Taking a break - no post this week

I am taking a break this week and plan to post again on Sunday, December 22.

U.S.-China trade war: Is the latest battle really tit for tat?

The United States and China moved closer to an all-out trade war as China last week banned export of the key high-tech metals antimony, gallium and germanium to the United States. That was in response to the United States banning exports to China of computer chip-making equipment, software and high-bandwidth memory chips (used for advanced applications).

It should come as no surprise that the three metals listed above are all implicated in the production of high-performance chips of the very type the United States won't send to China. Which leads me to ask: Which is more important for making advanced computer chips, the actual chemical elements needed to make them or the machines required to manufacture them?

More than two years ago I wrote a piece entitled "East vs West, 'Stuff' vs 'Finance'". My premise was that the United States and European countries ("The West") have hollowed out their economies by focusing on the finance, insurance and real estate sectors, the so-called FIRE economy, to the neglect of manufacturing, mining and agriculture.

President of the Titanic

Four years from now Vice President Kamala Harris may be glad she didn't get the promotion she was seeking from the American electorate. In fact, all those vying for high office around the world may find that the going from here on out will be much more difficult. What few of them realize is that global society has not only become a version of the Titanic, but that we're at the place in the story where the Titanic has already hit an iceberg.

Of course, government leaders around the world generally believe that—whatever our current troubles—the technological progress of humanity will continue unabated and our lives will get better. The world system we've created is, well, unsinkable. At least that is what they are conveying to voters; politicians generally know better than to suggest that under their watch people are going to have to make sacrifices. The last politician to do that was U.S. President Jimmy Carter and he was defeated for re-election.

Carter seemed to understand that we live in an age of resource limits and was attempting to prepare us for the necessary transition. But Americans didn't want to turn down the heat and wear sweaters indoors; they preferred gym shorts and T-shirts instead. Thirty-six years after what came to be called Carter's "Malaise Speech" one writer opined that "President Carter made the unforgivable error of treating the American people like adults."

More deglobalization: Russia cuts uranium exports to U.S.

Last week the United States authorized the use of American-made long-range missiles by Ukraine against Russia which the Russian government says risks escalation to a nuclear conflict in the almost three-year-old war. The Russian government reacted by announcing an unnerving shift in nuclear doctrine. It also announced reductions in uranium exports to the United States. By how much and for how long, the government did not say.

In light of what can only be seen as a proxy war in Ukraine between the United States along with its NATO allies and the Russian Federation, it is passing strange that the United States still relies on Russia for 27 percent of its enriched uranium. Oddly, the reaction in the spot market for uranium was a 4 percent slump in prices. Most customers for uranium—primarily nuclear power plants—have stockpiles and long-term contracts, so an immediate effect on spot prices was unlikely. But the price of uranium mining stocks soared in anticipation of greater pressure on mine supply outside Russia, the world's sixth largest producer.

This development highlights a vulnerability among metal importers across the globe. When relations between a large exporter of minerals and a large importer of them goes south, the consequences can be significant. While it's true that the exporter loses some revenue, critical material and energy shortages can have large effects. Inadequate uranium fuel for nuclear power stations could eventually lead to loss of generating capacity.

Falling human fertility can't be reversed by cheerleading for motherhood

Elon Musk told the world three years ago that "civilization is going to crumble" without a reversal in the accelerating decline in human fertility. He believes decisions by couples to have fewer children or no children at all because of environmental harms such as climate change (which is linked, of course, to growing population) are wrongheaded.

In Russia leaders are so concerned about falling fertility rates that health agencies are offering financial incentives for having children and free access to fertility treatment while discouraging abortions (which remain legal). The Russian government even revived the "Soviet-era honour award called Mother Heroine, which recognizes and honours women with 10 or more children."

Other countries with low birth rates are also offering incentives:

In Tokyo, the rates are so low that the government is launching a dating app to help citizens find love and get married.

The Japanese government has also tried to boost fertility rates by offering up to a year of parental leave and even cash incentives.

In South Korea, the least fertile country in the world, Seoul is offering people money to reverse their vasectomies or untie their tubes.

That's on top of South Korean companies offering employees up to $75,000 to have children, and a government allowance system that gives all parents with newborns $750 a month until their baby turns one.

While demographic experts insist it is primarily decisions by couples worldwide to marry later and have fewer children that are the cause of this surprising decline in fertility, they ignore the more ominous explanation, declining sperm counts caused by toxic chemicals and unhealthy modern diets (which are, of course, laced with toxic chemicals).

Donald Trump and the impossible destination of Globalism (revisited)

Back in 2016 a month before Donald Trump was elected for the first time, I wrote a piece that I'm revisiting here. So much of what I said then still applies that I encourage you to read that piece. My thinking was heavily informed by a lecture by the now late French philosopher Bruno Latour entitled "Why Gaia is not the Globe."

Latour made the case that Trump's perplexing popularity could be traced to his ability to give voice to the anger and fear generated by the effects of Globalism. In fact, Latour noticed that the anger and fear were actually widespread and reflected in Great Britain's exit from European Union and the many right-wing movements in European countries that now are all too familiar eight years later.

I am capitalizing Globalism because it really is an ideology and not the "inevitable" reality that so many of us think it is. In fact, as Latour explains, it is an impossible destination. First, let me lay out a definition of Globalism by quoting from my 2016 piece:

The American food system creates chronic diseases; the medical system 'manages' them

The explosive growth in the use of weight-loss drugs is a supreme irony within a food system that creates the very chronic diseases that lead to obesity and a medical system that "manages" those conditions with no intention of actually curing them. In fact, "manage" is too kind of word for this setup for the truth is, medical treatment of chronic conditions more often than not just perpetuates these conditions and sometimes makes them worse.

I rarely do book reviews, but I believe Metabolical may be the most important contemporary account of the nexus between modern diets, chronic illness and ecological ruin. So, I'm going to give you a taste of what's in it (pun intended).

According to Dr. Robert Lustig, author of Metabolical, thanks to the food and medical industries, the American public has come to believe the following things:

1. Gaining weight (sometimes lots of it) as we age is normal.


2. Developing chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease is inevitable for many people.


3. Once a person has a chronic condition, it cannot be reversed and must be managed primarily through medication and sometimes surgery.


4. Cancer strikes mostly randomly.


5. Exercise can prevent at least some of these conditions or even reverse them.

Bird flu, infected cows and playwright Henrik Ibsen

As I contemplate the rampant spread of bird flu through America's cattle herd, I'm reminded of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. The lead character, Dr. Thomas Stockmann, is the medical officer for the local baths, what we might call a health spa. The baths are a significant new source of income for the city and its residents.

Stockmann discovers that the water coming into the baths is unsanitary and unsafe. He writes a piece for the local newspaper announcing the problem, but the town's leaders (whom we discover later are heavily invested in the baths) stop publication of the piece and vilify Stockmann publicly, labeling him an "enemy of the people."

The veterinarians who warned about the spread of bird flu in American cattle herds earlier this year are today feeling a lot like Thomas Stockmann. According to Vanity Fair magazine, "The vets who sounded the alarm have been silenced, some even fired, and won’t discuss their experiences on the record for fear of reprisals. And the federal agency that was supposed to help thwart the virus instead has allowed for an unspoken 'don’t test, don’t tell' policy among dairy farmers."

AI + synthetic biology: What could possibly go wrong?

Science fiction films are replete with human space travelers visiting far-away planets that have atmospheres suitable for those humans to breath. Thus, the bother of wearing a space suit or other protective gear is dispensed with, and the encounters with alien races, both hostile and friendly, can proceed without such cumbersome gear mucking up the works.

In addition, these planets often have plants and animals that are strikingly similar to those found on Earth. The problem with this all-too-frequent occurrence in science fiction stories is that even if such planets exist, they would have microorganisms entirely unfamiliar to the human body and thus likely to kill it within days or weeks. Humans would have no immunity and suffer a fate similar to that of the indigenous people of North and South America when Europeans arrived bearing diseases unfamiliar to indigenous immune systems and therefore profoundly deadly. Up to 90 percent of the natives perished.

Enter synthetic biology, that is, the engineering of organisms never before seen on Earth. We've already seen it in the form of genetically engineered crops such as GMO soybeans and corn. But that is a pale forerunner of what is about to happen: the marriage of artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology. For many years already scientists have been able to create novel sequences of DNA, and they've already created dangerous designer viruses for research purposes. I've written previously about the possibility of systemic ruin that can flow from these activities. And I've voiced concerns about the democratization of genetic engineering through do-it-yourself kits: "Anyone with a credit card and a mailing address can now order their own genetic engineering kit."

Taking a break - no post this week

I am taking a break this week and plan to post again on Sunday, October 20.

Single point of failure: Hurricane Helene and high-tech's low-tech vulnerability

Among the horrific reports about the damage Hurricane Helene unleashed on the southeastern United States was one about Spruce Pine, North Carolina, population 2,194 (as of the 2020 census). The town was hard hit. One resident reported that the water treatment plant "washed away." Many of the town's old brick riverfront buildings are gone, and the mud is everywhere.

Just to the north of Spruce Pine is what could easily be considered a single point of failure in the supply chain that makes the modern high-tech world possible. It's there that two companies mine quartz so pure that it is suitable (after some refining) for the high-temperature crucibles that are used to melt silicon—melting point 1414 degrees C or 2577 degrees F. I'm referring to the silicon destined to be made into silicon wafers, the basis for modern electronics and photovoltaic solar cells. The crucibles have to be made from ultra-pure quartz so that they don't contain impurities that could ruin the silicon. Top-of-the-line ultra-pure quartz has no more than 80 molecules of impurities for every one billion molecules of silicon dioxide, the chemical formula of sand which turns into quartz in the Earth's crust under great pressures and high temperatures.

It turns out that Spruce Pine produces most of the ultra-pure quartz in the world. Exactly what percentage is a secret held within a small and secretive industry. The largest producer, Sibelco, announced that operations have ceased at its Spruce Pine mines as of September 26. The Quartz Corp. also announced a shutdown as of the same day. How long the two companies' operations will be down is unknown.

Memory in the age of the utterly now: The precarious state of the Internet Archive

"Information wants to be free" has been the watchword of the so-called free culture movement which has manifested itself in such phenomena as the free and open source software community and as Creative Commons. (For those who don't know, Creative Commons is a way to establish rights and authorship of creative works while also specifying how those works can be distributed and used by others in ways that are far less restrictive than traditional copyright—for instance, by allowing for varying levels of sharing, editing and incorporation in the works of others.)

It is in this tradition that following the sale of his web crawling company to Amazon for $250 million in 1999, Brewster Kahle increasingly devoted himself to his nonprofit startup, the Internet Archive, a project which became his full-time pursuit as of 2002 and remains so today. But today, the future of the Internet Archive is highly uncertain.

It is very likely that almost everyone reading this sentence has used the Internet Archive at some point to retrieve internet pages no longer available, to do research, or to archive internet pages for future reference.

Just the clash of opinions or different facts? Facing the epistemological divide

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late U.S. senator from New York, was famous for saying, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." It turns out that not everyone today agrees with Moynihan. It might seem that the rancor in political life that we are witnessing across the globe is merely the result of a clash of opinions. But, this upheaval is actually the product of a vast epistemological divide. (Epistemology is, of course, the study of how we know what we know.) There is no longer a consensus about how to determine what is, in fact, a fact.

I know this because those on each side look at the other and say, "How can they believe that that's true?" What they mean is not the other side's opinions; they mean what the other side believes are facts. In the realm of politics, the ledger on "mistaken" facts may seem lopsided. But politics is the realm of exaggeration and so no side is immune from mistakes.

But I'm more interested in the broader cultural and scientific battle over how to construct facts. Out of habit we think of facts as something freestanding. Facts are true whether we acknowledge them or not. Water boils at 212 degrees F. That's a fact one can't dispute. But, of course, even that fact is context-dependent. The statement is true for water containing no impurities under one atmosphere of pressure. If you add salt, it will raise the boiling point. Even simple statements of fact, it turns out, are more complicated that we think.

Going bananas: Why the approach to the latest banana blight misses the point

You may not know it. But your bananas have been under attack for more than a decade by a small fungus, Fusarium oxysporum. Half of the global production of bananas is in a variety called Cavendish which has become susceptible to a new strain of the fungus. A previous strain of Fusarium wiped out the Gros Michel variety of bananas which used to dominate world markets until the 1950s.

The Cavendish seemed immune to the previous strain and could therefore be planted on the same land—Fusarium lives in the soil—that the Gros Michel occupied. The Cavendish is what is mostly exported to countries that do not grow bananas and therefore what most people see in modern supermarkets and greengrocers. It is named after William Cavendish, the sixth Duke of Devonshire, who received a shipment from a friend who had gotten them from Mauritius. Cavendish's gardener proceeded to cultivate them in the duke's greenhouses.

If you are a banana eater, you may have noticed that the Cavendish you peel and eat every morning has no seeds. It turns out that the Cavendish is propagated by cloning—which means that Cavendish banana trees around the world are genetically identical. And so, every one of them will likely eventually succumb to the new strain of Fusarium as it spreads worldwide.

From Plato to AI: Are we losing our minds?

Plato, through the words of the central character in his famous dialogues, the philosopher Socrates, tells us that the invention of writing severely impaired human memory. The impairment resulted in part from disuse. We humans no longer had to commit to memory important information that could now be rendered on the page. Socrates insists that living memory is far better and far more responsive to inquiry than the written word.

Human learning has not, however, disappeared or even diminished in the age of the written word, but rather prospered as the wisdom of the ages can be readily passed down to each generation. The invention of moveable type in the 15th century spread the written word across world, making it accessible as never before. Plato must have realized the irony that he was preserving Socrates' argument against writing for future generations by writing it down. Plato could not have guessed, however, that 2500 years later his writings would be part of the canon of Western philosophy and that moveable type and modern transportation and communications would make his writings available practically anywhere.

Modern communications devices and adjuncts to learning and investigation such as artificial intelligence (AI) programs bid us to remember how writing itself was once critiqued and how that critique in large part was dispelled by subsequent events. But ought we be so sanguine about our reliance on such devices as cellphones, computers, and the emerging AI programs? Do these aid us or dull our abilities? Do they allow us to inquire deeper into the human world or become more divorced from it?

I suppose the general answer is: It all depends on how we use these tools.

Taking a holiday break - no post this week

I am taking a holiday break this week and plan to post again on Sunday, September 8.

Not if, but when: The coming North Atlantic deep freeze

In recent years scientists have been watching and measuring the flow of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, (AMOC), what Americans often refer to as the Gulf Stream though that flow is only part of this vast ocean current. For a long time the belief was that the AMOC—which transports heat from the tropics to Greenland, Iceland and northern Europe and makes them much warmer than they would otherwise be—would continue to flow with no discernible end date.

But two recent studies suggest that the current could not just slow, but stop altogether sometime around mid-century thereby lowering temperatures dramatically in northern Europe. The earlier study from 2023 suggests a collapse could occur sometime between 2025 and 2095, a wide interval, but actually the blink of an eye in geologic time. The more recent study released this year used a more sophisticated model and narrowed the window from 2037 to 2064. Both studies put the most likely date of collapse at mid-century (either 2050 or 2057).

Rising temperatures due to climate change are resulting in vastly increased meltwater coming from the the Greenland ice sheet—which on average is over one mile thick. This meltwater is being dumped into the North Atlantic where it reduces the salinity of the ocean water, thus making the water less dense. This reduced density appears to be slowing the current where it dives deep into the ocean, a dive that is essential for the current to continue to flow.

Taking a short break - no post this week

I am taking a short break this week and plan to post again on Sunday, August 25.

Dark oxygen: We don't know what we don't know

Last month some very clever scientists published their findings on oxygen production on the seafloor. What is astonishing is that previously we've believed that free oxygen in the atmosphere and dissolved in the oceans had come almost exclusively from plants performing photosynthesis. But here at the lightless abysmal depths these scientists found levels of oxygen consistent with production of what they call "dark oxygen." The discovery is yet another example of that eternal verity that we don't know what we don't know.

The findings—which were partly funded by deep sea mining interests—are now instantly under attack by those same interests. The reason can be found in the mechanism by which the oxygen is being produced. The scientists believe that the very minerals which the deep sea miners want to hoover up off the ocean floor are the ones facilitating what they call "seawater electrolysis." Electrolysis is the process of freeing the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that make up water from each other using an electric current. The hypothesis is that electrolysis is taking place spontaneously as a result of the presence of copper and manganese nodules lying on the seabed.

The implications are profound if it turns out that this is a significant contributor to free oxygen on the planet. No one knows for sure, and the mechanism producing the oxygen has not yet been verified by other researchers. And that verification is precisely what the scientists say needs to happen. But that, of course, might delay any deep sea mining until the implications of that mining for dark oxygen are clarified.

Who will pay for the cost of overheated humans in the age of climate change?

Hey there, it's hot in here

SOURCE: The Walt Disney Company (News Release)

 

 

 

One of the inevitable consequences of climate change is that in most places temperatures will rise. This may seem welcome (at least for a while) in cooler regions, but most people live in temperate and tropical zones. When the Walt Disney Co. built Disney World in central Florida—it opened in 1971—the location was warm and sunny three seasons of the year, even if a little hot in the summer.

Now, central Florida is not just a little hot in the summer; it has become unbearable for many of Disney World's employees who must work outside, some of them wearing heavy costumes while playing such roles as Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Disney princesses. With the local heat index rising above 100 degrees F, outdoor workers are becoming overheated and complaining about lack access to shade, water and adequate break time. Recently, a broken air-conditioner in a waiting room for actors led to two fainting incidents—after which the air-conditioner was repaired.

Of course, Disney workers aren't the only ones suffering from overheating. Those working in farm fields aren't there to entertain people, but to do heavy work in the noonday sun. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) reports that farmworkers suffer heat-related mortality at rates 20 times those of other workers. The EDF calculates that 2 million farmworkers in the United States now face 21 days a year during which heat conditions are unsafe. But climate change is a moving target. If global greenhouse gas emissions peak at mid-century, that would add an additional 18 days of unsafe heat conditions.

Mexican oil production to decline rapidly after 2030: Tip of the iceberg?

The news agency Reuters has seen something the rest of us haven't: Internal Mexican government estimates of that country's future oil production which paint a gloomy picture of rapid decline after 2030. Is this admission just the tip of the iceberg?

For many years those of us suggesting that a peak in worldwide oil production was in the offing kept pointing to several pieces of intelligence including the following:

1. Leaks of information about lower-than-publicly-stated oil reserves among major oil producers. In 2005, leaked internal government documents put Kuwait's oil reserves at 48 billion barrels, just half of the 99 billion publicly claimed at the time.


2. Unexplained massive one-year jumps in oil reserves of major OPEC producers in the 1980s. This was probably tied to OPEC production quotas that were, in part, based on stated reserves. In 2007 the former executive vice president for exploration and production at Saudi Aramco told an audience that as a result of these unwarranted jumps in reported oil reserves, world reserves had been overestimated by 300 billion barrels.

Not with a bang but a whimper: Making our own pandemics

One headline last week suggested that future pandemics are "a bigger threat than nukes." Hence, my allusion to T. S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men in my title. Pandemics may or may not be a bigger threat than nuclear war, but the assertion highlights the increasing concern some of those in the medical community have regarding ongoing failed policies in addressing COVID even as a summer surge of cases hits the United States. Our own response and behavior is not only sustaining COVID infections, but also setting the stage for new pandemics.

For example, concern remains that the ongoing "bird flu" infections of cattle will lead to variants capable of being spread human-to-human. It's worth reiterating that since 2003 half of the 889 people worldwide known to have contracted the virus called H5N1 have died.

While what is called the case fatality rate for COVID is notoriously difficult to estimate—because so many cases have gone unreported—one estimate puts it at 0.7 percent. That means the rate for the small number of bird flu cases in humans is more than 71 times higher than COVID. And, yet there seems to be little effort in the United States to check the spread of bird flu among cattle, let alone poultry. Some 99 million chickens and turkey have been infected since a new "highly pathogenic strain" appeared in early 2022. These developments seem like they should be "hair on fire" events given the potential seriousness of the outcome. Finland is so far the only country to offer bird flu vaccinations for people, in this case, those who work with potentially infected animals.

Can coastal property values weather climate change?

A reader of mine asked the following question in a recent email: If climate change is such a threat, how come U.S. coastal properties continue to rise in value? This seems like a conundrum unless you know what is actually driving the trend. And, it's worth noting that coastal home prices in certain instances have suddenly collapsed along with the shoreline next to those homes due to coastal erosion—which, not surprisingly, increases with rising sea level. A Nantucket seaside home assessed for tax purposes just this year at $1.9 million recently sold for $200,000. Expect more stories like this one to start appearing in the news.

So, what about other homes that continue to hold their value and even rise in value? Here are some of the drivers of what will some day be considered an insane bubble in coastal real estate prices:

Why adaptation to climate change misses the mark

The climate change deniers frequently offer three contradictory responses as their position becomes more and more untenable in the face of mounting evidence, to wit: 1) There is no climate change, 2) it'll be cheaper to adapt to climate change than prevent it, and 3) climate change is good for us—it will improve agriculture and open the Arctic to resource exploitation.

It is the second of these that I wish to discuss. There is no solid evidence that adapting to climate change will be cheaper, nor do the deniers provide a clear picture of what adapting would mean. In other words, they have no comprehensive plan; they are simply trying to muddy the waters to stall efforts at addressing climate change because the business interests behind them do not want to bear the costs.

The number one reason adaptation will be so costly is that climate change is a moving target. Sea level, temperature, and severe weather are not going to simply reach a new constant level to which we can adapt for the long run. On the contrary, these are all moving targets. Infrastructure improvements made today which are meant to last 20, 30, even 50 years are unlikely to address the ever-rising sea level, temperatures and severe weather in those periods. We have been consistently surprised by the pace of climate change. There is no reason to believe that the surprises will magically cease.

Taking a short break - no post this week

I am taking a short break this week and plan to post again on Sunday, July 7.

What the H5N1 scare tells us about ourselves and our society

I don't know whether there is an H5N1 "bird flu" pandemic in our future. H5N1 seems to be very dangerous to humans. Half of the 900 people known to have contracted it worldwide since 2003 have died. And, so a lot of scientists are concerned about the possibility of a pandemic now that the virus has crossed over into mammals including dairy cows.

That means that the milk we drink may have the virus in it though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says that pasteurization makes the milk safe. Or does it? A recent study indicates that a "small but detectable quantity" of H5N1 bird flu virus can survive "a common approach to pasteurizing milk."

We humans think we can build moats around our modern way of life that protect us from the natural world. We will pasteurize our milk and that will solve the problem. We will spray kitchen counters with some noxious disinfectant to kill offending organisms. We will wash our hands again and again with anti-bacterial soaps. And, when soap and water are not available, we'll use hand sanitizer. All the while we have actually been building the equivalent of superhighways into the heart of human society everywhere due to our dense living arrangements and global travel and trade.

Boondoggle Watch: Carbon capture great for making things worse, study finds

The study I refer to didn't actually say that carbon capture makes things worse. But that is the only conclusion one can draw given that the capturing is done for the purpose of dramatically lengthening the life of oil wells that would otherwise close, according to a recent piece in DeSmog. The oil wells in question are in Saskatchewan and were scheduled to close in 2016. Now with carbon dioxide pumping into them, they could produce oil for somewhere between 39 and 84 more years.

Back in May I reminded readers of a more expansive definition of the word "boondoggle," one promulgated by author Dmitri Orlov. To wit: It's not just something that is wasteful. Ideally, it should be something which "create[s] additional problems that can only be addressed by yet more boondoggles."

Carbon capture, it turns out, provides an excellent complementary boondoggle to the machines mentioned in my previous piece, machines which extract carbon dioxide from air rather than at the source as is done with carbon capture. In this case the carbon dioxide comes from the Dakota Gasfication Plant in Beulah, North Dakota, which according to its website is "the only commercial-scale coal gasification facility in the United States that manufactures natural gas." The gas—made synthetically from lignite coal—is piped to various electric cooperatives in five states which burn it to generate electricity. The captured carbon dioxide is then transmitted via pipeline to the Weyburn and Midale oil fields in Saskatchewan and injected into oil wells to force oil out, something the industry refers to as enhanced oil recovery.

After Cape Town will a breakdown of confidence bring 'Day Zero' to Mexico City and Bogotá?

'Day Zero' never arrived in Cape Town, South Africa. Day Zero was the name given by Cape Town officials to the day in 2018 they would have to shut down water flows to most of the city taps because of inadequate water supplies—supplies that had run desperately short in the wake of an extreme three-year drought. Day Zero never came for two reasons: First, those officials cajoled Cape Town residents into cutting water consumption in half. Second, the rains finally resumed a few months later.

Now Mexico City and Bogotá are both facing their own possible Day Zero. Droughts, aging infrastructure, poor water management and climate change have resulted in dangerously low water supplies. But, as this piece in Grist points out, it may not be so easy to convince residents of the two cities that the problem is real and that they should trust the pronouncements of their city officials.

The city administration in Cape Town generally enjoys the trust of its citizens who rallied together with widespread voluntary efforts to reduce water consumption. Neither Mexico City nor Bogotá enjoy that same kind of credibility.

Residents of both cities may simply keep their fingers crossed and hope for rain. And, if they do and the rain doesn't come, then Day Zero will arrive.

Messy business: Polluted 'biosolids' derail recycling of human waste

Many years ago a civil engineer explained to me the wisdom of taking solid biological residues from sewage treatment plants—dubbed biosolids—and using them on farm fields and garden plots. After all, nature intended for human wastes to return to the soil to replenish it in the same way animal manure has long been used to fertilize farm fields.

"What about all the industrial chemicals that end up in wastewater," I asked. He replied that these weren't significant enough to be concerned. I was skeptical.

Fast forward to last week when the U.S. Congress took up a proposal to allocate $500 million to compensate farmers whose livelihoods have been undermined by applying biosolids—what most of us call sewage sludge—to their cropland. It turns out that those biosolids have poisoned both land and livestock across the United States. The ostensible concern is so-called "forever chemicals," ones used to make such products as Teflon, firefighting foam, stain-resistant upholstery and water-resistant sports gear. These chemicals are linked to "cancer, liver damage, decreased fertility, and increased risk of asthma and thyroid disease." They are dangerous to human and animal health even at very low levels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this year proposed limiting certain of these chemicals to less than 10 parts per trillion in drinking water. In two cases, the proposed limit is 4 parts per trillion.

Taking a holiday break - no post this week

I am taking a break for the Memorial Day weekend and plan to post again on Sunday, June 2.

Yet more boondoggles: Extracting carbon dioxide from the air, mining asteroids

The dictionary doesn't quite do justice to the word "boondoggle" according to author Dmitri Orlov, best known for his book Reinventing Collapse. A contemporary boondoggle must not only be wasteful, it should, if possible, also create additional problems that can only be addressed by yet more boondoggles. (This does NOT preclude boondoggles from being profitable for certain insiders.)

In Orlov's universe, such boondoggles dissipate the wealth and vitality of a society until it collapses. But if executed properly, boondoggles first grind down society without actually collapsing it. When the collapse finally does comes, it is like "falling out of a ground-floor window." In the collapsenik lexicon, this is what passes for a soft landing.

Two important boondoggles were in the news recently: a big set of machines that extract carbon dioxide from the air and companies formed to mine asteroids.

Dr. Seuss and the weight-loss drug craze

As the weight-loss drug craze has taken off, I couldn't help thinking of a story my mother read to me when I was a child called "The Sneetches". The story was written by famed children's author Dr. Seuss.

The key character in "The Sneetches" is a huckster named Sylvester McMonkey McBean. The shrewd McBean observes that Sneetches—yellowish, flightless, bird-like creatures—come in two types: those with stars on their bellies and those without. The star-belly Sneetches consider themselves superior to those without. McBean brings in a machine that will attach a star to the belly of any Sneetch—for a price, of course. He does brisk business as all the Sneetches without stars line up to get theirs.

Once the star-belly Sneetches find out what's happening, they are aghast. They can no longer tell for certain which Sneetches are true star-belly Sneetches and which are imposters. McBean has a solution. It's a star-off machine which the congenital star-belly Sneetches flock to in order to re-establish their position of superiority in Sneetch society.

You can pretty much guess what comes next: The newly minted star-belly Sneetches rush to have the stars taken off their bellies in order to keep up with the original star-belly Sneetches who are now starless. But, of course, that's not the end of it. The whole society of Sneetches proceeds to cycle back and forth between the two machines, chasing the now elusive and ever-changing mark (or unmark) of status until the Sneetches are all penniless. McBean moves on. But in true Dr. Seuss fashion, the Sneetches realize that stars are not all that important and decide to live in harmony and equality for star-belly and non-star-belly Sneetches alike.

Getting back to diet drugs, the most important thing you need to know about these drugs is that you must continue to take them in order keep weight off. I feel that Sylvester McMonkey McBean must be in the wings somewhere.

Taking a short break - no post this week

I am taking a short break this week and plan to post again on Sunday, May 12.

Presidential immunity and the 'Dark Age Ahead'

When author Jane Jacobs published Dark Age Ahead in 2004, she was already seeing the signs of a dark age emerging. The prerequisites for such an age are a relentless decline in accountability and transparency across society. The most troubling sign of such a decline is not that we forget how to structure and run a robust society, but that we forget that we forgot. In such a case there is no attempt to rediscover the pillars of a healthy polity because there is no memory that there ever was one.

Last week at the U.S. Supreme Court lack of accountability and forgetting that we have forgotten seemed to be on display during oral arguments regarding whether a U.S. president should be immune from criminal prosecution after the president leaves office. (U.S. Department of Justice policy already forbids prosecution of a sitting president.) At least some members of the court seemed to forget that they forgot that no president of the United States has ever before been criminally prosecuted, that is, until now. Presidential immunity is a solution looking for a problem that has simply not existed historically. There has been no rash of prosecutions of former presidents that needs to be addressed. The universe of problem presidents is one in 235 years. One justice opined that the Court in making its decision would be "writing for the ages." If only this justice and some of the others knew something about "the ages" for which they are writing.

As many commentators registered shock that the Supreme Court is entertaining the possibility that the U.S. president ought to have immunity from criminal prosecution even after leaving office, they were missing the overall context. Many presidents of the United States have successfully avoided accountability for illegal acts performed while in office and probably will in the future. President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal comes to mind. Nixon, of course, was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford before Nixon was ever indicted. President Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra Affair is another example. The independent counsel in the case concluded there was not sufficient evidence to charge Reagan.

Are your Cheerios impairing your fertility?

I've decided to rename the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I now think a better name is the Agency for Fertility and Population Decline. I say this after reports that the EPA is thinking about adding even more chlormequat to our diet by allowing American farmers to spray this plant growth regulator—which is linked to reproductive damage in animals—on food crops such as barley, oats, wheat, and triticale. According to Wikipedia, chlormequat "can cause stem thickening, reduced stem height, additional root development, plant dwarfing, and increase chlorophyll concentration." All of this is useful in keeping the plant upright for easier harvesting and for making it more productive.

That sounds good until you learn that chlormequat has been found in the urine of 80 percent of those tested and that that number has been rising in recent years. Where is the chlormequat coming from? In part, it's coming from imported grains and animal products from countries that already allow the use of chlormequat on food crops. It may also be coming from American grain farms that are using chlormequat illicitly—that is, until the EPA makes it legal.

Gentlemen may be particularly interested in the "benefits" of consuming chlormequat with their morning Cheerios. These include delayed onset of puberty accompanied by reduced prostate size, reduced sperm motility, and decreased testosterone. For prospective mothers and their offspring the "benefits" include "adverse effects on postnatal health, including hypoglycemia, hyperlipidemia, and hyperproteinemia seven days after birth compared with controls." Yes, these are animal studies. But last time I checked, humans are animals.

Why we call it climate change

There were two pieces of recent news which highlight why what was once most often referred to as global warming is now called climate change. Yes, the globe is heating up. But effects vary depending on where you live for various reasons.

First, a report from India calls out problems with the criteria used by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) to issue a heatwave warning: The criteria do NOT consider humidity, only temperature. Anyone who lives in a hot climate or any climate that includes hot summer days knows that humidity can make a huge difference in whether one can stay cool in hot weather. It turns out that the IMD criteria fail to recognize that temperatures below what is considered a heatwave may be just as dangerous to human health when humidity is high and even be downright life-threatening. In short, India is already experiencing conditions that at times are at or near the limits of human suvivability.

The vast majority of humans—even with an unlimited supply of water—would likely die after a few hours in conditions that exceed 95 degrees in very high humidity, what is called wet-bulb temperatures because they represent a wet towel around the bulb of a thermometer.  This web-bulb temperature is supposed to mimic the way that humans cool themselves through perspiration. At very high humidity, it becomes hard to get perspiration on the skin to evaporate which is what allows for cooling of the body. It's why a handheld or electric fan helps cool the body because it speeds up evaporation.

The short-circuiting of societal feedback mechanisms

Both societies and individuals rely on feedback mechanisms to function. For example, humans balance on one foot not by rigidly holding the leg and foot steady. Rather, they constantly slightly shift their weight to keep upright. If they close their eyes, however, they have less feedback, and it becomes harder to maintain balance.

Now, the stakes are somewhat higher when you drive a car, but the principle is the same. When driving, you don't simply hold the wheel in one position. That would eventually send you off the road or into another car. Instead, based on visual feedback from the lines painted on the road and the positions of other vehicles, you steer your car, making frequent slight adjustments to keep you on the road, in your lane and away from collisions.

If, on the other hand, you were forced to drive with a paper bag over your head, you'd lack all that feedback and you'd be lucky if you only ended up going off the road into a ditch.

But our situation as a civilization is so much worse than that. Collectively, most of us are "drivers" of our civilization who have bags over our heads without understanding that we have bags over our heads. At least a lone driver of a car quickly realizes he or she is in trouble when the car hits another car or goes into a ditch. Collectively, as actors in our broader civilization, we are getting feedback that all is well, or at least well enough, that we don't need to make any drastic changes in our way of life. It's as if someone is beaming a false virtual reality to us inside the bag. And, that is a good metaphor for what's actually happening.

Biofortification: The latest technical fix for depleted soils

Many health-conscious people already know that the nutrient value of foods has been dropping since the introduction of industrial agriculture. The causes include loss of nutrient-rich topsoil due to erosion brought on by frequent plowing and therefore loosening of the soil. Farmers also often fail to plant cover crops to hold soil in place when the growing season is over. Another cause is the reduction in the biological diversity and density of the soil brought on both by frequent plowing and by the constant barrage of synthetic chemicals, both fertilizers and pesticides, used in industrial agriculture.

Now, the same people who brought you the industrial food system want to bring you biofortification, a term which refers to a set of approaches to boost nutrients in food—nutrients lost due to the very techniques used in industrial agriculture.

It should come as no surprise that one approach being discussed is genetic engineering of crops to increase nutrient levels. For those of us who find the idea of yet more genetically modified crops in the food supply unappetizing as well as dangerous, there is an alternative. This one encourages conventional plant breeding, the rebuilding of soil, and the planting of a more diverse set of crops. The reasoning is that part of the nutrition problem is that people don't get a rounded diet that includes the diversity of foods which have the diversity of nutrients their bodies need. (This piece in The Guardian provides a reasonably good summary of the discourse around biofortification.)

Why don't humans respond to extinction-level risks?

The perils that threaten the continuity of human civilization are so obvious that it is puzzling that so little is being done to counter these perils. In fact, much is being done to hasten their arrival. Climate change, nuclear war, toxic pollution leading to complete loss of human fertility, solar storms and electromagnetic pulse weapons that could take down the entire electric grid, designer viruses against which none of us have defenses, and energy and resource depletion are just some of the extinction-level risks that we face.

Now, none of these possibilities are certain to wipe out humanity altogether. But they might very well end modern technical civilization and leave behind only a few scattered groups of humans around the globe. And, then there is the recent hoopla about artificial intelligence (AI) taking over the world and extinguishing human beings or, at least making decisions without consideration for whether those decisions will lead to the demise of the human race. What the hoopla actually seems to be about is what people will do with AI, making this an all-too-human disaster rather than merely a technological one.

Given all that is known about these threats, what is stopping human societies from taking definitive action to prevent them? Let me offer a few ideas:

No post this week - Taking an EXTENDED break

A crush of consulting work has prevented me from finding time to reflect and write, and it will remain that way for the next month. Therefore, I'm taking an extended break and expect to post again on Sunday, March 24.

Owning your own information revisited

In 2020 I suggested an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would declare that each individual owns his or her own image and information. Anyone wanting to use that image or information would need to get permission and perhaps even pay for it. I pointed out that it's not such a radical idea since celebrities already do own their own identities and people who use them without permission and/or payment are subject to lawsuit.

Fast forward to today. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now proposed a regulation that would hold accountable those using technology to impersonate others. The FTC said in a news release:

The Commission is also seeking comment on whether the revised rule should declare it unlawful for a firm, such as an AI [artificial intelligence] platform that creates images, video, or text, to provide goods or services that they know or have reason to know is being used to harm consumers through impersonation.

The FTC just approved a rule that would protect businesses and government from similar harms. This would extend these protections to individuals.

Taking a short break - no post this week

I'm taking a short break this week and expect to post again on Sunday, February 18.

Surprise! Saudi Arabia is no longer wholly-owned gas station of the United States

In 1943 President Franklin Roosevelt declared that "the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States." The reason: Ten years earlier the desert kingdom had granted a concession to Standard Oil of California to explore for oil. It turned out there was some, in fact, a lot.

Roosevelt visited with the kingdom's monarch, King Ibn Saud, early in 1945 to further cement relations between the two countries, paving the way for a mutual defense treaty in 1951. The idea was to provide protection for Saudi Arabia in exchange for access to the country's oil.

Fast forward to last week. The Saudi Ministry of Energy ordered the government-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, not to exceed its current so-called Maximum Sustainable Capacity of 12 million barrels per day (mbpd) of oil production. In other words, stop any expansion plans.

Petroleum geologist and consultant Art Berman cut through all the speculation about the reason behind this move by pointing out that the energy ministry was only directing Aramco to comply with the law.

U.S. natural gas exports signal higher prices for U.S. consumers (in the long run)

After reading Art Berman's excellent summary of how fast-growing U.S. natural gas exports are likely to reduce domestic supplies significantly over the next several years as shale gas output begins to decline, I want to assure you that everything has been going according to plan for the natural gas industry, that is, until now.

On Friday the Biden Administration announced a freeze on new permits for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities that could last up to 15 months. The administration said that during the freeze it will review the environmental effects of such exports on climate and the communities in which the facilities are located. It is also possible that despite the industry's assurances, the administration may believe that supply problems and therefore higher prices lie ahead, something that voters won't like.

When U.S. oil and gas producers successfully lobbied the federal government for an end to restrictions on the export of crude oil and natural gas in the middle of the last decade, they loudly proclaimed that America could produce so much of both from the country's shale fields that the United States would have plenty left over for export—and that would boost the American economy while addressing the country's trade imbalance. They promised that this boom would go on for decades.

Of course, what those producers were really angling for was to integrate domestic oil and gas markets more fully with world markets in order to benefit from higher world prices and make a lot more money. In fairness, what they were asking for is what almost every other industry in the United States enjoys, the right to sell their products to the highest bidders no matter where those customers are on the globe.

Naturally, that argument would not have appealed to members of Congress whose constituents prefer low energy prices to high ones, so it was never advanced with any vigor.

Taking a short break - no post this week

I'm taking a short break this week and expect to post again on Sunday, January 28.

What the U.S. grab of ocean seabeds signals

There is an iron rule of resource exploitation: Go after the easy stuff first. If you don't, your competitors will and run you out of business with lower prices. But where do you go when the easy stuff runs out? (And the easy stuff always runs out.) The United States' recent expanded claims to ocean seabeds signals that the easy stuff has run out or will soon. More on those claims later.

The obvious answer to getting more resources is to start digging up the harder stuff. Sometimes it's new technology that makes the harder stuff economical to extract. Heap leach mining was developed to take low concentration ores and leach out the desired metals using chemical-laced sprays that result in a liquid "leachate." From this leachate valuable minerals such as gold, silver, copper and uranium are then extracted through further processing. (There are myriad environmental problems associated with the leachate and the tailings left behind if they spill due to leaks and floods. That would deserve a piece all by itself.)

But what happens when there isn't enough of the harder stuff on land with sufficient concentration of metals to supply the world with minerals it needs for, say, the highly touted renewable energy transition? One possible answer is the seabed which contains nodules of copper, cobalt, and manganese—all of them essential for the energy transition—that might be harvested with emerging undersea mining technology.

The end of paper?

Our civilization depends largely on paper.

                                --Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder (23 - 79 AD) was a lawyer and Roman provincial governor who is best known as the compiler of what we would recognize as an encyclopedia, one of the very first. Naturalis Historia filled 10 volumes covering astronomy, geography, anthropology, zoology, botany, pharmacology and mineralogy as well as a myriad of subtopics. Pliny knew something about the value of paper to civilization.

It goes without saying that paper is what made it possible for Pliny's entire encyclopedia to be available to those living now nearly 2,000 years after his death. If at the time Pliny had been able to place his whole encyclopedia on a DVD or flash drive and had forgone creating a printed version, would we know anything about his encyclopedia today?

The 2,000th anniversary of Pliny's birth was marked last year by the discovery of a complete papyrus in an ancient tomb near Cairo which contained text from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It has apparently been more than a century since the last complete papyrus was discovered. This latest one comes from a tomb that is more than 4,000 years old. Such is the staying power of papyrus.