The Weekly Flail - October 26, 2024
OVERVIEW
I ran across a perfect summary of the US political situation today:
+ More than half of Trump’s supporters don’t believe he’ll actually do many of the things he claims he’ll do (mass deportations, siccing the military on domestic protesters and political rivals), while more than half of Harris’s supporters hope she’ll implement many of the policies (end the genocide/single-payer) she claims she won’t. And that pretty much sums up this election. - Counterpunch
I can only add that I still cannot believe the polls. Lots of anecdotal information suggests that the election is close only in the eyes of the national media and our oligarchic rulers.
For a national culture still ensnared in myth-based religion, purgatory with Kamala is better than hell with Trump.
We continue our reliance on technology, our only positive accomplishment.
The climate disaster worsens by the month and is finally being noted as a problem in our official media because the disasters are too big to ignore. There are still only vague references to possible planetary warming as a factor.
Amazingly, we now have full bipartisan support for genocide in Gaza. The US is now using Stealth bombers against the Houthis, who now own the Red Sea, having driven the US Navy out to support the Palestine Resistance. You need to look hard to find this out in the US media.
CLIMATE DISASTER
The solutions to climate destruction will be migrating to Mars or using time travel to correct our historical errors. Despite the tech bros such as Musk, Mars is a very hard place for us to live other than as a tiny outpost, and time travel is impossible except in one direction. But this comes up as times get harder. The following are edited bits showing the problem from the cited article.
Time Travel Will Surely Save Us — The Honest Sorcerer
. . . . Time has no meaning without energy. In fact this is why we use energy to measure time; be it in the form of mechanical energy stored in a spring of a wristwatch, or measuring electrons changing energy levels in an atomic clock. Time is thus nothing more than a measure of energy dissipation — from a dense form into waste heat or background radiation. Sure, in the meantime all sorts of interesting things happen: energy might find itself locked up in dense clots (like a seam of coal, or a battery charged to the rim), not to mention all the motion and life it is converted into on its way to being dissipated as waste heat. One thing doesn’t change, however: you will always have less concentrated energy by the end of the day, compared to what you had in the morning. You’ve burnt fuel, spent electricity, put things in motion — and ultimately — dissipated a lot of energy. The Sun did just the same: it has spent a tiny fraction of its vast hydrogen storage and converted it into helium, and thereby released an immense amount of heat, light and particles. In the grand scheme of things, one day all dense energy in the Universe will be dissipated into background radiation. From the Big Bang, through the formation of stars and to their eventual demise, all concentrated energy will be converted into waste heat. This is the process what gives time a direction and meaning. And this is why time is so precious to us: because it’s finite.
Now, should we want to go back in time while staying in place, we would have to reverse this entire process. Remember, it is the dissipation of energy which gives time a direction. Trouble is, that you would have to do this across the entire Universe. Yes, you have read that right: since everything is connected, from the sunlight hitting an apple tree, to the bacteria turning soil into plant nutrients, or from the wind blowing over the Atlantic to the storm hitting your town, in order to accurately go back the causal chain of events, the entire Universe must be returned to a prior state. Sorry to be so blunt, but the world either goes back in time in one piece, or it doesn’t. . . .
The following is useful information on the prevalence of the climate reality among youth. That there is hope is not linked to any reference describing that hope. This is the nature of general media reporting on the worsening disaster.
Climate despair has never been higher but experts say there's hope -Salon
October 21, 2024
Julie France is a 34-year-old Millennial in Denver, a high-altitude Colorado city theoretically safer than other places from one of the most conspicuous ravages of climate change: hurricanes, such as Helene and Milton, the pair of hurricanes responsible for recently battering the Southeastern United States. Aware of climate change from a very young age, France has spent her life making choices about driving, meat consumption, buying locally and other carbon-sensitive issues with the global crisis in mind. She continues to be mindful of global heating as an adult, telling Salon that “it does impact my everyday decisions.”
France’s experience echoes similar decisions made by hundreds of millions of Millennials who are likewise aware of climate change — often painfully so — and must plan their futures accordingly. For decades, scientists and sociologists alike observed that Millennials have been growing up disenchanted with the future, being the first generation constantly aware of the changing climate. Now the next generations are also succumbing to that uniquely modern version of existential despair... but experts say hope is not lost for any generation.
A recent survey study Lancet Planetary Health found, using data of more than 15,000 16-to-25-year-olds, that human-caused climate change is impacting the mental health of 85% of young Americans. This includes overwhelming majorities of Democrats and independents (96% and 86% respectively), as well as nearly three out of four Republicans (74%). The study comes with potentially serious political consequences, as respondents of all ideological persuasions wanted more government action on the environment.
More than three out of five report feeling anxious, powerless and/or angry because of climate change, while almost two out of five say it impacts their ability to function daily. More than half (52%) report basing their decisions to have children on the reality of climate change, with more than two-thirds (69%) saying it also influences where they choose to live.
"The study shows widespread distress among U.S. adolescents and young adults about climate change."
But one of the main takeaways from this research is that feeling despair about the climate is not unusual. Lead researcher Dr. Eric Lewandowski, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University told Salon that “it's clear from this study that if you are feeling anxious or concerned about climate change, you are not alone! Very much the opposite. That creates a potential for change.”
“The study shows widespread distress among U.S. adolescents and young adults about climate change, and that climate change is affecting their expectations and plans for the future,” Lewandowski said. “The study of course indicates that young people want decisive action from elected and business leaders, but it also shows really anyone who is concerned with the well-being and mental health of the younger generations that they have an important role to play as well.”
And there is still time for meaningful action on climate change, as the crisis has not degenerated to the point where absolute catastrophe cannot be averted.
“It is still possible to avert warming of 1.5º C or 2º C” above pre-industrial levels, the threshold many climate scientists regard as a crucial point of no return, University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann told Salon. “The obstacles aren’t physical or technological, they’re entirely political at this point.”
Mann, who was not involved in the study, added that he knows firsthand that both Millennials and Gen Z feel despair about their future because of climate change. He recalled a focus group performed with University of Pennsylvania undergraduates which found climate anxiety arises from two different sources: “a sense that it’s too late to act, and a sense that our politics are too fraught to address the climate crisis. The first is easily alleviated — the science tells us it’s not too late to avert the worst impacts.”
"I think the anger, to be righteous in nature, has to be directed at the bad actors who have blocked climate progress: fossil fuel executives and petrostate authoritarians."
TECHNOLOGY
This Radical New Farming Method Would Replace Photosynthesis With Solar Power - SingularityHub
October 24, 2024
Farming immediately sparks images of lush fields of leafy greens under a blue sky, corn blowing in the wind, or majestic terraced rice paddies carved into mountainsides. Agriculture changed societies and our food habits roughly 12,000 years ago when humans switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to more permanent settlements.
In recent centuries, innovative farming equipment and synthetic chemical fertilizers have boosted food production to feed an increasingly growing population of people. But as any backyard gardener knows, growing plant-based food—lettuce, tomatoes, herbs, grains, pumpkins—still mostly relies on the age-old strategy: Plant seeds in nutritious soil, keep them well hydrated with plenty of sunlight, and wait for them to grow.
This strategy has downsides. Agriculture uses nearly half of the world’s habitable land and accounts for up to a third of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, wrote Feng Jiao at the Washington University in St. Louis and his team in a recent analysis.
The reason? While sunny regions naturally provide enough light to grow crops, areas with colder winters often need grow lights and greenhouses part of the year. This increases energy consumption, logistical headaches, and ultimately, food costs.
In their paper, Jiao and colleagues argue for a new method that could dramatically revamp farming practices to reduce land use and greenhouse gas emissions.
Dubbed “electro-agriculture,” the approach uses solar panels to trigger a chemical reaction that turns ambient CO2 into an energy source called acetate. Certain mushrooms, yeast, and algae already consume acetate as food. With a slight genetic tweak, we could also engineer other common foods such as grains, tomatoes, or lettuce to consume acetate.
It could be “a groundbreaking revolution in farming,” wrote the team.
According to one estimate, if the US were to fully adopt electro-agriculture, it would reduce agricultural land use by nearly 90 percent. A similar system could also allow more efficient crop growth during spaceflight, where efficiency in small spaces is key. With more research, it might even be possible to bypass traditional photosynthesis with acetate and grow plants in the dark.
“The whole point of this new process [is] to try to boost the efficiency of photosynthesis,” said Jiao in a press release. “Right now, we are at about four percent efficiency, which is already four times higher than for photosynthesis, and because everything is more efficient with this method, the CO2 footprint associated with the production of the food becomes much smaller.”
Man Versus Food
Agriculture is one of the most difficult domains in which to reduce carbon emissions. As the global population increases, its impact on the environment will likely grow.
“There is an urgent need for the global food system to be reimagined to sustain a habitable planet,” wrote the team.
Photosynthesis is at the heart of agriculture. In plants and some bacteria, green-tinted molecular machines called chloroplasts absorb sunlight and churn that light into energy. It’s no coincidence most farms are in sun-bathed areas liked central California.
Farmers and scientists have tried shrinking the agricultural footprint with vertical farming. True to form, vertical farms grow crops on stacked shelves rather than large horizontal fields. The method often relies on hydroponics, in which plants absorb nutrients from a water-based system instead of soil, similar to AeroGarden but at an industrial scale.
These systems run indoors, so plants can grow all year. But heavy reliance on artificial grow lights means high energy consumption limits their ability to scale.
Part of the problem is efficiency. Much of the “electricity supplied to the LED grow lights in conventional vertical farming is lost to heat,” explained the team.
Electro-agriculture, or “electro-ag,” skirts these challenges. The system captures ambient CO2 from the air and uses water and electricity to convert the gas into different molecules—including ethanol and acetate, which is “plant food” for some species.
Acetate is a vinegar-like chemical at the heart of many biological reactions. One recent study found that acetate made from CO2 could be used to cultivate yeast, mushrooms, and a type of green algae in total darkness without the need for natural photosynthesis. With some sunlight, the chemical boosted growth four-fold in nine different crop types compared to traditional farming techniques.
These initial results got scientists wondering: Can we use acetate alone to replace photosynthesis?
Not quite. Most adult crop plants naturally require photosynthesis to build up their weight and size. Plants grown with electro-ag would need to shift their metabolism to consume acetate—which most adult plants struggle to process—as a primary food source.
But plants can use the molecule for energy as they’re germinating from seeds. It’s a bit like people who drank milk as infants but later became lactose intolerant. The genetic programming is still there; it just needs to be reactivated.
Here’s where genetic engineering comes in.
By tweaking genes involved in acetate metabolism, it might be possible to reawaken the plants’ natural ability to digest the molecule. The strategy hasn’t been directly tested yet. But in bacteria, amping up a gene involved in acetate metabolism boosted their ability to eat it.
Engineering plants that eat acetate is a “critical step” toward building an electro-ag system.
The team envision a vertically stacked set-up to reduce land usage, kind of like a fridge with three sections. The first section—the roof—would be covered in solar panels to gather energy. The middle section would use this energy to break down CO2 and generate acetate to feed plants growing in the bottom section. Depending on the type of crop, this section could hold roughly three to seven “floors” of plants stacked on top of each other, like trays in a fridge.
Into the Wild
Electro-ag could benefit the environment, slashing total land usage for farming by roughly 88 percent in the US alone. This would free up over one billion acres of land that could be restored to natural ecosystems, such as dense forests. The technology could also help stabilize food prices. As weather becomes increasingly unpredictable due to climate change, developing nations are often hit hardest. A large-scale indoor system could help put a lid on volatility.
But how much all this would cost is still uncertain. The field is still in a very early stage. Currently, scientists are tweaking tomato and lettuce genes to increase their abilities to use acetate as food. High-calorie staple crops, such as potato, corn, rice, and wheat, are next on the list. Plants aside, a similar technology—in theory—could also be used for cultivating dairy and plant-based meat, although the idea hasn’t been tested yet.
“This is just the first step for this research, and I think there’s a hope that its efficiency and cost will be significantly improved in the near future,” said Jiao.
Image Credit: Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash
A Boeing-made satellite exploded in orbit and now there's space junk everywhere Quartz
William Gavin October 23, 2024
A satellite manufactured by beleaguered aerospace firm Boeing (BA-2.85%) has blown up after experiencing “an anomaly,” according to its operator.
That anomaly resulted in the “total loss” of the Intelsat 33e satellite, Intelsat said in a statement Monday. The satellite was launched in 2016 to provide internet services to customers across Europe, Africa, and parts of the Asia-Pacific region. Intelsat has said it is working to return service to those customers.
“We are coordinating with the satellite manufacturer, Boeing, and government agencies to analyze data and observations,” Intelsat said. “A Failure Review Board has been convened to complete a comprehensive analysis of the cause of the anomaly.”
The U.S. Space Force, which confirmed the breakup, said it is tracking 20 associated pieces. The Air Force branch said it is conducting routine assessments but has found no immediate threats. Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, on Tuesday said it had found more than 80 fragments from the destroyed satellite.
There are roughly 3,000 dead satellites littered across space, along with 34,000 pieces of large space junk and millions of smaller pieces. That debris has the potential to damage critical components on working satellites, such as solar panels, reducing their lifespan.
“Analysis of the trajectories of the fragments shows that the destruction of the satellite was instantaneous and high-energy,” the agency said in a statement posted to social media. “[I]t can be concluded that there is a potential threat to all operating spacecraft, including the Roscosmos group in the geostationary region of outer space.”
The 33e was designed to last for more than 15 years, but served for less than a decade. A propulsion issue discovered after the satellite was launched took some years off its orbit lifespan.
It was also the second satellite launched as part of Intelesat’s EpicNG platform. The previous satellite, the 29e, was lost in 2019 after just three years in orbit, with the failure attributed to either a meteoroid impact or a wiring flaw.
The incident comes as Boeing is dealing with a series of other problems across its operations, including its space business.
NASA recently said its 2025 Commercial Crew Program missions will exclusively use SpaceX spacecraft after Boeing’s Starliner suffered a series of high-profile issues that caused delays and eventually rendered its thruster inoperable. The Starliner landed back on Earth last month without its crew after NASA determined it couldn’t be trusted to return Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams safely.
On Wednesday, Boeing said it lost another $6 billion in its third quarter, thanks to major delivery delays and worker stoppages. The company has faced a litany of setbacks this year, starting when a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines flight in January. Since then, it has faced scrutiny both from regulators and the court of public opinion over a growing pile of safety issues.
WAR
Expected, yet stressful. How Iranians reacted to Israel’s attack
Life returned to its normal rhythm within hours in Iran, but a sense of trepidation remains.
Tehran, Iran – Thousands of Iranians in Tehran were jolted awake by the sound of explosions in the early hours of Saturday as Israel attacked.
“I heard about 10 booms in relatively quick succession,” said Ali, a 32-year-old who lives in western Tehran, where the first booms were heard after 2am (22:30 GMT on Friday).
Iranians got on social media to report hearing explosions all over the city and some surrounding areas.
By the time the second round of attacks hit a few hours later, videos were circulating online showing air defences being activated to counter incoming threats.
“Not that it was unexpected, but it was stressful anyway. We were up till morning with family checking the news, and we were talking with colleagues in our Telegram channels and looking for details,” said Ali, who asked his surname to be withheld. . . .
‘Limited damage’
After weeks of speculation that Israel could target Iranian energy infrastructure, authorities said there were no strikes on major refineries, power stations, natural gas lines, or sensitive nuclear sites.
There have been no threats of direct or immediate retaliation from Iranian authorities so far.
The Israeli attack was expected, in retaliation for Iran’s launch of some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, although the extent is still unclear.
Iran said the attacks targeted military sites in Tehran and the western provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan, and that air defences worked well, resulting in “limited damage”.
Until Next Week . . .
