My friend Martin Rees — The British Astronomer Royal — has long offered insightful views upon not only the sciences, but also the dangers we face rushing into an uncertain future. His new book On the Future: Prospects for Humanity gives even-handed criticism of both cynical denialism and hand-wringing despair, leading you toward the one thing that might save us all and help our children thrive… clearheaded pragmatism, laced with the idealism to believe we can be better. Solutions exist, but they depend upon an openminded willingness to question assumptions and learn from one another.
== The
Abundance Report ==
Indeed, the worst
plague in the world is gloom. It infests large portions of the “left” and
lobotomizes almost the entire “right,” undermining the confident, can-do spirit that has propelled nearly all
progress. Know this, only a people who are confident that they can change the
world stand any chance of actually changing anything. And "can" only arises when you admit "we already have."
To that end, read an interview with Stephen Pinker about how we are surrounded by good news, leading not to complacency, but a spirit of “I think we can!”
To that end, read an interview with Stephen Pinker about how we are surrounded by good news, leading not to complacency, but a spirit of “I think we can!”
“It’s no contradiction to say that we’re
extending human life and there are threats: threats of climate change, threats
of authoritarian politicians. You can appreciate the threats, worry about the
threats, try to fight back against the threats at the same time that you
appreciate the progress that we have made.
“I would say
that it’s appreciating the progress that gives us the courage and conviction to
try to strive for more progress. History tells us that attempts to make the
world better tend to succeed. We’ll never achieve a utopia, but that doesn’t
mean we can’t make things a little bit better.”
Want some
anecdotal evidence?
Inspired in
part by the “Tricorder XPrize, a new set of $1 test screens for the presence of a
number of diseases like malaria, flu and dengue fever, various types of
cancers, and genetic diseases will appreciably contribute to health. And Jimmy Carter's campaign to end the Guinea Worm parasite may reach completion this year..
The Internet
will soon be accessible from all areas of the planet, including rural locations
with poor or no network connectivity. The FCC unanimously approved
SpaceX’s ambitious plan to launch 7,518 satellites into low-Earth orbit. These
satellites, along with 4,425 previously approved satellites, will serve as the backbone for the company’s proposed Starlink broadband network. These new SpaceX satellites will increase the number of active
satellites six-fold in less than a decade. And my friends at ViaSat are taking an entirely different approach (massive geosynchronous sats) toward similar ends. Yes, they'll have more latency in voice coms, but most traffic is surfing and you'll never notice the difference.
And yes,
most of these links are brought to you by the Abundance Insider report from
Peter Diamandis’s XPrize Foundation (I’m on the Advisory Council.) Get his book
Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think! And realize that we have tons of hard work to do, to save the world…
but good news is all over the place… suggesting we should be up to the
task.
And now
something cool. California-based startup Hoversurf is training one of its first
customers, the Dubai Police Force, on the 2019 S3 Hoverbike. The vehicle, which
can operate with or without a human pilot, weighs 253 lbs, costs $150,000,
flies for up to 25 minutes, and can safely fly at an altitude of 16 ft.
== Oh, but the enemies of
enlightenment abound ==
“Under the tenure of
Texas Republican Lamar Smith, the House of Representatives Science
Committee has held hearing
after hearing casting doubt on mainstream climate science, used
its subpoena
power to harass and intimidate climate scientists, entertained
the conspiracy theory that sea level rise is caused by rocks falling
into the ocean, and used its Twitter account
to blast links to climate change-denying Breitbart articles.
Smith, who
is not a scientist, has used the veil of authority that chairmanship
offers to pen articles imploring the public not to buy into the “hysteria over
carbon dioxide” while railing
against “climate alarmists” at pro-fossil fuel get-togethers. (He
has also accepted hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions from the
oil and gas industry.) In short, the
House Science Committee has been a dark place for rational discourse on climate
change. Sitting on it has been a lonely and frustrating experience for Bill
Foster, Congress’s
lone scientist (until
last night).” - reports Maddie Stone in Gizmodo. These jibbering morons are a cancer on your children's future. Part of a campaign to discredit all fact-using professions.
Incoming Committee Chair Texas
Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson promises relief from this monstrous
lobotomization of the world’s “greatest deliberative legislature.” And maybe… after 2020? A
rebirth for the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) banished by Newt
Gingrich for occasionally daring (as faithful-neutral public servants) to say
“um, sir, that’s not really true.”
But it’s a long road. The Denialist
Cult keeps moving the goal posts. And one way they keep your confed neighbor
nodding and hypnotized is by offering dollops of “science” that he learned in
Junior High in incantations that let them neutralize any input from actual science.
Take the fact that plants consume carbon dioxide in order to grow. That means (according to their latest capering incantation) that nature will flourish if we don’t interfere with coal barons, petro-princes and carbon lords raking in billions from their legacy-corrupt extraction rights! Never mind that paleontology shows high-CO2 eras featured warm arctic zones… (yay? Ask the US Navy viz the Russians what each one thinks of that)… but also vastly bigger swathes of desert, across the globe.
You think tundra zones with max one growing season will replace lost temperate zones that had two? Not for the 10,000 years that it will take, to grow topsoil up there. Fools.
Take the fact that plants consume carbon dioxide in order to grow. That means (according to their latest capering incantation) that nature will flourish if we don’t interfere with coal barons, petro-princes and carbon lords raking in billions from their legacy-corrupt extraction rights! Never mind that paleontology shows high-CO2 eras featured warm arctic zones… (yay? Ask the US Navy viz the Russians what each one thinks of that)… but also vastly bigger swathes of desert, across the globe.
You think tundra zones with max one growing season will replace lost temperate zones that had two? Not for the 10,000 years that it will take, to grow topsoil up there. Fools.
== It gets worse ==
Oh, my, the depths
of crazy have yet to be plumbed. Example: “Autohoaxers” are a movement that
reflexively declares every significant event a hoax, sometimes just for
argument’s sake. Kind of like Vernor Vinge’s fictional “Friends of Privacy,”
who auto-generate more ersatz personas and fake items than can ever be refuted,
hence making your “that wasn’t me!” denials seem plausible.
Read about this and other pyrotechnically loony modern manias now
orbiting a growing *Flat-Earth Movement*. Yes you read that right. And this is
just one caked, pimply crust-symptom of the disease being crammed on us by the
spreading War Against Smart People. (Including every single fact-centered
profession, from science, teaching and journalism to intel and military and FBI
officers.)
One of you suggested “Tell the flat earthers to go
to Wal Mart and get a goPro and order a weather balloon and GPS tracker. You
don't have to build a rocket to see for yourself. If the Earth were flat, then
you'd be able to see the Great Lakes, Atlantic and Pacific from 30 miles above
Colorado."
Here’s another
truly devastating one: “Soundly Proving the Curvature of the Earth at Lake Pontchartrain.”
Of course my own answer is: “How many people do you think can keep secret a conspiracy? At most fifty? Your premise is that ALL the smart people… hundreds of millions of us… are in on this globe-pushing cabal? Woof!"
Liberals are fools, if they think this is rooted in “economic decay of the white middle class.” That’s happened and needs addressing, as does the nastiest pustule on the right — racism. But those are lipstick on a pig.
Liberals are fools, if they think this is rooted in “economic decay of the white middle class.” That’s happened and needs addressing, as does the nastiest pustule on the right — racism. But those are lipstick on a pig.
Scratch the
surface. This is all about an inherent American spite toward authorities or
“elites.” We all think one elite or another is conniving against us. Liberals
(rightfully) point at those who oppressed us across 99% of 6000 years…
owner-feudal lords.
Those oligarchs -
uniting in a world-mafia putsch - need a distraction to keep populist masses
from recognizing them as the ancient enemy. They have a great one, leveraging
and weaponizing hatred toward another elite… smart people who know stuff. And
make no mistake, we are the ones confederates truly hate, for “looking down on
them.”
Think about it. The
knowledge elites are our immune system against errors of the past, like
feudalism. And errors of the future, like climate change. They are the people
who can see — and prevent — the machinations of those seeking a New Feudalism.
(I portrayed this in EXISTENCE.) Hence there is a feral agenda behind the War
on All Facts — removing the only obstacle standing in oligarchy’s way.
The monsters' conclusion? That nothing can be done to prevent this now, so why try? – is rightly ridiculed by the appalled-educated half of the nation. (Answer – “You who were wrong about every single statement and forecast up to now… why should we heed you any longer?”)
All of this is deliberate. There is no unified conservative position on anything anymore. Not deficits, or trade, or morality… nor old anchor-standards like divorce or gambling or sexual deviancy or “family values.” Certainly not regarding the health of flat-fair-open entrepreneurial market capitalism. What we have now instead are talking points aimed at various constituencies with one purpose, to keep enough of them inside the fraying Big Tent for one more election.
And gleefully spitting gas on a fire, now Russian space officials talk about ‘investigating’ whether the Apollo landings actually happened. See a link below. Anything to keep us attacking each other. The chief failure mode of our brilliant enlightenment civilization is auto-immune disease.
== And so... back to saving the world ==
See the “Five Phases of Climate Denialism.” In fact, you can often hear all five uttered during the same hour, at Fox, even though they are mutually contradictory. “Climate Change is a hoax!” and “Glaciers are advancing!” will be chanted – sometimes in the same hour as “It’s changing but no worries and humans didn’t cause it,” all the way to “It’s a calamity and we caused it, but that doesn’t disqualify our credibility; it just means it’s hopeless to try solving the problem! So leave our parasite moguls alone!”
Now “Trump Administration To Polluters: Earth Is Doomed, So Go Hog Wild.” Yes, one branch of the administration issued a 500 page report admitting what every fact-using or “deep state” professional knows, that human-generated greenhouse gases have us on course for a climate precipice of rising acid seas and catastrophically spreading deserts and vast waves of refugees.
Now “Trump Administration To Polluters: Earth Is Doomed, So Go Hog Wild.” Yes, one branch of the administration issued a 500 page report admitting what every fact-using or “deep state” professional knows, that human-generated greenhouse gases have us on course for a climate precipice of rising acid seas and catastrophically spreading deserts and vast waves of refugees.
The monsters' conclusion? That nothing can be done to prevent this now, so why try? – is rightly ridiculed by the appalled-educated half of the nation. (Answer – “You who were wrong about every single statement and forecast up to now… why should we heed you any longer?”)
All of this is deliberate. There is no unified conservative position on anything anymore. Not deficits, or trade, or morality… nor old anchor-standards like divorce or gambling or sexual deviancy or “family values.” Certainly not regarding the health of flat-fair-open entrepreneurial market capitalism. What we have now instead are talking points aimed at various constituencies with one purpose, to keep enough of them inside the fraying Big Tent for one more election.
== Links galore ==
One of you (Anthony T.)
offered up a raft of NYT articles… “on topics Brin has written about.” A bunch of riffs on our
interesting times.
A treatment for Sickle Cell disease in Africa
The Insect Apocalypse is Here: What does it mean for life on earth?
The Insect Apocalypse is Here: What does it mean for life on earth?
