Category Archives: Web Article Review

stranded fossil fuel assets

An article from Cambridge (University, not Analytica) in Nature Climate Change estimates potential losses if renewables were to lead to a sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels.

Our analysis suggests that part of the SFFA would occur as a result of an already ongoing technological trajectory, irrespective of whether or not new climate policies are adopted; the loss would be amplified if new climate policies to reach the 2 °C target of the Paris Agreement are adopted and/or if low-cost producers (some OPEC countries) maintain their level of production (‘sell out’) despite declining demand; the magnitude of the loss from SFFA may amount to a discounted global wealth loss of US$1–4 trillion; and there are clear distributional impacts, with winners (for example, net importers such as China or the EU) and losers (for example, Russia, the United States or Canada, which could see their fossil fuel industries nearly shut down), although the two effects would largely offset each other at the level of aggregate global GDP.

So coal subsidies might be “making America Great Again”, but not for long. And they might not even have the desired effect according to this article, which argues they would primarily benefit nuclear. And solar energy, it turns out, is a growth industry creating jobs in many Republican districts.

 

top 20 metros for venture capital

This post has an interesting list of the top 20 metro areas in the world for venture capital investment. San Francisco and San Jose together vacuum up about 25%. Add LA and San Diego, and California gets over 30%. Boston and New York add up to a respectable 12%. After that it drops off quickly, with the major global cities tending to grab 1-2% or so. Austin does a great job marketing itself, but only adds up to 1.5%. Big cities in China and India are only grabbing in the 1% range, but presumably the money may go farther there. My home city of Philadelphia grabs around 1% which seems underwhelming, but at least we crack the list when there are a plenty of major cities (Miami, Atalnta, Houston, Rome, anywhere in Europe outside London and Paris, the entire continents of South America and Africa?) that do not.

the numbers on Syria

Syria might not be grabbing the U.S. headlines right now, but the conflict is grinding on. The Week has some staggering numbers. Out of a population of about 20 million, 5.6 million are refugees inside the country and 6.2 million have left the country as refugees. That’s 60% of the population. Estimates of the death toll vary but the most widely accepted is around half a million. That’s 2-3% of the population.

hottest May recorded in U.S. was during the Dust Bowl, until last month

May 2018 broke a heat record last set during the 1930s Dust Bowl. I’m trying to think of some clever Grapes of Wrath reference to illustrate how clever and well-read I am. Nothing is coming. Well, let’s just point out that last time it was this hot, a segment of the U.S. population was living in poverty as a result.

China passes U.S. in healthy life expectancy

  1. U.S. citizens still live a bit longer than Chinese citizens on average, but Chinese citizens have drawn even and slightly surpassed us in health.

https://www.axios.com/chinese-people-now-healthy-longer-than-americans-6dc7235f-e057-45ee-a975-c433611edabf.html

This would be perfectly fine if it just represented China catching up, but I suspect it represents the U.S. stalling as both our peers and developing countries continue to progress.

Vicar of Bray

Michael Liebreich at Bloomberg New Energy Finance describes renewable energy investments some oil and gas companies are making, which he calls the “Vicar of Bray”. I don’t quite get the reason for that name.

Under the first strategy – which we could call the Vicar of Bray  – oil and gas companies attempt to maintain leadership of the commanding heights of the energy industry as it shifts away from fossil fuels to clean energy, through a perfectly-timed and elegantly-executed redirection of capital and human capacity.

Early attempts at the Vicar of Bray include BP’s famous “Beyond Petroleum” rebranding under Lord Browne in 2000 – which was followed by the investment of $8 billion in clean energy, some of which was later written off. Similarly, Shell tried to gain a leadership position in the nascent solar sector by buying Siemens Solar in 2002; six years later it sold the sub-scale and failing operation. David Crane, former CEO of NRG, famously failed in his attempt to turn it into a clean energy company.

Today, it looks like all the major European oil companies are planning on some variant of Vicar of Bray. Shell (disclosure: whose New Energies Advisory Board I recently joined) has announced its intention to invest $2 billion per year in its New Energies division until 2020, out of its total capital spending of $25-30 billion; BP is investing a more modest $0.5 billion out of its $15 billion capex budget. French oil giant Total has committed to 20 percent low-carbon businesses within 20 years (although this includes mid-stream and down-stream gas). Statoil has been investing in floating offshore wind as well as carbon capture and sequestration, and this year announced its relaunch as Equinor, removing “oil” from its name, if not from its cash flows.

MIT makes crazy AI on purpose

A group at MIT showed an AI algorithm really disturbing pictures and then asked it what it saw in some inkblots.

When a “normal” algorithm generated by artificial intelligence is asked what it sees in an abstract shape it chooses something cheery: “A group of birds sitting on top of a tree branch.”

Norman sees a man being electrocuted.

And where “normal” AI sees a couple of people standing next to each other, Norman sees a man jumping from a window.

The psychopathic algorithm was created by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as part of an experiment to see what training AI on data from “the dark corners of the net” would do to its world view.

The software was shown images of people dying in gruesome circumstances, culled from a group on the website Reddit.

Then the AI, which can interpret pictures and describe what it sees in text form, was shown inkblot drawings and asked what it saw in them.

Personally, I’m afraid of the people who spend their time seeking out photos of people dying violently and posting them on Reddit. As for the algorithm, I suppose it could be trained to identify and block violent images like the ones it has been shown, or kiddie porn, or ads targeting minors, etc. Or in the wrong hands, it could be used to block political speech or repress certain people or groups. Or the highest bidding company could get to use it to repress competitors’ ads.

Trump may bail out obsolete coal-fired power plants

According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration is about to subsidize obsolete, inefficient, and polluting coal-fired power plants. Remember the Republican sound bite about “picking winners and losers”? Hypocrites.

The plan cuts to the heart of a debate over the reliability and resiliency of a rapidly evolving U.S. electricity grid. Nuclear and coal-fired power plants are struggling to compete against cheap natural gas and renewable electricity. As nuclear and coal plants are decommissioned, regulators have been grappling with how to ensure that the nation’s power system can withstand extreme weather events and cyber-attacks…

The Energy Department would be relying partly on the Federal Power Act — the so-called Section 202 authority — that lets the administration order guaranteed profits for power plants that can store large amounts of fuel on site. And the Energy Department would be tapping the 68-year-old Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era statute once invoked by President Harry Truman to help the steel industry…

The issue is a priority for some of the president’s top supporters, including coal moguls Robert E. Murray and Joseph Craft of Alliance Resource Partners, who donated a million dollars to the president’s inauguration. The move would be one of the most direct efforts by Trump to make good on campaign promises to revive the nation’s shrinking coal industry…

flat earth

I thought the flat earth thing was just sort of a joke. Apparently not. People believe it, and the way they convince themselves and dismiss any evidence to the contrary is instructive. If people can believe this because it seems to them like “common sense”, they can very easily convince themselves not to try to grasp and understand the more complex science and system interactions that govern so much of our lives.