ultimately underspends the U.S. Russia’s economy is only 1/5th the size of the U.S., but it diverts a lot of its people’s wealth to military spending so it can be roughly 1/3rd the size of the U.S. military. So Russia really is not a worthy adversary at all, it’s a poor country whose leaders want to project an image of strength to its people as a substitute for actually making their lives better. The average American still has a much higher living standard than the average Chinese in spite of our military spending, but we shouldn’t just take this for granted as we may be still riding past momentum and slowly drifting into the slow lane.
The Moscow Midterms?
Back in April 2018, Clare Malone from Five Thirty Eight wrote a sort of speculative fiction piece about how Russian intelligence agents could attempt to hijack the November (2018) U.S. midterm elections. Now that we have just found out a lot more facts about how they did in fact successfully influence the 2016 election, this is no longer so speculative.
In my view, interfering with another country’s election is something more than an act of intelligence gathering but something less than an act of war. We can act all shocked and surprised that a hostile foreign intelligence agencies would dare to interfere with our elections. But the fact is, hostile foreign intelligence agencies do this, and the U.S. has done it to others, particularly during the Cold War and particularly in the developing world, a lot. So we don’t exactly have the moral high ground. Shame on the FBI and our other counter-intelligence agencies for letting the Russians get away with this. Then again, going back to the Cold War, we should remember this is the KGB and they have always had our number.
So we now know that Russian intelligence interfered in the 2016 U.S. election, and we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they communicated with members of Trump’s campaign team. The evidence for these things is clear, disinformation and propaganda to the contrary. It remains to be seen whether there is clear evidence that people in the Trump campaign new they were talking to Russian agents and actively accepted their help or even helped them. If this can be shown, then the people involved are enemies of our country and need to be treated as such. And if Trump himself was involved or knew his campaign was involved, he is an enemy of the country and needs to be treated as such.
Now, if this evidence is produced, it seems unlikely that the immoral, cowardly farce that the Republican party has become will act on the evidence if they are in charge. At that point, I think the rule of law will truly be lost. Trump’s people might be convicted, he might pardon them, and Congress might stand by and let it happen. If the Democrats are in charge and this evidence is produced, I hope they have the courage to impeach. Impeachment would make sure the evidence sees the light of day in full public view, even if a cowardly Republican Senate ultimately refused to convict. So this midterm election really is important, and it really is critical that our government do a competent job of counterintelligence leading up to it.
The Wild Boars
BBC has a good story on the whole saga of the boys who got trapped in the cave, located and eventually rescued. The videos, pictures, and letters really humanize the story. I have to admit that while it was actually going on, I was reading about it but purposely avoiding the pictures and especially videos because I didn’t think it was going to turn out well. Maybe this will help us all to have more compassion for children whether they are close to home and not.
life expectancy in ancient societies
This article says life expectancy in ancient societies may not be as low as people tend to think. Many people are probably aware that child mortality brings down the average, but something I never thought about is how hard it is to measure the upper limit for populations that existed before any type of written records. There are people who specialize in digging up graves and doing exactly this, which seems a bit macabre.
We are all able to instinctively label people as ‘young’, ‘middle-aged’ or ‘old’ based on appearance and the situations in which we encounter them. Similarly, biological anthropologists use the skeleton rather than, say, hair and wrinkles. We term this ‘biological age’ as our judgment is based on the physical (and mental) conditions that we see before us, which relate to the biological realities of that person. These will not always correlate with an accurate calendar age, as people are all, well, different. Their appearance and abilities will be related to their genetics, lifestyle, health, attitudes, activity, diet, wealth and a multitude of other factors. These differences will accumulate as the years increase, meaning that once a person reaches the age of about 40 or 50, the differences are too great to allow any one-size-fits-all accuracy in the determination of the calendar age, whether it is done by eye on a living person or by the peer-preferred method of skeletal ageing. The result of this is that those older than middle age are frequently given an open-ended age estimation, like 40+ or 50+ years, meaning that they could be anywhere between forty and a hundred and four, or thereabouts.
The very term ‘average age at death’ also contributes to the myth. High infant mortality brings down the average at one end of the age spectrum, and open-ended categories such as ‘40+’ or ‘50+ years’ keep it low at the other. We know that in 2015 the average life expectancy at birth ranged from 50 years in Sierra Leone to 84 years in Japan, and these differences are related to early deaths rather than differences in total lifespan. A better method of estimating lifespan is to look at life expectancy only at adulthood, which takes infant mortality out of the equation; however, the inability to estimate age beyond about 50 years still keeps the average lower than it should be.
Archaeologists’ age estimates, therefore, have been squeezed at both ends of the age spectrum, with the result that individuals who have lived their full lifespan are rendered ‘invisible’. This means that we have been unable to fully understand societies in the distant past. In the literate past, functioning older individuals were mostly not treated much differently from the general adult population, but without archaeological identification of the invisible elderly, we cannot say whether this was the case in non-literate societies.