Here’s an interesting 2013 TED talk by Allan Savory, where he talks about his theory that intentionally grazing livestock at high densities, while keeping them bunched and moving as though they were a herd of wild herbivores pursued by predators, can reverse desertification and make a big dent in climate change. It all sounds very scientific and proven when he explains it. I also recall though that there are criticisms that he is resistant to sharing his research results with other scientists in a way that would allow them to reproduce his research and verify his findings, which a serious scientist would normally do.
Category Archives: Web Article Review
measuring blood pressure through your @$$
This seems like a good idea actually – a toilet seat that measures your heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen level. It’s designed for hospitals, but it makes a lot of sense to me. It would happen automatically, built automatically into your daily routine and with no wasted time or extra effort. You could have it sent right to your doctor if you wanted to.
geoengineering and rice yields
Would injecting sulfate particles into the atmosphere to counteract global warming affect rice yields in the tropics? Yes, according to this paper, but not in the direction I guessed. Even though rice is a tropical crop, it is sensitive to temperature – higher temperatures decrease its yield, and the effect of lowering temperature would be greater than the effect of having less light, leading to increased yield. At least in this study which wired together a complicated climate model with a complicated rice yield model.
Costa Rica
Costa Rica is planning to go carbon free by 2050. The trick is that most of their electricity is already hydroelectric, so what is left is to electrify their transportation system and then use that electricity to run it. This exact recipe won’t work everywhere, but the lesson is that electrifying opens up options for how to generate that electricity down the road.
Philadelphia to Pittsburgh hyperloop
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is apparently studying the idea of a hyperloop that could theoretically make the trip from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in half an hour. Initially they are looking just at freight. The larger context is that the Pennsylvania Turnpike has the right of way, is not doing well financially, charging trucks to carry freight is the core of their business, and they are worried about some killer app coming along. Good for somebody at a dinosaur organization like this to have a little bit of vision and actually get a real study funded.
Of course, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are not really connected in a socioeconomic sense other than being part of an anachronistic and mostly irrelevant political entity. Philadelphia is part of the Boston to DC metro corridor, and Pittsburgh is somewhat isolated but part of a loosely defined region that might include Cleveland, Cincinnati, even Chicago and Detroit if there were really good rail links in place. Put a really fast rail link in place between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and now you could buy a super cheap fixer up house in Pittsburgh and commute to your job in New York or Chicago.
climate, conflict, and migration
A new paper explores causal links between climate change effects (like drought, famine, and high food prices), violent conflict, and mass migration. And yes, the conclusion seems to be that climate change can be a big driver when the seeds of social and economic instability are already in place.
Climate, conflict and forced migration
Despite the lack of robust empirical evidence, a growing number of media reports attempt to link climate change to the ongoing violent conflicts in Syria and other parts of the world, as well as to the migration crisis in Europe. Exploiting bilateral data on asylum seeking applications for 157 countries over the period 2006–2015, we assess the determinants of refugee flows using a gravity model which accounts for endogenous selection in order to examine the causal link between climate, conflict and forced migration. Our results indicate that climatic conditions, by affecting drought severity and the likelihood of armed conflict, played a significant role as an explanatory factor for asylum seeking in the period 2011–2015. The effect of climate on conflict occurrence is particularly relevant for countries in Western Asia in the period 2010–2012 during when many countries were undergoing political transformation. This finding suggests that the impact of climate on conflict and asylum seeking flows is limited to specific time period and contexts.
generating hydrogen from solar panels
It makes sense that you could use electricity from solar panels to split water vapor into hydrogen and oxygen, but why do that instead of just using the electricity? I guess if storing and using the hydrogen gas is more cost-efficient or reliable than charging a battery. Still, it seems like the days of storing and burning dangerous gases and liquids rather than electrifying might be numbered.
space based solar
The government is finally getting serious about space based solar. The government of China, that is. The U.S. government (Jimmy Carter, NASA) was serious about it back in the 1970s as I recall (actually, I don’t recall because I was an infant, but I have since read). Our cynical government stopped looking into shortly thereafter and the public imagination withered and died. The interesting thing is that the Earth is in the path of only an infinitessimal portion of the sun’s energy. However much energy we need and are able to harness with our technology, we should be able to intercept it and beam it back, without depriving anyone or any natural ecosystem of their fair share. Utlimately, the limit would probably be how to deal with waste heat rather than any upper limit on how much energy we could intercept and beam back to Earth.
Deepak Chopra interviewed by Ron Burgundy
Will Ferrell has a podcast where he interviews people in the persona of Ron Burgundy, his character from Anchorman. If you haven’t seen or don’t like Anchorman, you won’t like this podcast but if you loved the character, you probably will like the podcast. I am a fan personally.
Anyway, the Deepak Chopra interview would be interesting even without Will Ferrell clowning around in the background. Deepak Chopra claims to meditate for two hours in the morning, followed by an hour of yoga, followed by a day of leisure, possibly a cocktail, and a final meditation on the “mysteries of death”. The last is interesting because, if you believe his Wikipedia page, when he was younger he claimed that you could meditate your way out of aging and death. He seems to have changed his mind to a certain extent.
where academic economics is headed
Writing in Boston Review, Harvard Professor Dani Rodrik and others talk about how public opinion has turned against the economics profession to some extent over the last decade or so, and how academic economists are trying to engage with the issues of the day, including inequality, technological change and climate change.
- economic history
- behavioral economics
- the study of culture (hmm, not sure if economists first thought of this one…)
- wealth concentration
- costs of climate change, and setting an appropriate carbon price
- “concentration of important markets” (maybe this means concentration of a few firms within a given market?)
- working class income stagnation
- social mobility
- empirical data analysis to test and confirm theory
- analysis and study of institutions
- appropriate allocation of property rights, including “intellectual property”
- innovation, technological change, and their effects on growth and labor markets
- money, power, and politics
They list a few “economic universals” which they think will never change: “market-based incentives, clear property rights, contract enforcement, macroeconomic stability, and prudential regulation”. Traditional topics that will probably always be studied include labor, credit, and insurance markets; tax, fiscal and monetary policy; international trade; recessions and financial crises; public goods and social insurance programs. I had to look up prudential regulation, which is basically capital requirements and limits on risk in the banking sector.