Category Archives: Web Article Review

rolling the DICE

The Intercept has a long take-down of William Nordhaus’s DICE climate change economic model. Well, it’s not just this journalist, who may not have past middle school algebra for all we know, in this openly left-leaning publication taking him down, it’s Joseph Stiglitz, Nicholas Stern, and Herman Daly among others. So despite some unnecessarily inflammatory language, I found the article to be a good summary of where this debate stands.

The basic take-down is that Nordhaus’s model ignores those “fat tail” tipping point scenarios, and is basically just extrapolating recent data far into the future in a linear manner, without consideration of true system dynamics. I might agree, but I can also see the point Nordhaus himself makes that our global society is doing much less than even his somewhat conservative model would recommend. Scientists sometimes deserve to be accused of “paralysis of analysis” – because there is some controversy, politicians and corporate leaders can rationalize continuing to do nothing. When in reality, all the economists and scientists cited here, who vehemently disagree with each other, all agree that our global society is doing too little too late to avert catastrophe. If our leaders would do what Nordhaus is recommending, it would be a huge step in the right direction, and then we could have a useful debate about whether we have done enough or still need to do more. We are nowhere near that point so this is quite literally an academic debate. If the more catastrophic scenarios people are talking about were moving the politicians in the right direction, that would be one thing, but I am not convinced. I think seeing the experts argue with each other just gives the politicians excuses. And we KNOW most of them failed elementary school arithmetic.

rapid intensification strikes again

Hurricane Otis, which just struck Acapulco last week as I write this, went from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane in 24 hours. This is scary because you can’t evacuate major coastal cities every time a tropical storm is nearby, and enormous damage and death can result from this, and it is becoming more frequent.

1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030!

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post says China will have 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030, an increase from a few hundred now. This is bad, in my view. It is also less than the U.S. and Russia have (5,000-6,000 each). Whatever one may think of China’s policies toward Tibet, Xinxiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, China has not invaded any sovereign UN member states without permission in recent memory (ever? there’s a good history question but I can’t think of one.) The United States and Russia have both invaded multiple sovereign states each in very recent memory (do I need to list them? Panama, Bosnia, Iraqx2, Afghanistan, Libya, Georgia, Ukraine, and I’m probably forgetting some – oh, Syria, when and how the f— did the United States invade Syria without anyone noticing? I’m not counting the dozens or hundreds of countries where we have boots on the ground with the permission of sketchy governments.) So who has reasons to be afraid of whom? I’m just saying, the United States leadership could try putting themselves in another country’s shoes and ask what they might be thinking and feeling. You don’t have to agree with your opponent to try to understand them better.

Only one country has ever used nuclear weapons in war. I hope we can continue to make this statement for a long time to come. If we have 5,000 nuclear war heads, China has 300 (making up some round numbers here), and is threatening to build more, maybe there is some room for negotiation? Maybe they would agree to stop at 1,000 if the U.S. and Russia both agreed to reduce to 2,000. The whole world would be safer. We would have a shred of credibility when we tell other countries they don’t need nuclear weapons. This would be a clear win-win-win-(etc.) situation. Are there any courageous leaders left in our country or anywhere on Earth?

flesh eating bacteria: worry or not worry?

If you are one of the people who gets flesh eating bacteria, it is horrible. This article is about a person who got a minor scrape in the Gulf of Mexico, lost her leg, and was lucky to live. But here are the numbers:

Cases of V. vulnificus are rare. Between 150 and 200 are reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention every year, with about 20% resulting in death. Most are in states along the Gulf of Mexico, but, in 2019, 7% were on the Pacific Coast. Florida averages about 37 cases and 10 deaths a year.

But a rise in cases nationally and the spread of the disease to states farther north — into coastal communities in states such as Connecticut, New York, and North Carolina — have heightened concerns about the bacterium, which can result in amputations or extensive removal of tissue even in those who survive its infections. And warmer coastal waters caused by climate change, combined with a growing population of older adults, may result in infections doubling by 2060, a study in Scientific Reports warned earlier this year.

Alternet, orignally in Tampa Bay Times

My heart certainly goes out to this person, the other 149-199 people per year who get this, and the other 299 to 399 per year who may get it by 2060. I am going to continuing worrying most about things that kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people each year. And I am going to keep in mind that being so fearful of the outside world I become a couch potato would also be very risky for my health.

just start your y-axis at zero

Seriously, just do that and it will work out most of the time. The only exception in my mind is if you are comparing the range or spread of two data sets and neither one is close to zero.

Snopes

I’ve been to Indonesia, and people there are normal human beings who are in fact somewhat shorter than Europeans on average. But their heads were typically around my shoulder height, not my knees. Some political violence has occurred there in the not-so-distant past, but I found the culture warm and hospitable. Like almost any country not at war, the biggest risk to your physical safety is probably being in a car accident or hit by a car. The next biggest if you are there for any length of time might be air pollution and second hand smoke. Once an Indonesian woman yelled at me to not sit next to her on a ferry. The ferry was crowded and there was nowhere else to sit, but I was eventually able to solve the problem by swapping seats with another woman (my gender being what made her uncomfortable apparently.) Other times I had groups of female Indonesian tourists stop me on the street and ask to take vacation pictures with me to show their friends back home. This was when I was quite a bit younger than I am now.

Ol’ Lindsey Graham’s gettin’ pretty hot, Time to turn Iran into a parking lot

Lindsey Graham was on Meet the Press on Sunday, October 16 (yesterday as I write this) saber-rattling against Iran. I couldn’t help myself thinking of this catchy little hit from 1980…uh, what year is it now?

I looked up the lyrics to this 1980 song. Pretty offensive. Or, let’s go with intended as parody.

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb
Bomb Iran
Let’s take a stand
Bomb Iran
Our country’s got a feelin’
Really hit the ceilin’, bomb Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran

Went to a mosque, gonna throw some rocks
Tell the Ayatollah, “Gonna put you in a box!”
Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb
Bomb Iran
Our country’s got a feelin’
Really hit the ceilin’, bomb Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran

Ol’ Uncle Sam’s gettin’ pretty hot
Time to turn Iran into a parking lot
Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb
Bomb Iran
Our country’s got a feelin’
Really hit the ceilin’, bomb Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran

Call the volunteers; call the bombadiers;
Call the financiers; better get their ass in gear
Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb
Bomb Iran
Our country’s got a feelin’
Really hit the ceilin’, bomb Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran
(Let’s nuke ’em! Whoo!)

genius.com

what if everything we thought we knew about the green revolution is wrong?

The story I have always accepted about the green revolution is that the world avoided famine by learning to manufacture and dump enormous quantities of fossil fuel-derived synthetic nitrogen fertilizer on crops. This came at an enormous environmental price, but saved literally billions of people. To the extent I have ever questioned this, I have wondered if there are any good alternatives to this system going forward, given the world’s enormous human population, and whether the system is sustainable (in the dictionary sense of can we continue to feed the world’s population this way even accepting the high environmental price) for the long term.

This article questions the mainstream story of the green revolution. The tag line of this website/blog is “ecosocialism or barbarism”, so I am not saying it is 100% credible, I am just saying I found it thought-provoking and the ideas/claims are worth digging into.

Meanwhile, the government urged Indian farmers to grow nonfood export crops to earn foreign currency. They switched millions of acres from rice to jute production, and by the mid-1960s India was exporting agricultural products.

Borlaug’s miracle seeds were not inherently more productive than many Indian wheat varieties. Rather, they just responded more effectively to high doses of chemical fertilizer. But while India had abundant manure from its cows, it produced almost no chemical fertilizer. It had to start spending heavily to import and subsidize fertilizer.

India did see a wheat boom after 1967, but there is evidence that this expensive new input-intensive approach was not the main cause. Rather, the Indian government established a new policy of paying higher prices for wheat. Unsurprisingly, Indian farmers planted more wheat and less of other crops.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/10/11/how-not-to-feed-a-hungry-planet/

So even if we continue with the current system, will the planet’s biophysical limits push back at some point? Synthetic fertilizer contributes to global warming emissions both through the industrial process required to fix nitrogen gas from the air and from releases from farms (nitrogen dioxide, tractors, cows, livestock, etc. All other things being equal, heat drives down grain yields. And all other things are not equal, because drought, flooding, and salinization are in the mix. Then we have nutrient-laden runoff poisoning the oceans.

On the plus side, we hear there is a demographic transition that could at least reduce the growth rate in the number of new mouths to feed. This is partly due to improving living standards particularly for women and children, but improving living standards also mean people want to eat more meat and processed food and not just bowls of grain. Meat substitutes are coming along (Chicky Nobs anyone?), so there is a lot going on.

Food is where the climate change sh**, er, rubber meets the road.

Red Caesarism

“Red Caesarism” is the idea that some right-wing white Christian nationalist type will swoop in and save the United States by establishing himself as a dictator. Sounds crazy, but some people out there are quite serious about it. Among them Kevin Slack, a professor at Hillsdale College, Steve Bannon, and quite possibly Donald J. Trump.

Sure, who wouldn’t want a benevolent dictator, as long as they agree with you. Of course, one group’s benevolent dictator will be another’s tyrant. Just give Handmaid’s Tale a quick reread and see if you want that to come true. Which is why we have a system of government that, despite its many faults, has remained relatively stable and allowed for a peaceful transition of power longer than any other one on Earth at the moment (I think this is true…somebody feel free to provide a counterexample.)

I can still envision a scenario where Red Caesar tries to do his thing, ends up with his head on a pike, and we get a military governor instead. At least for awhile. And then the whole cycle could repeat. Let’s hope not. Let’s try to restore some faith in our election system instead.

private surveillance

Private companies are making money vacuuming up photos of things in the public realm, like license plates and peoples’ faces, and selling them to law enforcement. I think we have to accept that the technology of potential tyranny is here to stay, and in fact it is necessary in a world of mass shootings and potentially much worse things, like bioterrorism. We need to figure out a way to regulate and channel it to positive purposes in democratic societies, but we will never be able to make it go away or even slow it down.