Posts Tagged ‘environment’
“We won’t really understand the brain until we can make models of it which are analog rather than digital, which nobody seems to be trying very much”*…
… As Max Levy and Michael Moyer argue, perhaps that should change, if only because our climate future might depend on it…
Computing today is almost entirely digital. The vast informational catacombs of the internet, the algorithms that power AI, the screen you’re reading this on — all are powered by electronic circuits manipulating binary digits — 0 and 1, off and on. We live, it has been said, in the digital age.
But it’s not obvious why a system that operates using discrete chunks of information would be good at modeling our continuous, analog world. And indeed, for millennia humans have used analog computing devices to understand and predict the ebbs and flows of nature…
[Levy and Moyer survey the history from analog computing, starting with the ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism…]
… Analog computing reached its apotheosis in the differential analyzer, first built by Vannevar Bush at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1931. The analyzer used a complicated series of gears and shafts driven by electric motors. It could calculate a huge variety of differential equations — the kind of equation used to model physical phenomena. But to modify an equation, the machine had to be laboriously reconfigured by hand.
When modern digital computing began in the late 1930s, it was clunky, expensive and inferior. But digital computation had benefits. Digital computers were easier to program and often more accurate than analog machines. And with the rise of the transistor and the subsequent advances fueled by Moore’s law, digital processing soon took over.
But as our digital world has exploded, its costs have as well. Every switch of a digital bit takes a smidgen of energy. And new artificial intelligence systems require huge amounts of computing power. To take just one example, news reports have revealed that Microsoft and OpenAI are planning a $100 billion data center that would suck about 5 gigawatts of power. That’s roughly the output of five nuclear reactors.
Analog computing offers an alternative. The neural networks that power AI systems make predictions by repeatedly blasting through a sequence of multiplication and addition operations.
In an analog computer that uses electrical signals — not gears and pulleys — a current could pass through a circuit that uses carefully chosen resistors to model those operations, at a significant power savings.
The advantages of digital computing are real, but so are the drawbacks. Perhaps, by reaching back to computing’s past, researchers will be able to steer a sustainable path toward our computational future…
You don’t need 0s and 1s to perform computations, and in some cases it’s better for the climate to avoid them: “What Is Analog Computing?” from @laxmevy and @mmoyr in @QuantaMagazine.
* Freeman Dyson
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As we celebrate the continuous, we might send elastic birthday greetings to Peter Hodgson; he was born on this date in 1912. An advertising and marketing consultant, Hodgson introduced Silly Putty to the world. As The New York Times recounted in his obituary,
The stuff had been developed by General Electric scientists in the company’s New Haven laboratories several years earlier in a search for a viable synthetic rubber. It was obviously not satisfactory, and it found its way instead onto the local cocktail party circuit.
That’s where Mr. Hodgson, who was at the time writing a catalogue of toys for a local store, saw it, and an idea was born.
“Everybody kept saying there was no earthly use for the stuff” he later recalled. “But I watched them as they fooled with it. I couldn’t help noticing how people with busy schedules wasted as much as 15 minutes at a shot just fondling and stretching it”.
“I decided to take a chance and sell some. We put an ad in the catalogue on the adult page, along with such goodies as a spaghetti-making machine. We packaged the goop in a clear compact case and tagged it at $1.00”.
Having borrowed $147 for the venture, Mr. Hodgson ordered a batch from General Electric, hired a Yale student to separate the gob into one ounce dabs and began filling orders. At the same time he hurried to get some trademarks.
Silly Putty was an instant success, and Mr. Hodgson quickly geared up to take advantage of it…
“We are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it”*…
… So what we do and how we do it matters. Sam Lavigne and Tega Brain warn that one of the most popular current approaches is unfair and could be a dead end…
Carbon offsetting injects market logic into thin air. It demands that certain activities become measured and standardized, reduced to the single dimension of the carbon dioxide molecule. The goal is fungibility—to assert equivalence between activities by people or environments so that emissions created over here can be traded and (theoretically) compensated for by actions removing or reducing carbon over there. The means is, of course, commodification. Offsets privatize planetary metabolism.
Offsetting is the logic behind “net zero.” “Think about it like a bath,” suggests National Grid. “The amount of water in the bath depends on both the input from the taps and the output via the plughole. To keep the amount of water in the bath at the same level, you need to make sure that the input and output are balanced.” Or, as McKinsey & Company puts it: “Net zero is an ideal state where the amount of greenhouse gasses released into the earth’s atmosphere is balanced by the amount of greenhouse gasses removed.”
Policymakers and corporations around the world have embraced the concept of net zero as a pathway to address the climate crisis. Nation states, corporations, public institutions, and even art exhibitions purchase offsets as financial assets (called carbon credits) in an attempt to compensate for their emissions and reach a state of carbon neutrality. Traded as financial commodities on carbon markets, offsets are supposed to represent either carbon dioxide reductions—via avoided emissions that would have otherwise happened in a business-as-usual scenario—or carbon dioxide removals—where some of the carbon already hanging about in the atmosphere is drawn down. Offsetting projects range from tree planting and conservation to changes in energy infrastructures, jet engine cleaning schemes, and programs for reducing methane emissions from cows. The carbon fluxes produced by offsetting projects are measured, quantified, priced, abstracted, and finally sold via carbon registries to emitters looking to claim a lower carbon footprint. What is counted as an offsetting project, however, and what is not, is left to the discretion of these registries.
The assumption underpinning offsets is that paying to compensate for emissions creates a powerful economic incentive for emissions reductions. In practice, however, it risks doing exactly the opposite. The logic of offsetting suggests that carbon intensive activities can continue as long as someone else, somewhere else, cleans up the mess…
Lavigne and Brain recount the history of the offset and explore it in practice, exposing its failings; they then turn to possible remediation…
… To foster an appreciation for some of these oversights—what current carbon markets are not counting—we have built a more inclusive carbon registry. We have developed new methodologies for how political actions that contribute to a program of carbon savings and radical change can be counted, measured, and transformed into offsets. What if we were to take the proposal of net zero seriously and apply carbon accounting to a wider range of human activities?
Our first carbon offsetting methodology, titled “Industrial Sabotage as Temporary Carbon Storage,” enables actions by groups like Blockade Australia, Water Protectors, and the Tyre Extinguishers to be analyzed with a carbon counting technique that was originally developed by the forestry industry. Called “temporary carbon storage,” this method provides a way of calculating the carbon benefit of delaying the release of emissions, like the harvest of a plantation forest. Although this approach has never before been used to calculate the benefits of production delays caused by activists who block fossil fuel infrastructures from producing emissions, we have rigorously undertaken this work, holding ourselves to the same standards as the offsetting industry. A marketplace for the resultant carbon credits is under development, where all proceeds will be donated back to support the groups responsible for these actions.
A second methodology further explores the carbon savings of sabotage and efforts to slow productivity. “Time Theft as Avoided Emissions” quantifies the carbon savings of immobilizing corporate executives working in the energy and extraction industries We applied this approach in a new offsetting project titled Cold Call, in which participants are invited to work in a call center and make calls to distract the oil and gas executives from their jobs for as long as possible.
To return to the words of [Australian activist] Max Curmi, sabotage reveals a system functioning exactly as it is meant to:
[The system] is actually not broken. It’s performing exactly the way it was set up … For the climate movement to actually start to engage with this in an effective way we have to acknowledge the situation that we are currently facing. It’s not a couple of bad politicians or a couple of bad corporations, it’s an entire economic and legal framework that prevents change from happening and that locks in an extraction-based economy that is fundamentally about exploiting people and the environment for as much profit as possible for the rich…
Eminently worth reading in full: “All that is Air Melts into Air,” from @sam_lavigne and @tegabrain.
Pair with: “Words Versus Words, Fire with Fire” on climate change denial (and deflection) propaganda and how to counter it.
* Barack Obama
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As we ruminate on remediation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1975 that the term “global warming” appeared for the first time in print, with the publication of Wallace Smith Broecker’s paper “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” in the journal Science.
Five years earlier, in 1970, Broecker, a researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, published a study of ocean sediment cores that revealed the Ice Age had seen rapid transitions in its Broecker argued that there was an increasingly likely scenario for this to happen: the ongoing rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide content created by fossil fuel emissions would soon begin to warm the planet, in turn warming surface waters in the ocean and melting ice into fresh water. This would reduce the waters’ density, thereby preventing cold water from sinking, altering ocean currents and effectively shutting off the conveyor belt. If that were to happen, he postulated, Europe would grow cooler as it did during the Ice Age. The more disruptive effect would come from unpredictable “on-and-off flickers” in global temperature. As Broecker put it in 1998, “the climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks.”
Broecker built on this discovery in his 1975 paper, which hypothesized that the Ice Age’s rapid fluctuations had been caused by changes in “thermohaline circulation”: the ocean currents and wind systems that move heat from the equator up north towards the poles and transport cold water toward the equator. Broecker later named this the “Great Ocean Conveyor.” He believed that rapid changes in climate were once again possible if this conveyor belt were changed or “turned off.”…
“The braid is always stronger than the strand”*…
From Grace Ebert, a novel look at the world’s densest “city”…
At its height in the 1990s, Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong housed about 50,000 people. Its population is unremarkable for small cities, but what set Kowloon apart from others of its size was its density. Spanning only 2.6 hectares, the tiny enclave contained [the equivalent of] 1,255,000 people per square kilometer, making it the densest city in the world. For context, New York City boasts about 11,300 per square kilometer, while Manila, the most highly concentrated municipality today, tops out at about 42,000.
Kowloon was built as a small military fort around the turn of the 20th century. When the Chinese and English governments abandoned it after World War II, the area attracted refugees and people in search of affordable housing. With no single architect, the urban center continued to grow as people stacked buildings on top of one another and tucked new structures in between existing ones to accommodate the growing population without expanding beyond the original fort’s border.
With only a small pocket of community space at the center, Kowloon quickly morphed into a labyrinth of shops, services, and apartments connected by narrow stairs and passageways through the buildings. Rather than navigate the city through alleys and streets, residents traversed the structures using slim corridors that always seemed to morph, an experience that caused many to refer to Kowloon as “a living organism.”
The city devolved into a slum with crime and poor living conditions and was razed in 1994. Before demolition, though, a team of Japanese researchers meticulously documented the architectural marvel, which had become a sort of cyberpunk icon that even inspired a gritty arcade as tribute.
For a now out-of-print book titled Kowloon City: An Illustrated Guide, artist Hitomi Terasawa drew a meticulous cross-sectioned rendering of the urban phenomenon to preserve its memory. The massive panorama peers into the compact neighborhood, glimpsing narrow dance halls, laundry dangling from balconies, and entire factories tucked inside cramped quarters.
Thanks to psychologist Greg Jensen, we now have a stunning high-resolution scan of Terasawa’s illustration complete with annotations and diagramming. It’s worth viewing the full panorama in its entirety to zoom in on all the details of this infamous city [and here, animated]. And, for photos of Kowloon and its inhabitants, check out this incredibly informative video detailing its history…
A real-life human hive: “A Rare Cross-Section Illustration Reveals the Infamous Happenings of Kowloon Walled City,” from @Colossal.
* Ryan Graudin, The Walled City
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As we pack it in, we might we might send the simplest of birthday greetings to a writer, philosopher, and naturalist who might not have gravitated naturally to Kowloon City, Henry David Thoreau; he was born on this date in 1817. From 1845 to 1847, Thoreau lived in a small cabin on the banks of Walden Pond, a small lake near Concord, Massachusetts. Striving to “simplify, simplify,” he strictly limited his expenditures, his possessions, and his contact with others, intending “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach.”
Thoreau became a pillar of New England Transcendentalism, embracing and exemplifying the movement’s belief in the universality of creation and the primacy of personal insight and experience. Perhaps best remembered for his advocacy of simple, principled living, his writings on the relationship between humans and the environment also helped define the nature essay.
“Men argue. Nature acts.”*…
Further to yesterday’s post, an elegant (albeit frightening) tool from our friends at The Pudding…
Climate scientists say that we’re headed for more than a two degree rise in earth’s temperatures. But for most of us, that’s not really helpful in providing a tangible vision of our future.
Perhaps that’s because we’re more familiar with weather: the daily, short-term forecasts that make you pack an extra sweater or wear your rain boots. Climate, on the other hand, describes average weather systems over long periods of time.
150 years ago, German scientist Wladimir Köppen attempted to bridge the gap between climate and weather by using vegetation growth, average temperature, and precipitation levels to classify the world into five distinct climate zones: Arid Tropical, Temperate, Cold, and Polar…
To distinguish the differences within these categories, the five climate zones are divided into subcategories.
For example, here you can see these European temperate climates broken up into four subcategories: Temperate – Dry summer, hot summer, Temperate – Dry summer, warm summer, Temperate – No dry season, warm summer, Temperate – No dry season, hot summer.
Overall, there are 30 unique subclassifications, and together they make up the Köppen Climate Classification (KCC). The KCC helps us not only differentiate between weather systems of neighboring countries, but also brings insights into cities oceans apart that on average will have similar weather throughout the year…
A 2018 study, led by climatologist Hylke Beck, used projected data from climate models along with the current Köppen Climate Classification to give a glimpse at what our world may look and feel like in 2070.
At a zoomed out level, some of these changes are hard to notice: Temperate climates shifting north Tropical and Arid climates growing Cold climates disappearing.
But what if we were to zoom into the city level to see how these changes affect the way each city feels?
This project looks at 70 global cities, and tracks their classification from present day to 2070.
And with climate change, your city isn’t just getting hotter: it will resemble the distinctive climate of completely different places…
Here we see our 70 global cities listed in their current climate classification. [With this tool], we can transport any city into its future classification…
Bracing: “Climate Zones- how will your city feel in the future?” from @puddingviz.
See also: “Conservation Imperatives: securing the last unprotected terrestrial sites harboring irreplaceable biodiversity,” a paper from two dozen climate scientists with a plan to protect Earth’s remain biodiversity by conserving a tiny percentage of the planet’s surface: “Our analysis estimated that protecting the Conservation Imperatives in the tropics would cost approximately $34 billion per year over the next five years. This represents less than 0.2% of the United States’ GDP, less than 9% of the annual subsidies benefiting the global fossil fuel industry, and a fraction of the revenue generated from the mining and agroforestry industries each year.”
* Voltaire
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As we reconsider our customs, we might note that on this date last year, the Earth set a record for the hottest day every recorded… a record that lasted until the next day, Tuesday, July 4th. July 6, 2023 currently holds the record– but it is deemed likely to “fall” this summer…
“What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.”*…
… and it’s likely, climate scientists Matthew Barlow and Jeffrey Basara suggest, to get more uncomfortable still…
… Although heat waves are a natural part of the climate, the severity and extent of the heat waves so far this year are not “just summer.”
A scientific assessment of the U.S. heat wave estimates that heat this severe and long-lasting was two to four times more likely to occur today because of human-caused climate change than it would have been without it. This conclusion is consistent with the rapid increase over the past several decades in the number of U.S. heat waves and their occurrence outside the peak of summer…
… Although heat waves are a natural part of the climate, the severity and extent of the heat waves so far this year are not “just summer.”
A scientific assessment of the U.S. heat wave estimates that heat this severe and long-lasting was two to four times more likely to occur today because of human-caused climate change than it would have been without it. This conclusion is consistent with the rapid increase over the past several decades in the number of U.S. heat waves and their occurrence outside the peak of summer…
At the peak of the last ice age, some 20,000 years ago, when the Northeast U.S. was under thousands of feet of ice, the globally averaged temperature was only 10.8 F (6 C) cooler than now. So, it is not surprising that 2.2 F (1.2 C) of warming so far is already rapidly changing the climate.
Countries promised in 2015 as part of the Paris Agreement to keep warming well under 2 C, but current government policies around the world won’t meet those goals. Temperatures are on pace to continue rising, with the increase likely to more than double again by the end of the century.
While this summer is likely be one of the hottest on record, it is important to realize that it may also be one of the coldest summers of the future…
Read on for more on: “How climate change is heating up the weather, and what we can do about it,” from @MathewABarlow and @OUWXDoc in @ConversationUS.
See also: “The rise of the truly cruel summer,” (gift article) from @TheEconomist.
* Jane Austen, in a letter to her sister dated 18th September, 1796
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As we chill, we might recall that it was on this date in 1922, the day before his 19th birthday, that Ralph Samuelson invented water skiing. Samuelson had already mastered aquaplaning (riding on a sheet of wood while being pulled by a powerboat) but wanted a summer equivalent of snow skiing. He had unsuccessfully tried barrel staves and snow skis before succeeding with 8 foot long pine boards, the front tip of which he bent up (by boiling them in his mother’s kettle). His first successful outing, on a wide portion of the Mississippi River near Lake City, Minnesota, involved starting on an aquaplane, then stepping off onto the skis.
Samuelson didn’t patent his invention, nor was his work sufficiently publicized at the time to prevent U.S. Patent 1,559,390 for water skis from being subsequently issued, on October 27, 1925, to prolific inventor Fred Waller, who marketed his product as “Dolphin Akwa-Skees.” (Waller also invented Cinerama, which he used to publicize his skis…) Still, Samuelson, who became a turkey farmer, was a guest of honor at a water skiing 50th anniversary in 1972, and was inducted into the Water Ski Hall of Fame in 1977. His slightly-modified second pair (the first pair broke) still exists, and are on display at the Lake City Chamber of Commerce.
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