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.