Challenges and Changes

Setting aside detailed politics, for now... but not the underlying issue...

Now that intellect and curiosity are threatened species in America, let's all nurture them wherever we can. One method: I often dip in to give brief answers to the curious on Quora. We’ve collected some of these queries - and my responses - on my secondary (Wordpress) blog. I explore questions like... “What has been the impact of science fiction books on readers?” and “Can you name a concept that is rarely explored in science fiction?” and ‘What are some science fiction novels with a memorable protagonist?

Others are trying to come up with answers. For example: the Breakthrough Prizes celebrate the bold accomplishments of scientists as if they are rock stars… and with generous Silicon Valley funding, plus Morgan Freeman presenting, they seem on track! (Though they've got a way to go, when it comes to red-carpet fashion allure, during the photo sessions.)

In this fascinating look at the last one thousand years, Ian Mortimer’s book Millennium: From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed Over a Thousand Years offers big-idea perspective on how far we have come, especially by developing new tools as well as a vigorously open society. And science. He writes, "The most significant changes are experienced when society is forced to deviate from its entrenched patterns of behavior."  This review is worthwhile in its own right. Mortimer looks at the tremendous challenges we will face to survive the next millennium.  Or the next few years.

Case in point: see the giant new containment shell that the Ukraine is slowly sliding into place to cover the fast-decaying concrete “sarcophagus” protecting Eurasia from the poisons inside the Chernobyl reactor.

== Potential game changers ==

Researchers  have created a device that absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and uses sunlight to break it into a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen called synthesis gas or “syngas,” that can be used directly or turned into diesel or other liquid fuels. Yeah. Saw this a couple of years ago. Note that this is not so much a plausible way to put a dent in atmospheric carbon. Fact is, the same solar energy, fed into the grid, would prevent CO2 emissions in the 1st place.

It is a potentially useful item, but more to provide fuels for outposts and military use. Also, this tech may be useful on Mars! Some call it an “artificial leaf,” using a special catalyst - tungsten diselenide - and sunlight.  We’ll see. But I rank it as a helpful game changer.

Here's another: A mild electric current combined with an antibiotic can kill multidrug-resistant bacteria by helping the antibiotic to cross protective biofilms. Zaps of electricity may also prove helpful in jumpstarting the blood clotting process to heal wounds.

Remember the Horta, in Star Trek:TOS? An alien creature whose biology was based on Silicon, which has a chemical bonding structure similar enough to carbon that science fiction writers have speculated for a century about alternate biologies.  Alas, there is no simple silicon molecule that merges well with a convenient liquid, like water, nor one that has carbon’s vast flexibility in bonding.

Still, rejoice, fans of diversity!  Researchers managed to coerce an extremophile bacterium to use an enzyme that could catalyze silicon–carbon bonding — if fed the right silicon-containing precursors.

Veering semi-randomly, but optimistically, access to mobile money was influential in lifting 2% of Kenyan households out of poverty -- particularly empowering female-headed families.

== Challenges on the weather front ==

This is the second year in a row that temperatures near the North Pole have risen to freakishly warm levels. During 2015’s final days, the temperature near the Pole spiked to the melting point… It’s about 20C [36 degrees Fahrenheit] warmer than normal over most of the Arctic Ocean…  “It will be fascinating to see if the stratospheric polar vortex continues to be as weak as it is now, which favors a negative Arctic Oscillation and probably a cold mid/late winter to continue over central and eastern Asia and eastern North America.” Watch. Our neighbors who are waging war on science, and every other fact-profession, will shiver and proclaim that their misery proves that nothing is changing.

U.S. Energy independence - one of the Obama Administration's specatcular braggables - has come in the short term from vast new supplies of natural gas... but ultimately depends on the same thing that might save us from the worst ravages of climate change… new technologies for sustainable energy and efficiency and storage.  All of which were blocked, relentlessly but (thank God) ultimately futilely by certain political factions.  Still, we are going to need oil and gas for some time.  And the best transition is one in which America and the West are fully independent from sources in unstable and unfriendly parts of the world.

Well, unfriendly to our civilization and enlightenment, though not to the incoming administration.

In other words, the stunning hypocrisy of those who blocked sustainables, thus keeping us tied to the Persian Gulf ten years longer than we needed to be.  In sharp contrast, note that it was during President Obama’s tenure that we regained independence and gas prices plummeted. (The U.S. has produced more oil and natural gas than any other country every year since 2012.)

In any event, it is a good thing that now it seems that new oil and gas discoveries in Texas will make this bridge of independence secure.  

The even gooder thing?  U.S. Sets Staggering Record with 191% Growth in Solar Power Installations in 2016. In other words, twits, you have failed.  We smartypants will save the world for you, despite you.

==Though smart folks aren't always right ==

The other side, while far more sapient, still has its fetishes and complexes.  Like a prudish utter-refusal to consider a Plan B, to supplement, in case efficiency and sustainables prove insufficient, by themselves.

Of all the schemes to ameliorate climate change through “geo-engineering,” the one with the greatest mix of plausibility and controllability is Ocean Fertilization. Most attention has been applied to adding the key missing ingredient… powdered iron: How dumping iron in the oceans can help fight climate change.

But the concept should be viewed more generally. Essentially you are talking about adding a little land to fertilize water.

This is exactly parallel to humanity's ancient trick: adding water to dry land in irrigation.  With almost identical advantages and failure modes!

Think. When you irrigate a region by adding water from mountain sources to flatlands with poor drainage, you are creating a recipe for long term disaster. Salts build up and you make a desert. On the other hand, when you add water to land and there’s good drainage? Well, there are places on Earth where irrigation has been practiced for thousands of years, without much harm. Drainage is key.

As for the reverse? Adding land to water? Well, minerals washed out to sea by weathering are precisely the way our planet maintains her “Gaia Balance” against the CO2 released by volcanoes and living ecosystems. That and upwelling currents that stir up ocean-bottom sediments. Both fertilize the 20% or so of the oceans that are filled with life. (The rest, that don't get nutrients, are vast ocean "deserts.") It's the same deal. “Adding land to sea.”

We are already doing this, big time, with agricultural runoff, and when this effluent spills into bodies of water with poor circulation – the Caribbean, Mediterranean and especially the Black Sea – then eutrophication and de-oxygenization can spread death, as when you irrigate a region with poor drainage, ashore. But when nutrients are added to fast and broad ocean currents – as happens at upwelling zones off Chile, South Africa and the Grand Banks, the result is a fecund burst of life, a vibrant food chain. And, incidentally, some carbon removal from the atmosphere. The magnitude of the latter is under dispute, but even if it is zero, isn’t the experiment worth trying?  If only to get more fish?

Not according to zealous purists, who fear that any form of geo-engineering, no matter how inherently controllable or plausible, is anathema – even the bottom stirrers I described in Earth, that merely boost what nature already does. Why oppose even small scale experiments? Pure prudishness, Because the activists assume that any such efforts might reduce our passion to save the world by reducing carbon use.

Such contempt. See The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the enemies of science by Will Storr.  Such zero sum thinking. The liberal-smartypants-progressive wing does contain some unreasoning, reflexively sanctimonious cretins, and these helped to propel Trumpist reaction.

Just let's be clear. One side contains some preachy flakes.  The other consists... but I was going to put that aside. For today. 

 == Fascinating lagniappes! ==

This sparrow acts like it has four sexes. Because a chromosome flip created a second set of “sex” chromosomes, beyond the XY pair. One individual in this species can only mate with one-quarter of the population. There are very few sexual systems with more than two sexes.”  No other species was known to have one set of fully operational sex chromosomes and another pair that subdivided the species again on another aspect of mate choice. 

Researchers managed to remove most of the C-14 from graphite blocks storing radioactive waste, and turn it into electricity-generating diamonds.  The nuclear diamond battery is based on the fact that when a man-made diamond is exposed to radiation, it produces a small electric current. According to the researchers, this makes it possible to build a battery that has no moving parts, gives off no emissions, and is maintenance-free.  Though current and voltage levels are low, this is a perfect source for science fictional scales of time. Because C-14 has such a long half life, the researchers estimate a diamond battery would still generate 50 percent of its capacity after 5,730 years.  Wowzer!

Oh, a final Brin-note. The 3rd issue of the i4is journal Axiom from the Institute for Interstellar Studies is now out and it features “an exclusive article by the world-renown science fiction writer David Brin about artificial intelligence: "How Might Artificial Intelligence Come About: Different Approaches and their Implications for Life in the Universe." You can order the issue here.