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bananas's JournalLet’s End the Peril of a Nuclear Winter
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributors
Let’s End the Peril of a Nuclear Winter
By Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon
Feb. 11, 2016
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We haven’t heard much about this apocalyptic future in recent years. But the research into the destructive potential of a war involving nuclear weapons has continued. Even with the reduced nuclear arsenals that the United States and Russia agreed to in 2010, we have the ability not only to set off instantaneous destruction, but also to push global temperatures below freezing, even in summer. Crops would die and starvation could kill most of humanity.
But it is not just the superpowers that threaten the planet.
A nuclear war between any two countries using 100 Hiroshima-size atom bombs, less than half of the combined arsenals of India and Pakistan, could produce climate change unseen in recorded human history.
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The Obama administration’s goal is to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons, with no specific timetable. But President Obama does not need a treaty with the Russians to take this action. He can just follow the lead of President George H. W. Bush, who unilaterally reduced America’s nuclear arsenal as the Soviet Union was disintegrating.
With less than a year left in office, President Obama could add to his legacy by sending a similar signal to the Russians today. We could reduce our arsenal from roughly 7,000 weapons to 1,000, eliminating land-based missiles and outlining plans to further reduce air- and submarine-based missiles.
Mr. Obama said himself in 2009 that “the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War” and that the United States, as the only nation to have used these weapons, had “a moral responsibility” to seek a world without them. “We have to insist,” he said, “‘Yes, we can.’”
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Alan Robock is a professor of environmental sciences at Rutgers University. Owen Brian Toon is a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Top U.S. Intelligence Official Calls Gene Editing a WMD Threat
Source: MIT Technology Review
Easy to use. Hard to control. The intelligence community now sees CRISPR as a threat to national safety.
Genome editing is a weapon of mass destruction.
That’s according to James Clapper, U.S. director of national intelligence, who on Tuesday, in the annual worldwide threat assessment report of the U.S. intelligence community, added gene editing to a list of threats posed by “weapons of mass destruction and proliferation.”
Gene editing refers to several novel ways to alter the DNA inside living cells. The most popular method, CRISPR, has been revolutionizing scientific research, leading to novel animals and crops, and is likely to power a new generation of gene treatments for serious diseases (see “Everything You Need to Know About CRISPR’s Monster Year”).
It is gene editing’s relative ease of use that worries the U.S. intelligence community, according to the assessment. “Given the broad distribution, low cost, and accelerated pace of development of this dual-use technology, its deliberate or unintentional misuse might lead to far-reaching economic and national security implications,” the report said.
The choice by the U.S. spy chief to call out gene editing as a potential weapon of mass destruction, or WMD, surprised some experts. It was the only biotechnology appearing in a tally of six more conventional threats, like North Korea’s suspected nuclear detonation on January 6, Syria’s undeclared chemical weapons, and new Russian cruise missiles that might violate an international treaty.
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Read more: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600774/top-us-intelligence-official-calls-gene-editing-a-wmd-threat/
Ole Peters and Murray Gell-Mann find foundational mistake in economics (and a solution)
Exploring gambles reveals foundational difficulty behind economic theory (and a solution)
Date: February 2, 2016
Source: American Institute of Physics (AIP)
Summary: Ole Peters and Murray Gell-Mann asked: Might there be a foundational difficulty underlying our current economic theory? Is there some hidden assumption, possibly centuries old, behind not one but many of the current scientific problems in economic theory? Such a foundational problem could have far-reaching practical consequences because economic theory informs economic policy. The story that emerged is a fascinating example of how human understanding evolves, sticks, unsticks, and branches.
In the wake of the financial crisis, many started questioning different aspects of the economic formalism.
This included Ole Peters, a Fellow at the London Mathematical Laboratory in the U.K., as well as an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, and Murray Gell-Mann, a physicist who was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his contributions to the theory of elementary particles by introducing quarks, and is now a Distinguished Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. They found it particularly curious that a field so central to how we live together as a society seems so unsure about so many of its key questions.
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"The first perspective -- considering all parallel worlds -- is the one adopted by mainstream economics," explained Gell-Mann. "The second perspective -- what happens in our world across time -- is the one we explore and that hasn't been fully appreciated in economics so far."
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They put it to the test after their friend Ken Arrow -- an economist who was the joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with John Hicks in 1972 -- suggested applying the technique to insurance contracts. "Does our perspective predict or explain the existence of a large insurance market? It does -- unlike general competitive equilibrium theory, which is the current dominant formalism," Peters said.
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This concept reaches far beyond this realm and into all major branches of economics. "It turns out that the difference between how individual wealth behaves across parallel worlds and how it behaves over time quantifies how wealth inequality changes," explained Peters. "It also enables refining the notion of efficient markets and solving the equity premium puzzle."
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What's the next step for their work? "We're very keen to develop fully the implications for welfare economics and questions of economic inequality. This is a sensitive subject that needs to be dealt with carefully, including empirical work," noted Peters. "Much is being done behind the scenes -- since this is a conceptually different way of doing things, communication is a challenge, and our work has been difficult to publish in mainstream economics journals."
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Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by American Institute of Physics (AIP). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
1. O. Peters, M. Gell-Mann. Evaluating gambles using dynamics. Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, 2016; 26 (2): 023103 DOI: 10.1063/1.4940236
Have gravitational waves FINALLY been found? Thursday press conference expected to unveil Albert Ein
Source: Daily Mail
- Signals have apparently been detected by the Advanced Ligo detector
- Astronomers working on the observatory are apparently analysing the data
- Rumours claim the signals are the first evidence of gravitational waves
- Gravitational waves are predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
- The results will be unveiled on Thursday at 10.30 EST (15.30GMT).
They are said to be elusive ripples in the fabric of space and time created by every massive object in the universe, but despite decades of searching scientists have never seen them.
That could be about to change.
Rumours are spreading among physicists that researchers have detected gravitational waves for the very first time, a century after they were proposed by Albert Einstein.
It is believed an experiment called the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (Ligo) has picked up signals from these waves just a few months after starting - and the results will be unveiled on Thursday at 10.30 EST (15.30GMT).
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3437846/Have-gravitational-waves-FINALLY-Thursday-press-conference-expected-unveil-Albert-Einstein-s-theory-ripples-space-time-proved.html
Revisionist Millennial Musing by Amy Shira Teitel About The V-2 Rocket
Revisionist Millennial Musing by Amy Shira Teitel About The V-2 Rocket
By Keith Cowing on February 8, 2016 4:05 PM. 4 Comments
"The short answer is that, no, the V-2 wasn't strictly speaking a Nazi weapon. The long answer is more complicated, and a lot more interesting."
Keith's note: Amy Shira Teitel who has done PR things for NASA on occasion, posted a video in December that accompanies this article wherein she splits hairs over whether the V-2 rocket was a "Nazi weapon". Of course it was. Its kind of odd that anyone would even ask that question. As Teitel happily wanders through a superficial review of German military history she seems to be thinking that because it was a German Army project before some Nazi walked in and took complete control over, that this affects whether or not to call it a "Nazi Weapon". At best this is a distinction without a difference. Anyone who has read one page in one book on World War II knows that the Nazis ran Germany - period. Teitel ends her video with a bubbly "The V2 is a really interesting rocket that played a very interesting role and it can be looked at so many different ways." Yes, it was an "interesting rocket", Amy. My father was severely injured by a V-2 that struck London - his roommates were killed by it, so I guess I am biased. But I am not alone in holding this view.
Amy Teitel can look at the always "interesting" V-2 anyway she wants from her millennial revisionist viewpoint 3/4 of a century after the fact- and she can even try to recast the V-2 as something it was not. Oddly, you never hear her mention the horrific and subhuman conditions that slaves endured to produce this "interesting rocket". I guess this is a trivial detail that gets in the way of her story telling. In the end the V-2 was created by Nazi Germany plain and simple. The V-2 is and always was a Nazi weapon. Klar, Amy?
'Lead helps guard your health': How American companies sold a toxic product
A brief history of how the American public was sold on toxic lead
http://www.trbimg.com/img-56b3ff74/turbine/la-na-lead-pipes-20160204-001/800/800x450
An ad placed by the National Lead Co. in the April 4, 1928, edition of the Los Angeles Times, features the company's famed "Dutch Boy." The company advertised lead paint as an effective deterrent against the elements. (Los Angeles Times)
Matt Pearce
February 5, 2016
After toxic lead from old pipes started poisoning the drinking water in Flint, Mich., residents were outraged at the environmental regulators who incorrectly treated the water.
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In the 20th century, Rabin and other lead critics say, the lead industry ignored growing suspicions that the element was toxic for children and launched a campaign to ensure that Americans kept buying lead paint for their homes, lead gas for their cars and lead plumbing in their communities.
“Lead helps guard your health,” a National Lead Co. advertisement declared in “National Geographic” in 1923 — a year after the League of Nations suggested banning lead indoor paint because of health concerns.
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You see similar campaigns for the GMO and nuclear industries.
Scientists say humans caused spread of virus that’s killing honeybees
Source: Washington Post
The global spread of a virus that deforms the wings of honeybees and kills them in droves was caused by humans, new research has found.
According to the study published this week in Science, the problem dates back to the mid-20th century when Asian honeybees traded widely in the former Soviet Union were introduced to Europe and paired with honeybees there.
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When European honeybees were introduced to the Americas and other parts of Asia in subsequent years, a localized endemic in Europe evolved into a global pandemic that led to bee colony collapse disorder and is threatening agriculture that relies on pollinating honeybees to grow food crops.
Making matters worse, honeybees are spreading the virus through their saliva and feces to plants used by other pollinators, such as bumblebees and other solitary bees. “DWV has been detected in various insect groups that play dramatically different ecological roles, including insect predators and scavengers, pollinators, and pest species that live inside the colony,” according to a Science article that announced the study.
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Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/news/science/2016/02/08/Scientists-say-humans-caused-spread-of-virus-that-s-killing-honeybees/stories/201602080051
Leaked police files contain guarantees disciplinary records will be kept secret
Source: Guardian
Contracts between police and city authorities, leaked after hackers breached the website of the country’s biggest law enforcement union, contain guarantees that disciplinary records and complaints made against officers are kept secret or even destroyed.
A Guardian analysis of dozens of contracts obtained from the servers of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) found that more than a third featured clauses allowing – and often mandating – the destruction of records of civilian complaints, departmental investigations, or disciplinary actions after a negotiated period of time.
The review also found that 30% of the 67 leaked police contracts, which were struck between cities and police unions, included provisions barring public access to records of past civilian complaints, departmental investigations, and disciplinary actions.
Samuel Walker, a professor in criminology at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, said there was “no justification” for the cleansing of officers’ records, which could contain details of their use of force against civilians.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/07/leaked-police-files-contain-guarantees-disciplinary-records-will-be-kept-secret
Assange findings by U.N. panel are legally binding
Source: UPI
A U.N. panel that determined WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was being arbitrarily detained by Sweden and Britain and that he should be allowed to leave an embassy in London said its ruling was "legally binding" on Friday.
The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled in favor of Assange, 44, who has resided since 2012 in Ecuador's London embassy after losing his appeal in Britain's Supreme Court against his extradition to Sweden, where he was accused of sexual misconduct. He has never been formally charged.
The panel called for his freedom and for compensation in a statement released Friday.
The investigating panel said its mandate and opinions are based on international human rights law and can be used as evidence in court, and as such are regarded as legally binding.
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Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/02/05/Assange-findings-by-UN-panel-are-legally-binding/5921454672620/
EXCLUSIVE: EU paints challenging picture of Europe’s nuclear future
EXCLUSIVE: EU paints challenging picture of Europe’s nuclear future
February 2, 2016 by Sonja van Renssen 2 Comments
In a leaked draft document obtained by Energy Post, the European Commission outlines the investments in the EU nuclear industry that it believes are needed out to 2050. The document, originally announced for last year, but off the table again for February, paints a challenging picture for the European nuclear industry. €450-550 billion will have to be spent on new plants and lifetime extensions, costs of decommissioning and waste management are high, competitiveness is a challenge and nuclear’s share in the energy mix will decline from 27% today to 17-21%. Sonja van Renssen investigates.
The “Communication for a Nuclear Illustrative Programme” or PINC is a non-legislative document “periodically” produced by the European Commission, as required by the Euratom Treaty (article 40) that “provides an overview of investments in the EU for all the steps of the nuclear lifecycle”. The last PINC dates back to 2008 so the one currently under preparation will be the first since the Fukushima disaster in March 2011. It “provides a basis to discuss the role of nuclear energy in achieving the EU energy objectives”.
The Commission reminds us of a few facts (see also Box below). Nuclear energy is part of the energy mix of half the EU’s Member States. There, it “has a role to play in ensuring security of electricity supply”. It also plays a part in tackling climate change: “With 27% of electricity produced from nuclear energy and 27% from renewable sources, the EU is currently one of only three major economies [Brazil and Canada are the other two] that generate more than half of their electricity without producing greenhouse gases.”
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