Category Archives: Web Article Review

fish-free fish food

With wild fish reserves more and more depleted, fish farming seems like a more sustainable and downright necessary alternative. And it has gotten huge. The problem though, as this Wired article explains, is that the food given to farmed fish is also made from wild fish. In this case, the smaller ones like anchovies that people don’t eat as much. So not only have humans sifted out most of the big fish, we are now vacuuming up the small ones that form the base of the wild food web for all the other creatures in the sea. There are some attempt to develop alternatives such as “feed made from seaweed extracts, yeast, and algae grown in bioreactors”. Basically, if humans are not going to go vegetarian, which might be the most sustainable option of all, we can at least try to eat vegetarian fish.

Fish meal—dried and ground up fish bits—and its more lubricious counterpart, fish oil, are made from cheap species that humans don’t eat that much: sardines, herring, anchovies, krill. But lots of other ocean animals do eat them; they’re kind of the linchpin of marine ecosystems. Lose the forage fish, lose a lot more. And as those forage fish catches are getting smaller, fish meal and oil-based diets are getting more expensive. Since 2012, prices have risen more than 80 percent. “Aquaculture is growing so fast that it can’t possibly continue to use any more,” says Kevin Fitzsimmons, a biologist at the University of Arizona and former president of the World Aquaculture Society. “Forage fish are just maxed out…”

Any kind of plant- or algae-based feed still relies on photosynthesis, and that requires surface area on the Earth, unless and until we go to all artificial light in high rises or in orbit powered by something like nuclear power. Yeast is interesting because it doesn’t require photosynthesis, only some kind of organic input. But if we hit the limit caused by the Earth’s footprint, then go to a technology that is not limited by Earth’s footprint, we will just tend to expand until we hit another limit. And our original natural ecosystems get completely lost somewhere along the way, if they have not been already.

how a U.S.-China war could happen

A full-blown U.S.-China war seems so stupid for both countries and the entire world as to be unthinkable. But it is thinkable because both countries may think they have something to gain from brinksmanship, and the Trump administration seems willing to take a lot of risks and to be unlikely to back down. Here is a scenario described in Foreign Policy:

Consider the testimony offered by Trump’s Secretary of State pick Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil, in his Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 11, as he warned of a more confrontational South China Sea policy: “We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.” There are only so many ways the Trump team can go about sending such signals given its vow to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which America’s allies had been hoping the United States would complete. By preemptively eliminating tools like economic statecraft from its foreign-policy toolbox, the Trump administration will be leaving itself with only hard power to counteract China’s ambitions. That would probably mean an attempted military blockade against the Chinese navy in the South China Sea…

Trump’s demonstrated willingness to toss out the rulebook on the one-China policy, with his phone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, has already ratcheted up tensions with Beijing to a level not seen since 1996, when President Bill Clinton sent two carrier battle groups through the Taiwan Strait. The passage of China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait at the end of December was largely interpreted as a stern indictment directed at Taipei and the incoming Trump administration. The carrier group then transited past Okinawa, which hosts more than half of the 50,000 American troops in Japan, into the South China Sea. A simultaneous op-ed appearing in China’s state-affiliate mouthpiece, the Global Times, warned, “If the fleet is able to enter areas where the US has core interests, the situation when the US unilaterally imposes pressure on China will change…”

Moving more U.S. naval assets into the Pacific will add to Beijing’s perceptions of U.S. containment while increasing the odds that a minor accident or hostile encounter could trigger armed conflict. One could imagine China deploying underwater submarine detection defenses in the South or East China Sea to monitor U.S. Navy movements. If Washington were to seek to destroy these assets to preempt Chinese primacy or look to extend American military superiority in the region, Beijing would feel compelled to retaliate. Trump’s team might then be tempted to think a shocking use of force could deter Beijing from escalating conflict. It’s not clear at what point Trump would decide the costs of conflict outweigh the benefits of winning such a clash.

peak bacon?

This headline in USA Today says Nation’s bacon reserves hit 50-year low as prices rise. That pretty much covers it. The reason is not lack of supply but increased foreign demand.

In December 2016, frozen pork belly inventory totaled 17.8 million pounds, the lowest level since 1957, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

As a result, prices are on the rise. The council reports pork belly prices have increased 20 percent in January. Officials said increased foreign demand might account for the decline in inventory. Hog farmers export approximately 26 percent of total productions, the council said.

free trade and big ag

When I think of the controversial side of trade, I tend to think of manufactured goods being produced cheaply abroad and imported to the U.S. But there is also a huge global trade in food and agriculture, and the U.S. is a huge player in it, both in exports and imports. It is not only big business but big politics too. This industry has lobbied heavily for trade deals like NAFTA and TPP. This Mother Jones article has a lot of interesting facts and figures. Okay, maybe Mother Jones is not a completely apolitical non-partisan voice, but this article has a lot of links you can follow up on if you want to draw your own conclusions from the raw data.

It’s interesting, we have a nominally business-friendly administration elected by voters in rural states that seems hostile to the priorities of politicians bought and paid for by the biggest and most powerful business lobby in those same rural states.

Silicon Valley Preppers

I don’t love this New Yorker article all that much, because it is mostly a bunch of anecdotes strung together with the opinions of “high net worth individuals”, as though we should care more about their opinions than the opinions of other people. I don’t. But the article had a few interesting parts, including this description of a “the Survival Condo Project, a fifteen-story luxury apartment complex built in an underground Atlas missile silo” in Kansas.

The original silo of Hall’s complex was built by the Army Corps of Engineers to withstand a nuclear strike. The interior can support a total of seventy-five people. It has enough food and fuel for five years off the grid; by raising tilapia in fish tanks, and hydroponic vegetables under grow lamps, with renewable power, it could function indefinitely, Hall said. In a crisis, his swat-team-style trucks (“the Pit-Bull VX, armored up to fifty-calibre”) will pick up any owner within four hundred miles. Residents with private planes can land in Salina, about thirty miles away…

The complex is a tall cylinder that resembles a corncob. Some levels are dedicated to private apartments and others offer shared amenities: a seventy-five-foot-long pool, a rock-climbing wall, an Astro-Turf “pet park,” a classroom with a line of Mac desktops, a gym, a movie theatre, and a library. It felt compact but not claustrophobic. We visited an armory packed with guns and ammo in case of an attack by non-members, and then a bare-walled room with a toilet. “We can lock people up and give them an adult time-out,” he said. In general, the rules are set by a condo association, which can vote to amend them. During a crisis, a “life-or-death situation,” Hall said, each adult would be required to work for four hours a day, and would not be allowed to leave without permission. “There’s controlled access in and out, and it’s governed by the board,” he said.

The “medical wing” contains a hospital bed, a procedure table, and a dentist’s chair.

It’s easy for me to say “no thanks” since, not being a “high net worth individual”, this is not an option for me. But even if I were sitting on a billion dollars I don’t think I would be interested in this.

the Doomsday Clock

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have moved their doomsday clock from “3 minutes to midnight” to “2.5 minutes to midnight”. It appears to me to be the first time they have used a fraction. A couple quotes:

Last year, and the year before, we warned that world leaders were failing to act with the speed and on the scale required to protect citizens from the extreme danger posed by climate change and nuclear war. During the past year, the need for leadership only intensified—yet inaction and brinksmanship have continued, endangering every person, everywhere on Earth…

Technological innovation is occurring at a speed that challenges society’s ability to keep pace. While limited at the current time, potentially existential threats posed by a host of emerging technologies need to be monitored, and to the extent possible anticipated, as the 21st century unfolds…

For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In its two most recent annual announcements on the Clock, the Science and Security Board warned: “The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.” In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way.

They offer some recommendations, including the U.S. and Russia returning to the arms reduction negotiating table, reducing nuclear weapons alert status and maintaining communication and crisis de-escalation channels, meeting obligations under the Paris climate accord, multilateral engagement with North Korea, nuclear power safety and risk management, and new institutions to manage “potentially malign or catastrophic misuses of new technologies”.

Trump’s infrastructure priority list

Here is a list of priority infrastructure projects the Trump administration has supposedly released. I guess these is the equivalent of Obama’s much-derided “shovel ready” projects, but they are smart enough not to revive that term. Here’s my very low tech data analysis:

  • transportation (39)
    • passenger rail/subway/stations (10)
    • freight rail (1)
    • highway/bridge (11)
    • R&D (1)
    • water transport, locks and dams, harbors/ports (12)
    • airport/air traffic control (4)
  • energy (7)
    • electric grid (3)
    • hydroelectric (2)
    • wind (1)
    • pipelines (1)
  • water (4)
    • wastewater (1)
    • reservoir (2)
    • desalination (1)

It’s an interesting list. Political discussion of infrastructure has a tendency to focus on highways and bridges, and this list is transportation heavy. But mass transit has almost equal representation. And looking at the projects, there is no sign that the administration is favoring red states or trying to punish Democrat-leaning coastal cities. There are more renewable energy projects than fossil fuel pipelines. There are a lot of dam, lock, and port projects presumably because the Army Corps of Engineers has a tendency to study and design these projects to death for decades, just waiting for a funding source to finally materialize. There are many cities that need billions in dollars in wastewater infrastructure (full disclosure: I am sitting in one of them and work in the industry), and Cleveland is the lucky winner in the list above. Cleveland is certainly a poor city and the wastewater rate payers there deserve some relief, but there are plenty of other cities (like Detroit, Newark, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia where I happen to be sitting) need help too. There must be 10,000 academics pitching research projects of various sorts, and Ohio State is the lucky winner. Ohio must have some savvy politicians who know something politicians in other states don’t know, or else they just care about their cities and infrastructure a little bit more. People sitting in Cincinnati and Akron could argue with me, I suppose.

optimal city block length

This article in Harvard Gazette is about the optimal block length for walkability. The basic conclusion is that small is generally better, but there is some minimum below which pedestrians are spending too much time crossing streets. If I were laying out a city though, I would want to err on the side of smaller because it is much easier to close streets to vehicle traffic than to create new streets where there previously weren’t any.