Overview
At the moment, something that could pass for sanity seems dominant in the Middle East. Perhaps old-fashioned political pressure is holding the Israeli active genocide in check while starvation, injury, and death continue for the Palestinian people.
Iran managed to destroy Israel’s image of invulnerability, which Yemeni attacks on Israeli-bound shipping had damaged. America now must face the cheapening of its massively expensive and complex military weaponry. While that weaponry can shield against a mass drone attack, history is on the side of cheap drones, as they will eventually overwhelm complex systems.
Iran has won the PR war by being very careful in limiting their serious attack to specific military targets while announcing what they intended in advance. From now on, Israel will always be a criminal genocidal state. That forced Israel to emulate Iran in their counterattack.
While the death, destruction, and suffering created by Israel continue, the world is now a very different place. Where all the governments are touched by religious insanity, those who act with care win.
MIDDLE EAST WAR
An image of invulnerability is not something that can be recovered once destroyed. That was more important than any physical damage inflicted.
Billions of dollars are again available to purchase weapons for Israel.
CLIMATE DISASTER
17th April 2024 Today's Round-Up of Economic News • Climate and Economy:
“Oil Traders Wager on $250 Price by June as War Risk Escalates…
“Volumes of bullish oil options have skyrocketed to a record, driving the premium for calls over puts jumped this week to the highest since October, as Israel vows to retaliate following Iran’s missile and drone attacks over the weekend.”
Climate crisis: average world incomes to drop by nearly a fifth by 2050
Average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, according to a study that predicts the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C. [Source: The Guardian]
Nearly half of China’s major cities are sinking - some ‘rapidly’
One in ten residents of China’s coastal cities could be living below sea level within a century, as a result of land subsidence and climate change, according to a paper published in Science today1.
Some 16% of the mapped area of China’s major cities is sinking “rapidly” — faster than 10 millimetres every year. An even greater area, roughly 45%, is sinking at a “moderate” rate, the paper says, meaning a downward trajectory of greater than 3 mm annually. Affected cities include the capital Beijing, as well as megacities, including Tianjin, Hefei and Xi’an. [Source: Nature]
Uncharted Territory Dead Ahead
When America’s leading authority on the climate system Gavin Schmidt of NASA throws his hands up in the air, exclaiming, we’ve got a knowledge gap for the first time since satellites started tuning into the planet’s climate system, what does this imply about future conditions for the planet?
Gavin Schmidt, Director, Goddard Institute for Space Studies: “In general, the 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth’s climate system.” (Source: Gavin Schmidt, Climate Models Can’t Explain 2023’s Huge Heat Anomaly – We Could be in Uncharted Territory, Nature, March 19, 2024)
TECHNOLOGY/SCIENCE
AI now beats humans at basic tasks - new benchmarks are needed, says major report
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as the chatbot ChatGPT, have become so advanced that they now very nearly match or exceed human performance in tasks including reading comprehension, image classification and competition-level mathematics, according to a new report (see ‘Speedy advances’). Rapid progress in the development of these systems also means that many common benchmarks and tests for assessing them are quickly becoming obsolete.
These are just a few of the top-line findings from the Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2024, which was published on 15 April by the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University in California. The report charts the meteoric progress in machine-learning systems over the past decade. [Source: Nature]
Designing a More Climate-Friendly Cow
Researchers have long experimented with making cows better global citizens by feeding them everything from turmeric to seaweed. One kind of seaweed called Asparagopsis taxiformis has been shown to reduce methane by up to 95% in cows. Scientists think the seaweed binds to the enzymes that convert hydrogen and CO2 to methane, reducing their activity. However, A. taxiformis only grows in parts of Australia and New Zealand, and harvesting enough to feed billions of cattle would be simply impossible.
A teaspoon of white powder is dropped into the cows’ feed and starts slowing down methane production within 30 minutes.
Bovaer targets the same enzymes, temporarily suppressing them to slow down methane production. Its key advantage is that it can be synthesized, cheaply and at scale, in factories worldwide.
“It was not that we just found something on the shelf, which was designed for something else and relabeled for methane production,” says Maik Kindermann, the scientist at the Dutch multinational DSM who invented Bovaer. “It’s uniquely made for emission reduction in the agricultural sector.”
The additive is a quarter of a teaspoon of white powder that is dropped into the cows’ feed and starts working within 30 minutes. It is already being fed to around 100,000 cows worldwide, mostly in Europe, according to the company. In January, Canada also approved its use.
Until Next Week