They used it for decoration, according to this blog.
ancient Maya cities heavily contaminated by Mercury
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more on ecological footprint
Here are the results of the ecological footprint calculations in units of “number of Earths”. The index currently stands at 1.75 and is increasing.
Living Planet Report 2022
WWF’s Living Planet Report is out. They mean this at least in part as a report card on the UN’s “Decade on Biodiversity”, and the grade is a failing one. A few things caught my eye:
- They have a discussion of “connectivity conservation”, which is intended to reduce fragmentation by connecting protected areas.
- They determined there is an average 69% global decline in abundance of monitored vertebrate populations between 1970 and 2018. The situation in the tropics is much worse than this average.
- Populations of corals and sharks in particular are crashing.
- The “Amazon as we know it” may cease to exist in less than a decade.
- They give an update on the global ecological footprint from the “National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, 2022 edition”. Maybe I’ll have a more detailed look at this another day. The value they give is in hectares per person and I find it hard to interpret given that the population is not constant. They seem most interested in showing that people in more developed countries are using more than their fair share of the planet’s “biocapacity”. Previously, I understood the unit to be the number of planet Earths needed to sustain humanity’s current level of consumption and waste production long-term. A value less than 1 would be sustainable long term, while a value greater than 1 indicates a drawdown of natural capital, creating a debt that will eventually come due.
IMF World Economic Outlook, October 2022
Here is what the IMF has to say, when we are in this weird time when pretty much anybody who wants a job can get one (in the U.S.), growth as measured by GDP is low or negative in the US and elsewhere, reported inflation is high but the shock has sort of worn off, and I can predict with total confidence that we may or may not be teetering on the edge of a recession, which if it happens might be either mild or severe and either short or long.
- “Global growth is forecast to slow from 6.0 percent in 2021 to 3.2 percent in 2022 and 2.7 percent in 2023.”
- “Global inflation is forecast to rise from 4.7 percent in 2021 to 8.8 percent in 2022 but to decline to 6.5 percent in 2023 and to 4.1 percent by 2024.”
- If this forecast is wrong, it will probably be wrong on the “downside”. The long list of risks includes monetary policy not working, US dollar appreciation disrupting trade, energy and food price shocks, emerging market debt distress, natural gas supply shocks in Europe caused by the Russia-Ukraine war, a continuation of the last pandemic and/or a new pandemic, a bursting of the real estate bubble leading to a financial crisis in China, and “geopolitical fragmentation could impede trade and capital flows, further hindering climate policy cooperation”.
- “successful multilateral cooperation will prevent fragmentation that could reverse the gains in economic well-being from 30 years of economic integration.”
I emphasized the word “will” above. Is that “will” like we think successful cooperation will happen, or “will” like if successful cooperation could somehow happen, then this positive outcome will happen. It’s hard to be optimistic these days. About the most optimistic thing I can say is that when almost everybody in the world is feeling pessimistic, maybe we have hit bottom and can start clawing our way back up.
Michael Vick was the most fun college football player to watch of all time
This isn’t the sort of thing I usually post, and there was the thing with the dogs later on, but what the heck, it’s football season and I am low on queued posts.
Here is Michael Vick as an Eagle in 2010. Unfortunately he didn’t look like this in every game as a pro player.
But in college, he was just simply the most fun player to watch of all time, in my opinion. And I am not really a Virginia Tech partisan although there are a couple alums in the family.
I’ll vote for Joe Burrow as the second most fun college quarterback to watch of all time. And I am most definitely, most certainly not an LSU partisan. Those people are barely civilized down there, although they are certainly passionate.
human brain cells in rats
You wouldn’t necessarily get the idea from this Nature article that it is about implanting human brain cells in rats. But according to this (sensationalized?) article in Axios, that is exactly what it is about. The scientists are doing this to study diseases like autism that they can’t just study by growing human brain cells in a jar (which they have been doing for some time, apparently!).
Given all that, this is the paragraph that really caught my eye:
A current concern, though, is whether organoids might be transplanted to non-human primates. Paşca says there is no need: “It’s not something that we would do or that I would encourage doing.”
Axios
So it could be done then. And what can be done, Somebody somewhere will probably eventually do.
I have a childhood memory of seeing the Rats of Nimh on the big screen and being utterly terrified. By the Rats. Who were supposed to be the good guys in the story.
stagflation?
The new era of stagflation is here, according to Nouriel Roubini.
It is much harder to achieve a soft landing under conditions of stagflationary negative supply shocks than it is when the economy is overheating because of excessive demand. Since World War II, there has never been a case where the Fed achieved a soft landing with inflation above 5% (it is currently above 8%) and unemployment below 5% (it is currently 3.7%). And if a hard landing is the baseline for the United States, it is even more likely in Europe, owing to the Russian energy shock, China’s slowdown, and the ECB falling even further behind the curve relative to the Fed…
But US and global equities have not yet fully priced in even a mild and short hard landing. Equities will fall by about 30% in a mild recession, and by 40% or more in the severe stagflationary debt crisis that I have predicted for the global economy. Signs of strain in debt markets are mounting: sovereign spreads and long-term bond rates are rising, and high-yield spreads are increasing sharply; leveraged-loan and collateralized-loan-obligation markets are shutting down; highly indebted firms, shadow banks, households, governments, and countries are entering debt distress. The crisis is here.
Project Syndicate
But at the moment, pretty much everybody who wants a job can get one, whereas stagflation would imply high unemployment coupled with inflation that won’t go away.
So we will see what happens here. For people just a few years away from (planned) retirement, this must be nerve wracking. For those of us a decade or more away, we hope we can ride this one out (as the bumper sticker says, lord just give me one more bubble…). Or is this the one where we have a human-caused financial crisis, and then food supply and fires and floods and earthquakes and volcanoes and (nuclear) warfare prevent us from ever returning to the baseline? No, I’m not predicting that, but I think it is a possible outcome that we are not doing much to mitigate.
UN General Assembly to Scrutinize and Comment on Security Council
It’s easy to be cynical about the UN. Take this statement directly from the UN:
Russia on Friday vetoed a Security Council resolution which described its attempts to unlawfully annex four regions of Ukraine earlier in the day with a formal ceremony in Moscow, as “a threat to international peace and security”, demanding that the decision be immediately and unconditionally reversed…
Due to Russia’s veto, following a new procedure adopted in the UN General Assembly in April, the Assembly must now meet automatically within ten days for the 193-member body to scrutinize and comment on the vote. Any use of the veto by any of the Council’s five permanent members triggers a meeting…
“The Charter is clear”, said the UN chief. “Any annexation of a State’s territory by another State resulting from the threat or use of force is a violation of the Principles of the UN Charter”.
UN News
The UN clearly has no ability to enforce violations of its own charter by “permanent” members of its own Security Council. It’s easy to point to violations of the charter by at least 3 of the 5 permanent members (Russia, China, and the United States) that have gone unpunished. Fixing the UN would have to start with fixing the Security Council, and that is difficult because these permanent members are not about to give up any fraction of the the power they hold over the rest of the world. So you can either argue that the Security Council is too powerful or that it is powerless. Either way, it prevents the UN from accomplishing its own mission.
One of the clearest visions for how to fix the UN was articulated by Mikhail Gorbachev (may he rest in peace) in his “Westminster College speech” in 1992. Let’s have a look at that.
No, the idea that certain states or groups of states could monopolize the international arena is no longer valid. What is emerging is a more complex global structure of international relations. An awareness of the need for some kind of global government is gaining ground, one in which all members of the world community would take part. Events should not be allowed to develop spontaneously. There must be an adequate response to global changes and challenges. If we are to eliminate force and prevent conflicts from developing into a worldwide conflagration, we must seek means of collective action by the world community…
Nuclear and chemical weapons. Rigid controls must be instituted to prevent their proliferation, including enforcement measures in cases of violation. An agreement must be concluded among all presently nuclear states on procedures for cutting back on such weapons and liquidating them. Finally a world convention prohibiting chemical weapons should be signed.
The peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The powers of the IAEA must be strengthened, and it is imperative that all countries working in this area be included in the IAEA system. The procedures of the IAEA should be tightened up and the work performed in a more open and aboveboard manner. Under United Nations auspices a powerful consortium should be created to finance the modernization or liquidation of high-risk nuclear power stations, and also to store spent fuel. A set of world standards for nuclear power plants should be established. Work on nuclear fusion must be expanded and intensified.
The export of conventional weapons. Governmental exports of such weapons should be ended by the year 2000, and, in regions of armed conflict, it should be stopped at once. The illegal trade in such arms must be equated with international terrorism and the drug trade. With respect to these questions the intelligence services of the states which are permanent members of the Security Council should be coordinated. And the Security Council itself must be expanded, which I will mention in a moment.
Regional conflicts. Considering the impartially examined experience obtained in the Middle East, in Africa, in Southeast Asia, Korea, Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan, a special body should be set up under the United Nations Security Council with the right to employ political, diplomatic, economic, and military means to settle and prevent such conflicts.
Human rights. The European process has officially recognized the universality of this common human value, i.e., the acceptability of international interference wherever human rights are being violated. This task is not easy even for states which signed the Paris Charter of 1990 and even less so for all states members of the United Nations. However, I believe that the new world order will not be fully realized unless the United Nations and its Security Council create structures (taking into consideration existing United Nations and regional structures) authorized to impose sanctions and to make use of other enforcement measures.
Food, population, economic assistance. It is no accident that these problems should be dealt with in this connection. Upon their solution depends the biological viability of the Earth’s population and the minimal social stability needed for a civilized existence of states and peoples. Major scientific, financial, political, and public organizations — among them, the authoritative Club of Rome — have long been occupied with these problems. However, the newly emerging type of international interaction will make possible a breakthrough in our practical approach to them. I would propose that next year a world conference be held on this subject, one similar to the forthcoming conference on the environment…
The United Nations, which emerged from the results and the lessons of the Second World War, is still marked by the period of its creation. This is true both with respect to the makeup of its subsidiary bodies and auxiliary institutions and with respect to its functioning. Nothing, for instance, other than the division into victors and vanquished, explains why such countries as Germany and Japan do not figure among the permanent members of the Security Council.
In general, I feel Article 53 on “enemy states” should be immediately deleted from the UN Charter. Also, the criterion of possession of nuclear weapons would be archaic in the new era before us. The great country of India should be represented in the Security Council. The authority and potential of the Council would also be enhanced by incorporation on a permanent basis of Italy, Indonesia, Canada, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, and Egypt, even if initially they do not possess the veto.
The Security Council will require better support, more effective and more numerous peace-keeping forces. Under certain circumstances it will be desirable to put certain national armed forces at the disposal of the Security Council, making them subordinate to the United Nations military command…
In a qualitatively new and different world situation the overwhelming majority of the United Nations will, I hope, be capable of organizing themselves and acting in concert on the principles of democracy, equality of rights, balance of interests, common sense, freedom of choice, and willingness to cooperate. Made wise by bitter experience, they will, I think, be capable of dispensing, when necessary, with egoistic considerations in order to arrive at the exalted goal which is man’s destiny on earth.
Mikhail Gorbachev, 1992
He also goes into climate change and limits to growth in this speech.
So how can we translate this vision to 2022? Well, it seems to need surprisingly little translation 30 years later. Maybe the United States could show real leadership on nuclear disarmament. Maybe the UN could offer civilian nuclear technology to any nation that agrees to permanently give up pursuit of nuclear weapons. This might require the IAEA to have an international security force with some real teeth. From there, it seems critical now to elevate biological weapons and pandemic preparedness to a similarly serious framework as nuclear weapons, since you can argue it represents an equally existential threat going forward.
The Security Council needs to expand, and the veto needs to go. This is obviously a really tough one. Or maybe each country’s veto needs to have a sunset date, and its renewal needs to be reviewed and approved by the General Assembly or a court of some sort based on the country’s record complying with the UN charter. What incentive could the current Security Council members be offered to accept this new arrangement? Hmm, this is a tough one that I will have to think more about. But one quick thought is that as the Security Council becomes increasingly ineffective and increasingly divorced from the UN’s mission, the prestige of being on it will continue to decrease. It seems like membership on the Security Council just means you are a militarily powerful bully able to get your way. And that is the exact opposite of what the UN is supposed to represent!
you can charge electric vehicles while they are driving
As the title of the post says, you can charge electric vehicles while they are on the move.
The solar panels are on one side of the facility’s service road and will ship power up the hill to the maintenance and trades area. That pad also has the generator; a system for converting direct current from the solar panels to alternating current for the buildings and street lights; a system for capturing radiant heat from the generator; and an IT setup to keep everything running…
Utah State’s ASPIRE center will begin installing a 50-meter demonstration section at its Logan, Utah, test track in the next two weeks, said Tallis Blalack, the center’s director. Working with California wireless provider Electreon, the center intends to install a one-mile electrified section of road surface in central Detroit next year in conjunction with the University of Michigan.
The center also is working with another provider to design a segment of electrified highway for Disney World in Florida over the next four years.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
I like this idea because there is a lot of real estate out there along highways, and installing solar panels that can charge vehicles as they go by would seem to make a lot of sense. Maybe this could also replace some or all of the gas tax revenue we are going to lose as we convert to solar. The money could be plowed back in to road maintenance and safety upgrades.
ideas for improving Amtrak
Amtrak needs tens of billions of dollars in capital investment to get its trains up to the standard of middle income countries in the rest of the world (let’s not aspire to the European or Japanese standards of 50 YEARS AGO just yet). However, this (Philadelphia Inquirer, paywalled) article has some low-hanging-fruit ideas for how Amtrak could move more people at lower cost. Amtrak has apparently rejected all of them.
- Instead of running old and new trains and different speeds and with different classes of cost, run just the new trains with two or three different class compartments. This would allow them to run more often and move more people at lower cost. It would also be safer because the newer trains are less likely to derail and more survivable if they do derail.
- Maintain public ownership of the lines and stations, but consider competitively contracting some of the operations and support services. These would be for fixed time periods, so if it didn’t work out you could go back to status quo.
Okay, actually that was a list of only two. They also need to upgrade or replace many curves, bridges, and tunnels that limit speeds. My big, naive idea has always been to start laying high speed rail lines along the interstate highway system. This already connects our population centers. It would automatically connect with buses and other forms of local transporation. You already have the public right of way and at least some of the crossing, utility, bridge and tunnel issues worked out. Autonomous vehicles maybe/should/could decrease traffic and free up capacity and width requirements at some point. You can double deck them where needed. We might be able to build out a modern electric grid this way too. Expensive? Sure, it’s an investment in the long-term future of the economy and country.