May 2024

Tech Doom

If you didn’t see Apple’s new ipad ad this month, then I highly recommend doing so. It was a wonderfully on-the-nose representation of the techbro mindset, though I’m sure they didn’t intend it that way.

Space

Starlink continues to pollute space in a way that’s ruining telescopic space observation. The bright satellites are causing no end of frustration to astronomers. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg; since Starlink satellites are being treated as disposable, the amount of garbage that is being dumped into orbit runs the risk of triggering Kessler syndrome. That only accounts for decommissioned satellites however, a very real and building problem is collision risk:

Currently there are about 10,500 satellites orbiting our planet, 8,100 of which are operational, according to the European Space Agency. Things only started to get so congested fairly recently. For example in 2019, there were only about 2,300 active satellites circling the planet, according to Statista. The main driver of the growth is Starlink, by far the largest satellite constellation ever assembled.

But surely humans are involved, right?

Starlink relies on an autonomous collision avoidance system that instructs satellites to maneuver based on models of orbital trajectories of objects in space. These models provide alerts several days in advance and may not always get it right. Moreover, other factors, such as the changes in the density of Earth’s atmosphere at high altitudes caused by space weather, may affect the accuracy of these calculations.

What could possibly go wrong? Of course, part of why this caught my attention is that part of what can go wrong are massive solar storms, such as the one that lit up night skies across the northern hemisphere this month. Which led me to discover that the global food supply is painfully dependent on GPS, a system which is notoriously fragile when it comes to interference from solar storms.

Okay okay, but at least SpaceX isn’t just raining that junk down in a way that could kill people on the ground, right? RIGHT?

“We estimate the chance of somebody getting hit by one of the rocket bodies over the next 10 years to be about 20 to 30 per cent,” PhD candidate Wright said. “So that worked out to about a three or four per cent chance each year that someone, somewhere will get hit by a piece of space debris.”

Regardless, have a fun SpaceX kicker: an account of how SpaceX simply doesn’t pay its bills.

Internet

404Media had an excellent evaluation of Google’s own investigation of AI-driven disinformation problems, and The Guardian had a good summary about the ‘zombie internet’ problem.

Geoengineering

Carbon capture has long been a pipe dream, and a Swiss company is trying to make that literally true in Iceland.

Climeworks partners with the company Carbfix to keep the captured CO2 from escaping into the atmosphere again by locking it away in Iceland’s basalt rock formations. They mix the CO2 with water and then pump that slurry deep underground where it eventually becomes solid rock.

“Eventually” doing a lot of heavy lifting here. But notice anything about their plan? Yes, that’s right, it sounds a lot like how oil companies deal with fracking waste. I’m sure injecting liquid into the ground in a country known for its volcanoes is not going to cause any problems. What’s a few earthquakes in between eruptions? This is all beside the point as so far carbon capture technology can barely offset its own carbon cost. The sheer scale required to have a significant effect on the atmosphere makes it a non-starter. Maybe one day these companies will prove me wrong, but so far it feels like the same kind of grift as carbon trading.

That being said, not all geoengineering is created equal, as this piece about towns in northern India shoring up their roads with plants chosen to halt erosion shows. Sustainable environmentalism is always going to an important part of surviving what’s to come. Not technology.

Climate Doom

Weather

Lots of climate news this month, shocking no one with the ability to read a room. But one of the pieces that stuck with me more than others was the new reality for homeowners: their homes are becoming uninsurable. This is especially a problem because many mortgages require insurance, or it counts as defaulting and the bank can reposses your home. Which is definitely something normal people should have to worry about.

But the climate don’t care, and destruction continues apace.

The storms that struck Houston were supercells, particularly dangerous rotating thunderstorms that often produce damaging winds and sometimes tornadoes. Several meteorological ingredients, including a link to this week’s record heat in Florida and possibly to an ocean heat wave, led to the storm producing destructive gusts. Radar imagery indicates that winds reached 125 mph just above the ground at skyscraper level, while there were likely gusts of 95 to 115 mph at the surface.

Particularly hard hit has been Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul area:

Several cities are still underwater, including the state’s capital, Porto Alegre, where 46 of the 96 neighbourhoods were flooded. Even residents of non-flooded areas have had to endure days without electricity and potable water.

Of the seven main rivers in the state, five are still above the maximum water level, and experts say there is little hope the waters will recede anytime soon.

“These rains were typical of the climate crisis: very intense, with a large volume of water concentrated in a short period”, said Anderson Ruhoff, professor at the Institute of Hydraulic Research (IPH) of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

In just three days, the state saw the amount of rain normally seen over four months.

In just 48 hours, the water level of the Guaíba rose to more than 5 meters, overwhelming drainage dykes, and floodwaters poured through the city. Dyke containment systems failed to contain the water.

Last but not least, fire season has started in Canada, and Fort Mac once again dealt with fires and evacuations. The Tyee had an interesting piece which adds some perspective to the people living there and working for big oil, while still being affected by these catastrophes.

I don’t think there’s a real advantage, morally or practically, in confronting people who labour in that industry, or trying to change their mind. We’re all living in this wicked set of dissonant inconsistencies. I think the worker has much less culpability than the bankers and the government officials and the oil company executives who have far better access to information about the damage that their industry does, and what their investments do. They’re the ones with the leverage to make positive change. And they know.

Global Warming

Scientists now overwhelmingly believe we have little to no chance of restricting warming to 1.5C. Directly related, the future doesn’t look good for the elderly trying to cope with heat. In the previous statement, the elderly are probably us.

Environmental

Absolutely do read this article about 3m polluting with forever chemicals so thoroughly for the last half a century or more, that it was nearly impossible for scientists to find people’s blood that wasn’t tainted. And for those of who who love intersections:

One paper, published in 2012 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that, in children, as PFOS levels rose so did the chance that vaccines were ineffective. Children with high levels of PFOS and other fluorochemicals were more likely to experience fevers, according to a 2016 study. Other research linked the chemicals to increased rates of infectious diseases, food allergies and asthma in children. Dozens of scientific papers had found that, in adults, even very low levels of PFOS could interfere with hormones, fertility, liver and thyroid function, cholesterol levels and fetal development. Even PFBS, the chemical that 3M chose as a replacement for PFOS, caused developmental and reproductive irregularities in animals, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.

As for news I didn’t expect to hear, global warming has gotten so bad that (tree-planting schemes may no longer be viable)[https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2024/05/13/End-Of-Tree-Planting-As-We-Know-It/].

But it’s unclear whether the plant species that emerge after severe and repeated wildfires will be the same as those that burned. In the case of West Kelowna, where the McDougall Creek fire burned last summer, preliminary research suggests that trees are unlikely to naturally regenerate, due to inadequate nutrients in the soil, higher temperatures and drier conditions precipitated by climate change. Instead, a new ecosystem is beginning to take root: grasslands.

“There will be areas of B.C. where we will just stop trying to replant trees and leave for grassland conversion. Definitely. That’s not a question,” Enns confirmed. “But the scale of that — I’m not too sure of.”

Tesluk believes that reforestation will have an important role to play in stabilizing and rehabilitating ecologies amidst extreme climate change.

“If we’re in a place where tree planting is no longer viable in significant sections of this province, we’re in the endgame,” he said.

Please tell me something good

Health

We know vaccines are good, but exactly how good? Well, mRNA covid vaccines are showing that they, over time, build up the ability for the body to fight off unrelated coronaviruses. My own editorialization, but a lot of common colds are coronaviruses. Maybe we’ll get lucky and wipe out a bunch of those. But also, mRNA vaccines are proving to be close to magic. For example, these vaccines are now being used to fight malignant brain tumors, and what’s better: it’s working.

Unexpected Things

Have a fun read about Marty Friedman’s life after Megadeth, and Eliza Haywood, a subserversive 18th century feminist author.