Ocean Fertilization redux… plus the politics of science

My last posting about Climate Change remediation got a lot of attention, positive and negative,  so let me emphasize: I do not consider any form of "geoengineering" to be a substitute for responsibly investing in energy efficiency and finding ways to maintain a great civilization without ruining our planet. Even if a few such methods are found that work well, without crackpot flaws and/or gruesome side effects, that won't let us off the hook from our shared and individual responsibilities, which include seeking alternate, sustainable forms of energy to replace the irresponsible spewing of greenhouse pollutants into our atmosphere. Those who have been lured into participating in a War on Science must be introduced to its value. But the cynical men who are financing this cult are enemies of humankind.

Only now… some additional insights. A variant on ocean fertilization has been proposed by my friend William Calvin, one of the smartest guys I know. Bill agrees with me that the best approach for geoengineering and partial remediation of carbon driven climate change would be to emulate and enhance the method that Nature herself already uses, to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.  That means doing it via natural processes at-sea, forming carbon rich solids and letting these settle as sediments to the ocean bottom.  (While, as a side-benefit, stimulating new fisheries.)  See Calvin's Proposal: Emergency 20-year Drawdown of Excess CO2 via Push-Pull  Ocean Pumps.

Earlier we discussed the drawbacks of the bludgeon-like initial attempts at ocean fertilization, that have created crude plankton blooms by dumping iron powder into currents.  We also saw that care must be taken to make sure that (as when arid land is irrigated) the new zones of fecundity must be "well-drained" like the Grand Banks and Chile, and unlike the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, where "fecundity" can translate into  a poisoned morass of algae and jellyfish.  My conclusion: if you want to emulate the main life-process that removes CO2 from the air, do it by lifting submerged nutrients to higher, sun-lit realms, exactly as Nature does it.  Several methods have been proposed and I showed a couple of them way back in in EARTH (1989).

Let me pause to add that there are non-living process that do the same thing, in parallel.  Even more effective at drawing down atmospheric CO2 is the weathering of continental rocks by the rain cycle, washing silicates to sea via river estuaries, reacting and combining with dissolved carbon and sealing them away in sediments without intervention by biology. (Indeed, this is the principal driver of the "Gala Balance" that makes a natural ocean world self-regulating.)  I have never seen any proposals to expand continental, river-carried weathering… though I imagine a lot of dust will go to sea if we continue to spread deserts… or if desertification results in nuclear war.

But let's get back to Bill Calvin's concept.  He starts with what I've been pushing… systems that emulate natural upwellings by bringing up nutrients from below, using either windmills or wave powered systems.  (Have a look: some are very clever: especially using 3000 abandoned oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.)

He then deals with a serious problem, that most of the CO2 sequestered by a plankton bloom does not either sink or feed fish, but simply returns to the air after the plankton dies.  Calvin solves this by having another windmill-powered tube situated down-current from the upwelling one.  This second one pumps the carbon rich surface water back down again.  I'll let him explain:

Calvin's push-pull pumps:  "An easy-to-visualize method to do push-pull pumps uses floating windmills. Long pipes hang 15 to 30 stories down into the slowly moving depths. One windmill operates traditionally, pulling deep water up to the surface.  The nutrients in this cold water create a sustained bloom of algae (and algae thrive in cooler water). The other windmill pump pushes the enriched surface water down to where it cannot resurface for millennia. Pumping down stores the carbon in the brand-new algae as well as canceling out whatever carbon dioxide was first pulled up from below the thermocline. That’s the first big payoff from going with push-pull pumps."

"Even more importantly, it sinks the 240x larger amounts of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from the feces and cell debris. (Algaculture throws out the dissolved part of their organic crop.) DOC ordinarily becomes carbon dioxide within a week or two and then escapes into the air as winds stir the surface layer. Stashing it as well is the second big step up in efficiency achieved by push-pull pumps."

These things merit discussion.  Do have a closer look.  Because reducing CO2 at the source will no longer suffice.  We have to push for that!  But it will take more.

See my article: Defining Climate "Deniers" and "Skeptics." Without any doubt it is possible to be a skeptic who helps science by critiquing the flaws in any standard model. Such skepticism, propelled by curiosity and the natural competitiveness of science (indeed, science is the most ferociously competitive of all human endeavors) is natural and wholesome.  Alas, 95% of those calling themselves "climate skeptics" do not fit this description.  Their stance is driven by political loyalties and participation in an ever-deepening War on Science and everything that it stands for. And the worst example of all is...

== Politics and Science ==

The Science Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives -- continuing its almost blemish-free record of jibbering inanity, with members from the majority party almost universally unqualified and propelled by fanatical dogmas.  Take Mississippi Republican Rep. Steven Palazzo, who chairs the Space Subcommittee. His revision of the Administration's NASA budget request would slash the requested Earth science budget by a third (from about $1.8 billion to $1.2 billion) next year.  This from the party that proclaims "we need more research!" in order to determine whether human activity is promoting climate change and global warming.

(This year's Fox-declared dogma is to backpedal and admit (at last) that major global warming is obviously taking place, but continuing to declare human causes to be "unproved." And further proclaiming that lemming-herd-like scientists are all cowardly-timid yelpers after teensy grants. Even though half of all climate researchers are doing great, earning nearly all of their funds from perfectly safe research into weather prediction, having accomplished the spectacular feat of transforming the old, two hour weather report into a ten day miracle. Geniuses, chivvied by their opposites.)

Keeping true to form, the targeted slashing of science continues. The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which supports the development and commercialization of new energy technologies, would receive $50 million, $215 million — or 81 percent — less than what was enacted in fiscal 2013.

This is not the science-loving GOP of 1980, but some aberration that has sabotaged Earth science for twenty consistent years. Indeed, they several times tried to remove Earth observation and ocean/climate studies from the mission statements of both NASA and NOAA.  Can any modern person rationalize this?  Or convince himself/herself that this has anything to do with "conservatism" anymore?

Read also how the Space Subcommittee Republicans demand that funds be shifted away from asteroidal research, which offers the possibility of accessing vast wealth and resources, -- a new Gold-Platinum Rush in space -- while providing a useful intermediate mission for astronauts to develop deep space skills.  Instead they prefer an utterly pointless return to the sterile-useless-heavy Moon, and then armwave talk of a Mars Mission that this generation is nowhere near ready to even design.

Who - on Earth or anywhere - would try so hard to ALWAYS be wrong?

== Science Miscellany ==

Astronomers from 11 different institutions in the UK have joined forces to hunt for alien life, setting up a network to coordinate their activity. The UK SETI Research Network will fund research that considers new ways to find extraterrestrial intelligence. The group will also buy listening time on radio telescopes.

NASA image shows nearly ice-free Alaska on a clear day.

NASA seeks backyard astronomers to help chart asteroids.

A telescope for your eye: new contact lens allows user to switch between magnified and normal vision.

An interesting article reviewing the early days when the discoverers of pulsars first thought that the signals might be coming from Little Green Men.

Wearable computers for soldiers could stop deaths by friendly fire.

Cool images of sand reacting to sound at varied frequencies.

==And Finally==

Striking correlation between infection and mood disorders: Researchers have found that every third person who is diagnosed for the first time with a mood disorder had been admitted to hospital with an infection prior to the diagnosis. That notion adds another facet to the "hygiene hypothesis" that links a variety of autoimmune conditions to an inflammatory response caused by the loss of healthy bacteria in the gut.

Changes to the English language so subtle you don't notice; i.e. from "they started to walk" to "they started walking."

"Standard IQ tests are problematic on many levels — not least, because they do very little to tell us about the quality of our thinking. Looking to overcome this oversight, psychologist Keith Stanovich has started to work on the first-ever Rationality Quotient test." An interview that forges into deep territory, revealing just how difficult it is for humans to do the thing we are most proud-of.

Recent Sci Fi films -- the okay and the meh!

Before diving into Science Fiction films, some news: the fabulous -- and alas late -- science fiction author Iain Banks just had an asteroid named after him. Part of a terrific tradition. The great planet hunter Elinor Helin named one for me (5748 DaveBrin), back in the 90s… and she graciously assented (after enduring my rude armtwisting) to name another pair after Poul Anderson and Frederik Pohl.  I had been hoping that Iain would  be similarly honored, and am deeply gratified that he was.  Now let's go out there, mine them and reduce them to nothing, by turning them into wonderful things.

I'll give some impressions from recent sci fi films, like Star Trek: Into Darkness, below. But first some retro-looks.

== Successes and failures: older sci fi flicks ==

The always-brashly relevant site io9 has a run-down of the "12 Most Unfaithful Movie Versions of Science Fiction and Fantasy Books."  A fun romp and - as you might guess - a chance for shared misery with other authors who have seen "liberties" taken with their original material.

In fact, I am more forgiving of some of these films - even Kevin Costner's version of my novel The Postman - than many would expect.

For example, Soylent Green may have veered a bit in plot focus, but nothing about the "soylent" part of the film was incompatible with Harry Harrison's world in the novel Make Room! Make Room! which was vividly portrayed pretty much as he wrote it. Above all, Soylent Green was excellent, vivid and beautiful cinema… and  also probably the most effective film in history at scaring folks into becoming  environmentalists. Which I cannot say for the earlier and relentlessly preachy Silent Running, which we recently watched again. Silent Running had some fine moments, but was far too heavy handed to be truly effective -- and Joan Baez makes my ears ring. (With apologies to fellow ex-hippies.)

I also forgive the silly Freejack flick, simply because it got more people to read Robert Sheckley (it was based upon Immortality, Inc.).  And now I will enrage some others by saying I bet Bob Heinlein would have chuckled at Verhoeven's approach to Starship Troopers.  All of Heinlein's preachings are there… all of them!  Veerhoven argues with RAH, using symbolism to rebuke and provoke. I found it a fascinating conversation and the subsequent arguments that raged among Heinlein fans would have pleased him.

== Successes and failures: Recent Movies ==

All right, I know I owe you that thoughtful essay on Avatar and other serious science fiction films.  I do hope to get to it.  Meanwhile, we've watched some other recent flicks and I'll give quick impressions.  (Warning: some spoilers below!)

(Note: some 2013 Science Fiction  offerings were clearly in the category of "wait for the DVD."  The Tom Cruise and the Will Smith offerings, for example. One could tell from afar that they are old, old, old and tired concepts, retreaded with nice effects. We have a big TV… and can wait.)

Star Trek: Into Darkness.  Folks wrote in, predicting I would hate this latest episode in the re-boot, because the core villainy originates within the Federation,. Aren't I the guy who most fervently celebrates Gene Roddenberry's optimistic vision of an improvable human and sapient civilization? (A very rare message indeed, these days.) Hence it may surprise folks to learn that none of my fears were realized.  J.J. Abrams delivered a fun and vivid -- if a little popcorny -- Trek adventure that I found entirely faithful to the wholesome and uplifting Roddenberry-Trek mythology.

Sure, there was a Starfleet villain. So?  That happened often enough in the older films and the varied TV series.  The key point is that the conspirators were acting in secret and in violation of the Federation's core principles.  Hence, the scenario was not an indictment of civilization as a whole, nor a proclamation of the hopelessness of democracy -- as you see perpetrated relentlessly in the Star Wars prequels -- but rather it's a tale about society's ethical immune system (manifested by Enterprise and crew) discovering and neutralizing a lethal and immoral aberration.

That is what good sci fi does: "Watch out for mistakes! Pay attention to potential failure modes! Then envision that citizens can cure them with courage, openness and belief in us."

(Indeed, with just five minutes of alteration, that's the message James Cameron might have delivered via Avatar.  Alas that, instead, he chose to spread a poison.)

On a less ethereal plane, I thought J.J. Abrams dealt pretty well with the rascally immaturity of the new version of James T. Kirk by giving us a tale of maturation.  Fine. Chris Pine is growing on me. I wasn't keen on this re-boot, but I think it could work out fine.  (I'd like to see a more thoughtful use of the old (Nimoy) Spock.  I believe he would be more nuanced in his "interference." Indeed, what's  blatantly called for is an intersection of the parallel worlds, giving Pine (conveying different Kirks) even more range. But that awaits my someday having beers with Mr. Abrams.)

Oh, but then there's the other villain in ST:ID. Yes… sigh… you-know-who.  Okay. I winced, for about three seconds. Then I got over it, decided to go along, and thoroughly enjoyed the performance.  Even the deliberate counter riff to the moving death scene in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. Self-indulgent? Sure, but in a way that shared our fan-crush with a nod and many winks.  Hey, there are worse cinematic torts and (in real time) I talked myself into loving it.

Speaking of self-indulgence, did any of you notice the arrival of Dr. Carol "Can I cook?" Marcus? Oh gawd. Why do directors do that? Still, I told myself to "shut up and eat more popcorn." All told, it was fun. Refreshing. Even going so far as reprising the music from the Original Series.  The STII/TNG/Goldsmith musical themes were better, by far, but had grown exceedingly over-exposed and stale.

Want depth in your cinematic sci fi? Try Chistopher Nolan. Heck, these days, I'm delighted just to be able to watch something that contains some goodness, plot consistency and clean fun.  J.J. Abrams delivered those and I can wait for brain food.

And Other Films more briefly: Cloud Atlas (based on the novel by David Mitchell) was not as murky as I expected.  We could all follow the threads. The blatant homages to Blade Runner and Soylent Green and other classics got tiresome, after a while.  And the whole reincarnation point was thin.  Still, it was pretty. And I chuckled a few times over the makeup-makeovers.  Popcorn, requiring lots and lots of butter.

I left out Looper from my first draft.  Shouldn't have.  It was a meticulously thoughtful effort.  Time travel is truly hard to do well, but this one tried very hard and a careful analysis on paper reveals one of the two dozen or so causality models for time travel stories might, sort-of, work... or at least hold together well enough for a consistent story. The crime premise is dopey, but you have to overlook something and it drove a solid movie plot. SO much better than Surrogates!  Even forgot the popcorn on my lap.

Some things, however, no amount of can be saved by no amount of condiments. We recently rented Part II of Atlas Shrugged: The Movie. (I had to. I am a bit of an "Ayn Rand scholar" and felt behooved.) I had few hopes for an entertaining or enlightening evening… and all expectations were met. I do admit that the film-makers have striven hard to be faithful to the source material! That is always gratifying to an author… almost enough for me not to wish (fervently) that they hadn't.

Atlas Shrugged: Part One had been pretty damned awful, tendentious, illogical, preachy, dreary and dumb... but there were moments of charm, as I describe here.   (Wherein I also demonstrate, decisively, that Rand was the greatest of all acolytes of Karl Marx, even if they disagreed over the teleologically ordained end point.) Alas, Part II had all of the dreary-awful traits of Part I... without any of the redeeming qualities.

I was reminded of Frank Herbert's Dune, in which you start rooting for the Atreides family only because their opponents are so vampiric and grotesquely-cartoonishly awful, and hence you are able to squint and not notice that the Atreides are - themselves - oppressive monsters.  Likewise, in Atlas Shrugged, a litany of inane and calamitously self-destructive "laws" (that bear no relationship with any real world politics) are passed by the U.S. government, serving as strawman excuses for the rise of what would otherwise be recognized as a lunatic cult, led by a man who (in the more detailed novel) deliberately sabotages all American industry and the nation's ability to feed itself, while crooning "followwwww meeeee" in hypnotic tones to one ubermensch "creator" after another.  A cult of uniform obedience to the Big Man that would make David Koresh and Jim Jones envious.

Mark this well... I consider myself to be a "libertarian" in the sense that Adam Smith was a genius - and a much more ethical man than anyone credits - who helped establish our positive sum Enlightenment and taught us how to harness human creative competition, unleashing a cascade of great things. I consider it to be one of the great tragedies of modern intellectual and political history that the American Libertarian movement has been hijacked away from those roots, down paths of solipsistic madness, enticed by a spite-propeled, child-hating, crypto-Marxist woman whose appeal should be limited to brief obsessional flings by nerdy-male college sophomore under-achievers. No greater proof can be seen than the overwhelming rejection at the polls by the American people in 2012, despite the Libertarian Party having its best candidate ever, and despite the apparently determined self destruction of the Republican Party.  Twin facts that have William F. Buckley spinning in his grave.

Never mind.  My previous essay said it all, exposing not only Rand's Marxist roots, but the stunning inability of her followers to explain the lack of children, procreation or the possibility of a future in her strange "utopia."

Rant-mode off!

== Sci fi films in a lesser mode ==

See a  terrific mini movie, six minutes long, about terraforming Mars… in French!(With English subtitles.)  C'est étonnant et merveilleux ouvrage de la science et aussi science fiction! Felicitations et bon chance!

The Contradiction of Capital Markets

I will have some unusual and skew-perspective takes on all the transparency-related news, from Google Glasses to the NSA revelations.  In fact, an article of mine should appear in the July 16 issue of Variety: Google Glass: In the Long Run, the Benefits Outweigh the Risks. And another one in a major newspaper.  Till then, and while I am traveling to Chicago and Ft. Worth, here is a riff that I've stored too long.  Something that needs saying.

== Can companies really gain investment capital via the stock market? ==

Elsewhere I have commented on how easily capitalist/entrepreneurial markets can and do get warped by cheating and parasitism.  Some of it is inherent, as Adam Smith described way back in 1776. What could be  more natural for human beings to do – for example – than insider trading? Even primly honest folks will do it, inadvertently, We set up rules, and then lay patches on cracks that inevitably open in the rules, then bandaids on the patches….

Across 6000 years, no civilization ever tried so hard to create fair and open arenas within which humans can engage in creatively cooperative and creatively competitive positive-sum games.  Those who claim that markets are “natural” are romantics who know no human history and who have never even cracked open Smith's classic, Wealth of Nations. 

Markets are far from natural!  They are marvelous, wealth generating machines. Human inventions that need constant tuning, tweaking and re-adjusting.  Especially since cheaters (in other words humans) are all over the place, looking for ways to exploit those cracks. If they must, they will use camouflage and call themselves socialists… or oligarchs… or champions of enterprise, -- whatever garb will let them blend into the favored sanctimony of their environs.  But pay less attention to surfaces and polemics than to outcomes.

Witness how the emphasis in the U.S. economy has shifted, since the 1940s, away from goods and services to finance. Companies once founded by innovators start to fail when taken over by “business majors.” The clade of parasitical meddlers has an endless supply of rationalizations, such as those concocted by the HFT or High Frequency Trading industry, claiming that – by leaping to suck away the intermediate value between buyers and sellers – they are somehow doing both parties a service, by helping markets to settle on the "proper (intermediate) market price."  This catechism-incantation allows them to shrug aside the blatant fact that they benefit while producing nothing, even as the buyers and sellers and producers of goods and services starve for capital, languish and fade.

(Aside: one reflex will be to to accuse me at this point of "socialism" - even though every word of mine so far has been in praise of honest trade and competitive market forces, in a capitalism free of what biologists and disease experts call "parasitic-burden.")

(Another aside: some have written in to suggest that I should distinguish between new shares issued as dilution (described above) and those issued in an initial stock offering or IPO.  The latter events are often filthy affairs, rife with cronyism, insider trading, corrupt under-the-table dealings and grotesque market distortions in which the little guy seldom has a chance.  Almost anyone could design a system that would "bleed" into the market enough option-warrants in an open fashion, that would serve to help set an actual price for the IPO, instead of the bizarre and self-serving activities we see performed by most IPO underwriters. It is one more way in which we are not served by the cartel of "seated exchange members." Still do note. Much of the IPO cash does go to the company. Purchasers should always know how much.)

== The "mutant" CEO ==

Elsewhere I have also discussed the flawed reasoning that defends today’s outrageous compensation packages for CEOs and other managers who create no product or service whatsoever. Think about it. Market forces are supposed to correct imbalances!  Hence, by the very logic of capitalism, high CEO salaries should attract new talent to the field of corporate management until the supply of brilliant corporate managers outstrips demand and the prices -- or compensation for such managers -- finally fall. That is capitalism!

It is the absolute core catechism of their faith… completely ignored when convenient. Members of the collusive CEO caste never ever, ever mention this -- that the system they claim to admire should result in a smooth and natural limitation on these French Royalty level compensations. And the failure of a correction to appear - after decades of incessant pay raises to stratospheric levels - is essential proof of a collusive market distortion.

The one excuse I've heard is that the very best managers are mutant-level good. They are like tall, fast NBA players, nonlinear and by far worth any price! But there's a rub.  NBA mutants can prove they are worth it by clear statistical performance measures and ticket sales! In contrast, there is famously almost no correlation between CEO compensation and company health.  Rather, studies have shown a near-perfect correlation with how many members of a very small clade of 5,000 or so lordlings you play golf with. Stuff each others' corporate boards with pals and what else do you need?  Can anyone out there point to a "market force" that would prevent this?

== The myth that equity markets efficiently raise capital ==

But let's go back to the stock markets. You can step back and question the fundamental rationale for equities trading, altogether! Oh, sure, people should be able to sell their shares to others who deem the company has better prospects. But for the most part its sense of importance masks a gambling den. It is justified by the claim that companies use the NYSE and NASDAQ and other exchanges as “capital markets,” to fund their RandD plus the building of productive plants and equipment. (Ironically, much of their catechism on this goes back to Karl Marx!)

The whole notion that a company benefits very much, when its stock price rises, is absurd. It is a Big Lie on the scale of an Emperor who people suddenly realize has no clothes.  Companies can draw new investment funds from the stock market only when the price rises AND the company's board issues new shares to sell at that higher price. 

That will, indeed raise capital! Current stockholder value is diluted, but presumably it rises back up as a result of  new activities and products that the fresh capital allows. To do this requires sober calculation and convincing existing stockholders that the dilution will prove beneficial.  And it just doesn't happen that much.  Nowhere near enough to justify the 99% of trading that is pure speculation, gambling and manipulation.

Let me reiterate; I am not calling for an end to equities markets! Current stock-owners should be able to trade, fine, but let's stop pretending that companies benefit from any but the tiniest fraction of NYSE or NASDAQ activity. To the contrary, managers are terrorized by stock value fluctuations into making rapid, near-term decisions that can prove short-sighted, even catastrophic.  (Secondary note: none of this applies to commodities markets, though those have their own problems.)

In any event, that cycle of ownership dilution and re-investment via new share issuance is the activity that should be tax favored, and NOT the passive clipping of gambling profits from the trading of old shares to "greater fools." Re-stating that again… the issuance of new shares - the proceeds of which go to new products, capital equipment and so on - should be tax-favored, and not (gambling) dividends and capital gains that benefit competitive capitalism not... one... iota.

Aside #1- The favored flows would go directly to the company's investment in productive capacity and competitive activities.

Aside #2- Assuming we also constrain cheat-methods like proliferating a zoo of share types with sneaky-variable voting rights, the result of new issuance would be a steady decline in the power of large bloc stockholders as dilution spreads ownership ever-wider.  In order to hold onto control, large-bloc owners would have to keep plowing dividends back into buying new shares.  So, either the ownership becomes more broadly spread (resembling democracy), or else the "kings" are forced to be hands-on, involved and committed to the firm.  Either way, vigorously competitive investment in new goods and services would be the favored outcome.

Indeed, although it is a separate matter, I believe that these "radical" measures to save capitalism from cheaters should include a limit to shell holding companies.  No share of voting stock in any company should be more than two layers from a living, breathing human being. (Or charitable foundation or pension plan.)

React viscerally.  Call this "socialism."  In fact, there is not one molecule of socialism in this proposal.  Just anti-parasitism, plus a will and eagerness to see so-called "capital markets" actually function as advertised, for a healthy version of capitalism.

Let me swivel now and point my finger in the opposite direction: left-wingers who blame "capitalism" for our recent messes should replace the word with "cheaters."  I consider healthy "Smithian" capitalism to be one of the top five victims of the malignantly incompetent rule of the recent U.S. GOP.  There are no outcome metrics of national health under which the Republican Party's tenure in command did not wreak harm upon the people of the United States, on human civilization, and upon healthy capitalism… and upon the spinning ghosts of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley.

Okay.  It's been said. When was the last time you saw such a fiercely radical "j'accuse" denunciation, issued in defense of our present economic system, against the enemies of enterprise, who claim to be its great defenders?  Well well.  This is Contrary Brin!

More… anon… Meanwhile… and just to clear the decks… here are some political miscellany.

== Who won the Iraq War? ==

“We lost out,” said Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official in the Bush administration who worked on Iraq oil policy. “The Chinese had nothing to do with the war, but from an economic standpoint they are benefiting from it, and our Fifth Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply.”

Not to mention that Iraq is now largely a satrapy of Iran.  What a great idea that pair of trillion dollars was.  And you would even consider trusting those goofballs with a burnt match, let alone any role in political life?  

(And while this proves the American right to have been completely loony, the far-left is little better, if they continue to nurse the insane delusion that these wars ever, ever, ever had anything at all to do with "grabbing oil." Um... show me the oil? Moderates rise up! The left-and-right wings are out of their freaking minds.)

== Political-News ==

An infographic rates countries based on the state of freedom of the press. Many criteria are used, including violence against journalists to legislative measures to curb press freedoms.

An interesting look at how unusual it is to see the Republican Party without a clear next front-runner.  "For decades, the party has drawn from a small pool. There was a Bush or a Dole on every national ticket from 1976 through 2004. For 20 years before that, Richard Nixon was on the ballot in every election but one."

Tracking progress toward US energy independence: a handy chart, from Popular Science.

A provocative essay, Radical Centrism and the Return of Ricardo, reminds us that Adam Smith was not the only founder of enlightenment economics. Ricardo also played a major role. I cite both of them in that they knew what most "free market" economists have forgotten, that economic distortions will always be generated by toxically massive accumulations of wealth. A healthy market system - like an ecosystem - needs recycling, not just for "liberal" reasons of justice and equity and outcomes, but for the very health of the system itself, so that competition remains a real, vibrantly creative force, with a maximum number of empowered participants on a relatively flat playing field.  This proposal for a radically altered tax and property system has no chance of ever being implemented outside of a sci fi novel. And I only agree with half of the aspects.  Still it shows real thought.

See statistical proof that obstruction of appointments has skyrocketed under the Tea Party House of Representatives.

How 1% of 1% dominate U.S. elections.  Yes it is Mother Jones and I don't always agree with their polemics.  But unlike Fox, they use actual facts. And they show where all of this will head, so long as the agenda of The Insatiables is the re-establishment of feudalism.

It would be one thing if -- as I portray in Existence -- the re-emerging oligarchy took seriously their need to be intelligent rulers. It is another thing to blithely assume they are smart while undermining every institution and enlightenment system that brought them all they own. Do they actually plan to ignore where history says that this will lead?

Finally, a science-fictional side: Here's hoping that Hugo voters will consider that Stanley Schmidt has just retired after his long and brilliant tenure as editor at ANALOG Magazine.  It is his last year of eligibility and it might be nice to honor him, at long last.

The Science of Climate and Geo-engineering… and more

On June 18 I joined a blue ribbon panel (via Google Hangout) on the topic of Reinventing Climate Management: Staring Down the Possibility of Geoengineering, led by scenario thinker Jamais Cascio, author of the book Hacking the Earth: Understanding Geoengineering. He moderated a terrific group of scientists and other innovators (plus me… for comic relief I guess) wrestling with this issue, joined by visitors from the web with questions and ideas.

Managing the climate in the face of global warming is a wicked problem that requires getting almost every independent nation to coordinate. What would a system of global governance look like that's up to the true challenges ahead? And how do we start thinking about whether we need to take more desperate steps in the form of geoengineering?

I came away from the discussion convinced, yet again, that some things merit much closer examination and experimentation.  Out of all of the ideas that have been raised for either removing carbon from the atmosphere or reducing the sunlight that feeds the greenhouse, only one would attempt to emulate nature's own process for removing CO2, the way by far the largest amount has already been removed -- through chemical and biological sequestration in the open ocean. That proposal is Ocean Fertilization.

Yes, yes we have all read about silly, half-baked "experiments" in which poorly instrumented boats dumped tons of iron dust into ocean currents. These created plankton blooms, all right, but also questionable after-effects. They did not get very good press.  And they poisoned the well - so to speak - for more intelligent proposals that would more closely emulate what Nature, herself does.

And if anyone gets tentative rights to "speak for Mother Nature" it would be James Lovelock, author of the Gaia hypothesis.  With Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum in London, Lovelock proposed trying an option that would place vertical pipes some 200 meters long in the sea to pump nutrient-rich water from depth to the surface, thus enhancing the growth of algae in the upper ocean. The algae, which are key in transporting carbon dioxide to the deep sea and producing dimethyl sulphide involved in the formation of sunlight-reflecting clouds, should help to prevent further warming. According to his note in Nature: 

"Although fertilizing the ocean with iron as a way of stimulating algal growth is being considered, the use of pipes to use the ocean’s existing nutrients as fertilizer is certainly novel."

Well… novel? Except that ocean bi-layer nutrient mixing was shown to readers way back in my novel EARTH (1989).  Our friend, The Economist's Oliver Morton, wrote an extensive blog on the Lovelock/Rapely proposal -- which may get funding from the Gates Foundation for preliminary research.  And Morton fairly describes some of the critics, as well:

“The concept is flawed,” says Scott Doney, a marine chemist at WHOI. He says it neglects the fact that deeper waters with high nutrients also generally contain a lot of dissolved inorganic carbon, including dissolved CO₂. Bringing these waters to the lower pressures of the surface would result in the CO₂ bubbling out into the air."

Well, then shouldn't we look into it and find out?

Might this concept be compatible with Nathan Myhrvold’s innovation… pumping warm surface water below the thermocline?  As reported by Oliver Morton, the system would be something a bit like a floating paddling pool with a long pipe dangling down from its centre. Because there will be waves outside the pool but not inside, water will splash in over its edge but not out, and so the water level inside the pool is higher than the level outside the pool, providing the downward force.  A company called Atmocean has in fact built prototype systems which aim to do it in almost exactly the opposite way to the Searete patents, by using wave power to pump cool water up, but the effect would be the same, spreading nutrients from below to where the sunlight is…

…exactly what happens in the world's greatest fisheries, off Chile, the Grand Banks and Antarctica. Why do extra nutrients spur fecundity and ocean health in those places, but not in "dying seas" that suffer from eutrification (death by excess fertilizing runoff from agriculture), like the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean and especially the Black Sea?  Well… just look at them!  The difference should be obvious to the eye. The choked seas do not "drain well."

Let's make a parallel.  It is said that ninety percent of the oceans are "desert" realms where very little lives, because of lack of nutrients to feed a food chain… mostly the stuff that you find in "dirt." Now turn back onto the continents.  What do we sometimes do to make deserts bloom?  Onland we irrigated,  bringing water to soil.  At sea the proposal is to bring "soil" to the water in a sense. (The mouths of most river systems are also generally fecund.)

Ah, you answer, but hasn't irrigation been a mixed blessing, and often a downright curse? Yes! Our ancestors ruined the so-called "Fertile Crescent" by pouring river water over fields, allowing salts and toxic metals to accumulate until the land died.  But this did not happen everywhere.  Many regions -- e.g. the Ganges valley and the Yangtze -- have been heavily irrigated for thousands of years without suffering desertification. Again, the reason should be eye-obvious: Those river valleys had good drainage, allowing salts to be washed away by monsoons.

The Gulf Stream, the Antarctic Current, and the fisheries near Chile are not enclosed seas -- they flow.  So ocean fertilization experiments should start where strong currents can disperse the plankton blooms.  So let's try some of the more natural-like layer mixing or bottom stirring proposals. And let's see if we can make another Grand Banks somewhere.

== Another concept ==

A truly ambitious concept for ocean fertilization by layer mixing would go beyond those mentioned above.  It would use pipes more than 1000 meters long and power them by planting the bottom end right atop an oceanic hydrothermal (volcanic) vent!  

A thousand meters?  Atop a volcanic vent?  Well… I think we should try some simpler mixing methods, first.

== More factors ==

Again, Oliver Morton (in private correspondence) explained why  the first recourse in ocean fert has always been iron.: "Iron is interesting because its a *micro*nutrient. That gives it great stoichiometry -- you can see in the literature estimates of C:Fe ratios of around 100,000:1, IIRC. That gets you a lot of C for a tonne of Fe. As I understood it you were suggesting mobilising phosphorous reserves in ocean sediments or deepwater. For phosphate fertilizaton the ratio is 106:1 -- the ideal Redfield ratio of C to P in marine biomass. The practical ratio, given losses, would almost certainly be a lot less; for iron it is more than 10 times less. If that were true for macronutrient fertilization, you'd get only a few tonnes of C stored for every tonne of P mobilized. There have to be better ways of getting rid of a tonne of C than that. You might do better -- 10 tonnes C, maybe 30? But that still means a vast mass-moving operation to work at the desired gigatonne C level, because you would have to mobiliza a lot of tonnes of sediment or bottom water to deliver one tonne of P. This is a very different and more extensive infrastructure than needed for iron fertilization."   (See Morton's survey of geoengineering schemes in Nature: Climate Crunch: Great White Hope .)

Wow.  Okay. Look, I never doubted than iron fertilization was efficient, compared to ocean bottom stirring, or bi-layer mixing.  What I maintain is that not enough attention has been paid to studying the most effective parts of the ocean - e.g. the Grand Banks and Chile and Antarctica -- to determine if they are also big net carbon sinks, as well as fantastic fisheries.  It does not seem to have occurred to anyone that there might be other places on Earth that have almost the right conditions and that might be tipped into similar fecundity with just a little help. 

Instead, the reflex is to assume that all meddling is always bad, all the time.  Indeed, the metaphor I used was irrigation and that was the very reflex. We all know what shortsighted irrigation did to the Fertile Crescent... and that metaphor makes us ignore the lessons of other watersheds that remained productive and healthy for 4000 years.  Again, this is the main difference between Chile, Labrador, Antarctica... and the eutrophic dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and Mediterranean and Black Sea.

To my knowledge, this consideration was not handled well in most of the iron experiments.

Continue to Part 2 of Ocean Fertilization, discussing Push-Pull Ocean Pumps.

== More using natural forces: Solar Towers ==

Some great ideas have been around for a long time.  Way back in 1989 I talked about desert solar towers that use temperature differentials to suck greenhouse-heated air past turbines, generating electricity for free. A test unit was built in Spain 10 years ago.  

Now plans are underway for a 2015 solar tower in Arizona of mammoth proportions.

== Climate Miscellany ==

Back to Oliver Morton again… his rather skeptical look at more geoengineering schemes, especially cloud-creation.

A fascinating survey of how past climate changes, especially in the 17th century, severely affected societies and people worldwide, in The Inevitable Climate Catastrophe by Geoffrey Parker on The Chronicle.

Some convincing charts about climate change. Plus see my earlier posting: Arguing with your crazy uncle about Climate Change.

Somebody go read this and review it for us here?  The Age of Global Warming: A History by Rupert Darwall.

==  Plus Science Miscellany! ==

With three terrestrial-mass planets in the habitable zone of this small, red star (they would all be tidal locked facing their sun), "the likelihood of one of them actually being habitable is tremendous." Just 22 light years away.

Interstellar Visioneers and a limitless future: Read a review on Centauri Dreams of UCSB Professor W. Patrick McCray's new book called The Visioneers: How A Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies and a Limitless Future on the lives of  Gerard O'Neill and Eric Drexler, and how their innovative visions and research into space colonies and nanotechnologies transformed society -- and shaped our future.

Anthropologists see evidence that developing the ability to throw well was a major evolutionary driver.  Something that Bill Calvin hypothesized 20 + years ago in The Throwing Madonna: Essays on the Brain.  Indeed, throwing is one of our many prodigious skills that made us formidable and scary, even discounting "intelligence."

A fascinating (if highbrow) appraisal of the radical roots of the Enlightenment. 

John Hodgman narrates a Cory Doctorow animated short about NSA spies.

== call my agent… quick! ==

Past Brain Activation Revealed in Scans: "What if experts could dig into the brain, like archaeologists, and uncover the history of past experiences? This ability might reveal what makes each of us a unique individual, and it could enable the objective diagnosis of a wide range of neuropsychological diseases. New research at the Weizmann Institute hints that such a scenario is within the realm of possibility: It shows that spontaneous waves of neuronal activity in the brain bear the imprints of earlier events for at least 24 hours after the experience has taken place."