The image caption does say “could double”, but the PNAS article doesn’t mention that. As far as I understand, the role of the Southern Ocean as a whole as a carbon sink is big (two-digit percentage of human-caused emissions). But the effect subdivides into biological (phytoplankton) and physical (currents downwelling CO2-rich water and upwelling CO2-poor water). And I’m not aware or capable of pointing out a balance sheet of how much each component does.
Yes. It seems to have turned a part of the ocean which acted as a carbon sink into a carbon source. They don’t mention gigatonnes, but I would guess: a few (that’s a lot).
That’s some quite chilling reading.
People never got information about what mistake or malfunction took their relatives’ lives, but the leaked files draw a pattern of Teslas making erratic maneuvers when self-driving.
Also, there’s a pattern that crashed Tesla drivers tend to burn to death without passers-by being able to help them - because passers-by depend on opening doors using their handle, not pulling people out through windows or cutting through structures with hydraulic scizzors. By the time firefighters arrive, the person is dead and the fire too hot to apprach.
I would never buy a Tesla anyway, since I like utmost simplicity in vehicles.
But the Tesla battery seems like a special invitation for trouble to me - a ridiculously high number of small lithium ion cells. Unless your production is 100% reliable, that’s not a manageable configuration. A low number of large cells in manageable. Also, it seems that their battery is very likely to short in a crash. A low number of large cells have more limited options for shorting and more chances of the single series connection breaking. As soon as you have parallel cells, you’re asking for trouble.
If implemented like moped battery swapping on Taiwan, things might work. If everyone designs their own unique solution, nope. :)
It’s like with earthquakes. At first, when nobody knows jack s**t, they tell you 10 people died.
When the statistics come home, often enough, an initial 10 turns into 10 000.
With a heat wave spanning half a continent and breaking records, the typical mortality to expect (basing on experience) is at least 1000 people (some of them old and about to go anyway, but pushed over the edge by heat).
Something is wrong here. Likely the exact category in which things are compared. 1.17 kilograms, 200 W and world’s lightest… I’ve seen 2000 W drone motors that weigh less than 1 kilogram and aren’t called the world’s lightest, because one can go lighter.
It looks like a neat motor, though. For a very limited power level. But they didn’t even tell the efficiency…
It was meant to be humorous framing, given the impossibility of making humans from magma or the iron core. :)
Which ethnicity’s population are we going to reduce?
I honestly believe that “we” aren’t going to do jack s**t. It’s a process which is nearly unsteerable. People are going to live longer and longer, and use resources that would otherwise be used by children they might have had. Society is going to be burdened by caring for the old, and this is going to reduce chances of caring for the young.
In nearly every developed country, population growth is slowing or population has already started decreasing. Only in the least developed regions (some areas of Africa) does the opposite still apply, but UN predictions (made by competent people) suggest the process just reaches there later.
So, every ethnicity’s population is going to be reduced. Every ethnicity can also consider if their numbers are adequate, too high or too low. If a nation feels threatened by disappearing from the maps, they can try to reorganize their society. Random ideas: a few laws that give parents various health and social security guarantees regardless of their employment status, especially in case they’re single parents, then maybe create a few dating sites that actually try to help their users find people they like, etc…
There is plenty of resources to support humanity.
I cannot say I agree, and I think I recall that some indicators currently suggest we’d need about 3 planets to keep going at the same pace.
I think we shouldn’t use up every atom on Earth to churn out more humans. Our species has experienced a massive population explosion and is at peak numbers.
Usually this kind of events are followed by a hurtful population crash. It seems considerably better if growth ends due to a (subconscious?) decision to stop expanding, rather than a war for remaining resources.
The founder of the Antinatalism International, Anugraha Kumar Sharma, argues that “there is absolutely no hope whatsoever in this world.”
Well, that’s hard to argue against. I might disagree, but I cannot artificially give him any hope, even if he wants some.
For some, the progressive embrace of antinatalism might just be a reaction to the pronatalism espoused by the Right. Because Vice President J. D. Vance wants you to have more children, the only natural reply is that we ought to have none.
Not for me. They can want all they want, but to consider children, I imagine I would need to find a society relatively free of strife, a society with lower risk. I would need to feel somewhat secure in my own future, because you have to raise children for a hefty amount of time. Most importanly, I’d have to find someone who’d like to do this together.
Some creatures respond to environmental stress by breeding earlier and faster, and trying to do that more desperately. I cannot find such a response in my own “code”. I respond to environmental stress by saving resources to overcome hardship, and focusing effort to defeat the source of hardship. If that means a decline in population by 1.7 people, so be it.
I think that in the modern times, more people have started thinking this way. Having children is expensive and can effectively put you below the poverty line, and stop you from pursuing goals, whatever they are.
I’m not even anti-natalist. I’m just not interested in reproduction - precisely because I still have a future that I might influence for the better - but not if I waste my resources on reproduction.
Also, I think a scarcity of humans might actually cause society to value humans more. In the Middle Ages, when the plague reduced populations, serfs were able to obtain better conditions and break the pattern of slavery in many lands. Feudal lords struggled because their vast empty lands could not be managed by their dwindling crew - someone could till a field or hunt game without paying taxes or asking for permission out there. Of course, this pattern might not apply in modern times, however.
the global democratic left has been incapable of developing an economic agenda that looks beyond the next election cycle.
Not sure if I can agree. Over here, the agenda looks pretty clear. Achieve progressive taxation. Achieve higher taxation of capital than labour. Achieve lower taxation of worker-owned companies. Achieve universal health insurance. Beyond the economic, achieve a governing system not disproportionately influenced by the wealthy. Preferably, achieve all this without violence.
(and reaching those goals is prevented by the disproportionate propaganda capability of the economic right, mostly financed by the wealthy)
"My immediate reaction was to say, ‘I don’t talk with the FBI,’” Neill said. The man said, “OK,” and Neill shut the door. Two other activists described similar visits in interviews with WBUR.
This guy is my hero. :)
Interesting article, thank you.
A note about black carbon, however - it requires a carbon based fuel. This launch vehicle (and some others too) used H2 as its fuel. As a result, we can note emissions of zero for black carbon, alumina and chlorine.
The article has one more estimation error relative to this flight. They seem to have estimated 17.5% of the landing pod’s mass to burn up on re-entry. This is a reasonable estimate when re-entering from orbital flight (initial speed at least 7.8 km/s), but the flight in the news article was suborbital: a steep ascent to the Karman line (initial speed of re-entry: very low), followed by a ballistic fall.
As evidenced by photos of the capsule (also available in the news article), nearly none of its mass burnt away. It features no thermal protection tiles on the sides (there could be some under the bottom) and exhibits no visible signs of overheating or mass loss (even the painted text has remained readable).
So, while the article could be accurate in its analysis of solid-fueled and carbon-based launches and orbital re-entries, this flight differs considerably from the analyzed pattern. The capsule didn’t enter orbit, didn’t carry retrograde engines to initiate re-entry, as a result was lighter, and launchable using a relatively small rocket (19 m is really small for a passenger carrying rocket).
As a result, I think they caused very little harmful atmospheric emissions (I would consider water vapour harmless, thermal NOx harmful). Based on this, I would even speculate (based on intuition, no calculations) that during the flight (notes: not during the building of the spacecraft, not during spacecraft fuel production) less pollution was caused than an airliner burning aviation fuel emits over 500 km… maybe 1000 km.
It was just their energy bill that was huge.
Myself, I’m not so skeptical.
Yes, it’s a very expensive passtime. They burned H2 and O2, but used a lot of energy.
They had no practical purpose for going - only demonstrating that it’s safe. No experiments besides the flight itself, and it’s been demonstrated already that Blue Origin can fly and land. The added data point was just telemetry and small improvements, and the message that Blue Origin dares to fly VIPs.
I’m content to mostly ignore it, and note “there’s one more private space launch company out there”.
For greater traffic between Earth and space, things must change. The rocket stage that ascends out of the atmosphere would be better released from an extremely high-flying plane or airship. Chances of surviving accidents would increase. Required engine power levels would drop. This has been tried by Scaled Composites. Sadly their space programme was set back by deadly accidents unrelated to their architecture, losing 3 ground crew to an explosion and one pilot to a pilot error. :(
At a later time, instead of ascending out of atmosphere by burning carried fuel, one should seriously consider delivery of energy from Earth by laser (rocket as a solar concentrator, no looking out of windows) and maneuvering in orbit with the assistance of permanent space tugs utilizing highly efficient magnetic thrusters (orientation) and ion engines (propulsion). Probably ion engines that permanently sit in space and only get reaction mass and energy delivered to them regularly.
In the far end, if lots of cargo and lots of people must visit space, then a space elevator must be constructed. Materials that allow making one still don’t exist.
It would be a method of representing trust or distrust in a structured way that’s automatically accessible to the end user.
The user could right-click an image, pick “check trust” from a menu, and be presented with a list of metainfo to see who has originally signed it, and what various parties have concluded about it.
Negative proof: the AI company signs it with their watermark.
Positive proof: the photographer signs it with their personal key, providing a way to contact them. Sure, it could be a fake identity, but you can attempt to verify and conclude that.
Cumulative positive and negative proof: on top of the photographer, news organizations add their signatures and remarks (e.g. BBC: “we know and trust this person”, Guardian: “we verified the scene”, Reuters: “we tried to verify this photo, but the person could not be contacted”).
The photo, in the end, would not be just a bitmap, but a container file containing the bitmap (possibly with a steganographically embedded watermark) and various signatures granting or withdrawing trust.
or agreeing to tracking cookies.
Now that I think of it - yes. I agree to them, but my browser is configured to discard them on leaving.
The Guardian doesn’t have a paywall, it just shows an annoying message you can get past. At least my browser doesn’t prevent me from seeing the article, so I’ll copy the essence.
It was jurisdiction shopping by the oil company, trial errors by the court and manipulation of public opinion, third world oligarchy style. :(
- The jury – the most sacred due process protection available to a defendant – was patently biased in favor of the company. Seven of the 11 people seated had ties to the fossil fuel industry. Some had admitted they could not be fair, but the judge seated them anyway. There was no Native American or person of color on the jury even though issues of Indigenous rights were central to the trial.
- Morton county, where the trial was held and where many of the protests took place, voted 75% for Trump in the last election and has extensive ties to the fossil fuel industry. In a pre-trial survey, 97% of residents in the county said they could not be fair to Greenpeace. Yet the judge refused repeated requests by Greenpeace to move the case.
- Energy Transfer ran a major television and online advertising campaign in the county lauding itself in the weeks leading up to the trial. A newspaper called Central ND News, with articles critical of the protests, was also sent to county residents; Greenpeace believed Energy Transfer might have been responsible for it. But the court refused to allow Greenpeace to use court discovery procedures to determine how this unethical campaign to taint the jury pool happened.
- Adding to the absurdity, Greenpeace was blamed for the entire protest movement even though it played only a minimal role. The protests were led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, on whose ancestral land the Dakota Access pipeline was being built. In fact, only six of the 100,000 people who came to the protests were from Greenpeace – yet Energy Transfer was able to convince the jury to hold the organization responsible for every dollar of supposed damages that occurred over seven months of protests.
- Secrecy pervaded the proceedings. The court repeatedly refused to open a live stream to the public or to create and release transcripts. A request by media organizations (including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times) to access the live stream was denied. Thousands of key documents were sealed and thus hidden from public scrutiny.
- The judge, James Gion, made evidentiary decisions that gutted Greenpeace’s ability to mount a defense. For example, a major expert report showed that the pipeline had leaked roughly 1m gallons of drilling fluids into drinking water sources used by millions of people. Greenpeace lawyers needed the document to debunk the argument that the pipeline was safe, but the judge refused to let the organization use it.
- The 35-page verdict form was confusing and the results seemed to prove the jury was in fact confused. It appears the exorbitant damages number was calculated by pulling numbers out of thin air – including millions for public relations expenses, private security costs, which were being paid anyway, and refinancing costs due to various banks withdrawing from the project once they learned about the protests. (Lobbying banks is also constitutionally protected advocacy.)
Interesting, but feels like abuse of the patent system (which is widespread) and feels pointless.
Personal experience: I drive the earliest highway-capable electric car, a MIEV from 2011. It has a “manual gear stick”. Gear B gives hard acceleration and hard regenerative braking. D gives medium. C gives slow acceleration and soft regenerative braking. In reality, there’s only one mechanical gear - the parking lock. All other “gears” including reverse are electronically implemented. As for why the letters are out of sequence, I don’t know.
I use B in summer and D in winter, because applying B on glass-flat ice can lead to skidding. I hear that people in mountainous places appreciate B when going downhill - constant deceleration with no touching of the brake pedal.
But something that’s been rinsed and repeated over the history shouldn’t be patentable any more.
The concept is new to me, so I’m a bit challenged to give an opinion. I will try however.
In some systems, software can be isolated from the real world in a nice sandbox with no unexpected inputs. If a clear way of expressing what one really wants is available, and more convenient than a programming language, I believe a well-trained and self-critical AI (capable of estimating its probability of success at a task) will be highly qualified to write that kind of software, and tell when things are doubtful.
The coder may not understand the code, though, which is something I find politically unacceptable. I don’t want a society where people don’t understand how their systems work.
It could even contain a logic bomb and nobody would know. Even the AI which wrote it may tomorrow fail to understand it, after the software has become sufficiently unique through customization. So, there’s a risk that the software lacks even a single qualified maintainer.
Meanwhile some software is mission critical - if it fails, something irreversible happens in the real world. This kind of software usually must be understood by several people. New people must be capable of coming to understand it through review. They must be able to predict its limitations, give specifications for each subsystem and build testing routines to detect introduction of errors.
Mission critical software typically has a close relationship with hardware. It typically has sensors coming from the real world and effectors changing the real world. Testing it resembles doing electronical and physical experiments. The system may have undescribed properties that an AI cannot be informed about. It may be impossible to code successfully without actually doing those experiments, finding out the limitations and quirks of hardware, and thus it may be impossible for an AI to build from a prompt.
I’m currently building a drone system and I’m up to my neck in undocumented hardware interactions, but even a heating controller will encounter some. I don’t think people will experience success in the near future with letting an AI build such systems for them. In principle it can. In principle, you can let an AI teach a robot dog to walk, and it will take only a few hours. But this will likely require giving it control of said robot dog, letting it run experiments and learn from outcomes. Which may take a week, while writing the code might have also taken a week. In the end, one code base will be maintainable, the other likely not.
As a minimum, a local emergency deparment should have an automatic interface to the nearest weather radar. If a radar scan suggests “ocean falling down”, people should be alerted with text messages in the same way they’d be alerted of a wildfire, chemical leak or incoming missile strike.