Science – Page 39 – a sibilant intake of breath

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a collection of over 1,400 miniature lectures, delivered by one man via YouTube. They cover topics that range widely, in disciplines including mathematics, chemistry, biology, statistics, history, finance, and physics.

From the twenty or so I have tried, they seem to be quite accessible, at least for those with a basic grounding in mathematics. I had never covered matrices in high school or university math, but the videos in the linear algebra collection have left me with what feels like an adequate theoretical awareness of what they are, why they are useful, and how they fit into mathematics more broadly.

The whole collection is worth a look.

How good is gas?

Per unit of electricity generated, natural gas is the lowest-carbon fossil fuel. Producing a kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity using oil, and especially coal, generates significantly more emissions. While bituminous coal produces about 370g of CO2 per kWh, oil produces about 260g, and natural gas produces about 230g.

A recent MIT report focuses on switching American electricity production to gas, as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

In the results of a two-year study, released today, the researchers said electric utilities and other sectors of the American economy will use more gas through 2050. Under a scenario that envisions a federal policy aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, researchers found a substantial role for natural gas.

“Because national energy use is substantially reduced, the share represented by gas is projected to rise from about 20 percent of the current national total to around 40 percent in 2040,” said the MIT researchers. When used to fire a power plant, gas emits about half of the carbon dioxide emissions as conventional coal plants.

They claim that nuclear power, renewable energy and carbon capture and sequestration are all more expensive than gas, and thus less viable as low-carbon alternatives. They also claim that by 2050, 15% of the U.S. vehicle fleet will be fueled with natural gas.

I have three big objections to all this:

First, an increasing share of natural gas is coming from unconventional sources, using techniques like hydraulic fracturing. This has associated environmental risks, such as the contamination of groundwater.

Secondly, the amount of climate change humanity will cause depends on the total amount of all fossil fuels burned before society becomes carbon neutral. Burning more gas obviously contributes to this cumulative total, changing the atmosphere and climate in ways that will endure for thousands of years. If humanity ever starts to burn the methane embedded in permafrost of methane clathrates, the total quantity of associated emissions could be very worrisome indeed.

Thirdly, building new gas-fired power plants perpetuates fossil fuel dependence. It keeps us wedded to fuels that are inevitably going to become ever more costly and destructive to access, and which can never form the basis for a truly sustainable society.

None of this is to say that gas has no role to play in dealing with climate change. In the short term, substituting gas for coal may be a promising way to reduce emissions during the transitional period before renewables become dominant. In the long run, however, there is no alternative to moving beyond fossil fuels.

Helpfully, the MIT report does not just take energy demand as constant, or ever-increasing. Rather, they model the economic effect of putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions, and find that doing so would keep demand flat in the next few decades. They project that carbon pricing would raise electricity prices by 30% by 2030 and 45% by 2050 – a small price to pay for reducing the extreme risks associated with climate change.

Hunting neutrinos with IceCube

The University of Wisconsin is leading a project to embed a massive neutrino detecting telescope in the Antarctic ice sheet, called IceCube. It will use thousands of Digital Optical Modules (DOMs) to look for the characteristic blue flashes which occur when neutrinos collide with ice. Since neutrinos normally zip straight through everything, collecting enough observations to learn about them is challenging and requires specialized detectors.

The project will try to identify point sources of high energy neutrinos, investigate their connection with gamma ray bursts, and may provide experimental data relevant to dark matter or string theory.

The problem with 3D everything

The 3D craze in all forms of entertainment has spread to the extent that the swag bags for journalists at Toronto’s G8/G20 summit include an iPhone cover designed to let you view 3D media. 3D is all the rage for movies and games, as consumers flock to something novel and seemingly high-tech and entertainment companies sense an excuse to boost ticket prices and (for now) offer something that pirated media does not.

I have one big problem with all of this: while it is easy enough to exploit binocular vision to produce the illusion of three dimensions on a flat screen, doing so doesn’t really take into account how people see. The effect works because of how our brain interprets parallax – the situation in which the perspective on a scene differs slightly when the viewpoint used changes. This is a problem for many point-and-shoot cameras, with viewfinders offset from the lens; you can compose a photo nicely as viewed through the former, only to discover that it doesn’t look so great when viewed through the latter. It also applies to the different perspectives offered by your two eyes. Your brain uses the differences between the two views as one source of information about how far away things are, feeding into our overall awareness about the three-dimensionality of the world.

Parallax is one important way in which our brains make sense of a three-dimensional world. Others include geometric cues, like how parallel lines seem to converge as they approach the horizon. Exploiting these sorts of cues allows artists to make works that seem to have depth. It is also one way in which optical illusions can be created. It is one reason why the very cool hollow face illusion works. Indeed, that particular illusion only works when seen without the benefit of binocular vision, which allows our brains to figure out that we are in danger of being tricked by geometry.

The trouble with 3D is what happens when our eyes go beyond perceiving a scene and into responding to it: specifically, by refocusing. When we see a rhino charging at us, the muscles around our eyes change the shape of our lenses so as to keep the beast in focus. Our eyes also turn inward, toward our noses. Unfortunately, when we are just looking at a false 3D image of a rhino, the re-focusing is not necessary. After all, we are still really looking at the same flat screen. This may explain why watching 3D movies is nauseating for some people; more worrisomely, it could cause people to learn to see in unnatural ways, in a manner that extends beyond the movie theatre experience.

This is not a problem that can be overcome, so long as our chosen mode of producing faux-three-dimensional images relies upon information displayed on flat panels. How important it ultimately will be, I can’t really comment on. Still, it is worth knowing that the exciting 3D experience consumers are being promised is premised on a limited understanding of how people really see moving images.

How Pleasure Works

After thoroughly enjoying his free psychology course, available on iTunes U, I was excited to read Yale professor Paul Bloom’s new book: How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like. It was certainly very interesting. Though it may not quite have met my high expectations, the book certainly has a number of substantial strengths. It includes both original insights and a useful presentation of the research undertaken by others. Indeed, the book’s greatest strength is probably its accessibility. There is little jargon, terms are clearly defined, and good analogies and explanations are employed throughout.

Bloom’s main hypothesis is that people are ‘essentialists’ and that this has importance for what people enjoy. This concept has a bit of a Platonic flavour, as Bloom explains:

The main argument here is that pleasure is deep. What matters most is not the world as it appears to our senses. Rather, the enjoyment we get from something derives from what we think that thing is. This is true for intellectual pleasures, such as the appreciation of paintings and stories, and also for pleasures that seem simpler, such as the satisfaction of hunger and lust.

Perhaps one reason why I found the book a touch disappointing is that this thesis seems uncontroversial to me. Bloom does bring up some interesting examples and related experiments, but never really sets out a credible alternative theory well distinguished from this ‘essentialist’ view. Perhaps his most interesting argument is that essentialism – the desire to understand the ‘real nature’ of things, and the related assumption that there is such a thing – is inherent, even in children, and not the product of socialization.

Bloom takes a thematic approach: discussing food, sex, objects with histories (like JFK’s tape measure), performance, imagination, safety and pain, and finally the respective appeal of science and religion. His discussions of imagination are one of the most interesting parts of the book, as the author teases apart the different ways in which imagination is useful and pleasant, as well as discussing the limitations it has (such as how we cannot surprise ourselves while daydreaming). His discussion of the importance of evolution to psychology, as well as the processes through which the mental life of children changes as they grow up, are also particularly worthwhile and interesting. While it is not a novel argument, Bloom also provides some nice illustrations of how the human mind evolved in a world very different from the one that now exists, with important consequences for individuals and society.

One thing that sticks out at times are little judgmental comments made by the author. They are all very justifiable, but they do stand out within a work that is largely a summary of scientific research, albeit one written in a manner intended to be accessible to non-expert audiences. For instance, Bloom repeatedly condemns the obsession people have with female virginity. He also talks about steroids in sports, the power of stories to inspire moral change, ‘evil’ in video games, the dangers of awe in relation to political figures, and ‘immoral’ pleasures. A few of Bloom’s claims also stand out as being unsubstantiated, particular several assertions he makes about non-human animals, without reference to either logical argument or empirical evidence to support them. All told, Bloom stresses strongly that humans are quite different from other animals, though he arguably fails to provide adequate evidence to make that claim convincing.

Another thing you won’t find in Bloom’s book is much concrete advice on how to live a happier life. If there is anything of that sort in the book, it is arguments that might make people feel less irrational for taking pleasure in things that are a bit unusual: whether it is collecting objects formerly owned by celebrities or paying somebody to tie you up and beat you.

To his credit, Bloom also considers the logical errors that can arise from the intuitive essentialism that people manifest. He argues that it contributes to some of the basic errors of logical deduction and probabilistic reasoning that people commonly make – and which are exploited equally by advertisers and despots. Bloom highlights how many of the aspects of our minds that evolved for certain purposes have ended up creating other social phenomena by accident, from obesity to paranoia about terrorism and serial killers.

While the book is full of interesting tidbits and pieces of information, the overall thesis is a bit of an overcautious one. Perhaps that is something to be expected from a scientist, given their hesitation to go beyond claims that can be clearly justified by the facts. Nonetheless, this book is a worthwhile discussion of the nature of human pleasure, from a scientific and psychological perspective. For anyone with an interest in seeing the topic treated in that manner, it is definitely worth a look.

Meteorologists on climate

Writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, Charles Homans has a piece on why so many television meteorologists are climate change deniers. He cites the particular case of John Coleman, whose opposition to mainstream climate science was motivated more by personal animosity than by any doubts about their empirical methods:

Coleman wasn’t arguing against the integrity of a particular conclusion based on careful original research — something that would have constituted useful scientific skepticism. Instead, he went after the motives of the scientists themselves. Climate researchers, he wrote, “look askance at the rest of us, certain of their superiority. They respect government and disrespect business, particularly big business. They are environmentalists above all else.”

Coleman’s 2007 essay was picked up by right-wing news sites, with his experience as a weatherman used as a justification for taking his position seriously.

The issue of meteorologists making decrees on climate goes back to the basic question of what constitutes expertise and whose views – if anyone’s – we should pay special attention to when making up our minds. Apparently, the majority of professional meteorologists in the United States reject the mainstream science of climate change:

Twenty-nine percent of the 121 meteorologists who replied agreed with Coleman—not that global warming was unproven, or unlikely, but that it was a scam. Just 24 percent of them believed that humans were responsible for most of the change in climate over the past half century—half were sure this wasn’t true, and another quarter were “neutral” on the issue.

Despite how climate science and meteorology are very different fields, the Yale Project on Climate Change found that 66% of Americans listed television meteorologists as a credible source of information on climate change. It’s not surprising – though it is certainly regrettable – that this helps keep the general public confused about the issue.

Alief

One interesting idea discussed in Paul Bloom’s How Pleasure Works is that of ‘alief.’ Originally developed by Tamar Gendler, this concept refers to how we cannot entirely separate fantasy from reality in our minds. Even though we know better, we respond to fiction in similar ways to how we would respond to seeing the actual events described; similarly, we would hesitate at least a bit to drink from a cup marked ‘cyanide,’ even if we just saw it filled from the tap. We can quite rightly believe that the water is perfectly safe, while at least slightly alieving that it is poisoned.

Bloom highlights how children are more vulnerable than adults, when it comes to being emotionally influenced by alief. Partly, he thinks this has to do with their lesser sophistication about fiction. He points out how, when watching Free Willy II with his child, his child became frightened that characters on a raft could drown. While he was sophisticated enough to recognize that adorable children don’t drown in such films, his child was not.

In general, Bloom has a lot of interesting things to say about fiction and imagination – including why people enjoy tragedies and horror films, the appeal of varying degrees of masochism (from enjoyment of hot sauce to much more extreme varieties), to the limitations of fantasy and the effects they have on social dynamics.

Climate change and individual ethics

During today’s earlier discussion of climate change and partisan politics, a distinction was eventually drawn between the key principles that underlie intergenerational justice, the ways in which those principles manifest themselves in individual morality, and the question of how to bring our politics more in line with what those principles demand.

The final question is the topic of the previous discussion, but it seems worth having another about the broad question of what the moral consequences of climate change are for human behaviour. Naturally, this has come up before with reference to specific behaviours (especially voluntary travel). It has also come up in broader discussions, such as on the relative importance of abstaining from emissions, compared with resisting societal structures that perpetuate climate change.

This discussion is meant to be broader than those: what are the moral consequences of climate change, when it comes to individuals?

Climate: integrated left or post-partisan?

In a recent article, British journalist George Monbiot argues that climate change mitigation advocates must join forces with a broader progressive coalition in order to see their ideas implemented. Alongside environmental concerns, this coalition ought to be “against the [public spending] cuts, against the banks, against BP, unemployment, the lack of social housing, the endless war in Afghanistan.” It should have the same kind of dynamism as the American Tea Party movement, and the same sort of enthusiasm for demanding policy changes.

While I certainly recognize the current impotence of the climate change mitigation movement (backsliding from the United States to Australia to UNFCCC negotiations), I don’t think Monbiot is right. Climate change mitigation is something we must undertake because of the physical realities associated with the climate system and the consequences of emitting greenhouse gases. It is not fundamentally a partisan issue, and dealing with it is not fundamentally tied to political views on issues like housing or Afghanistan.

Furthermore, the world cannot afford climate change mitigation to be a policy only of the political left. Inevitably, left-wing and right-wing governments alternate in power, as voters become disgusted by the excesses of each subsequent administration. Dealing with climate change requires a long descent towards zero net global emissions, over a span of decades. It’s not something that can be vigorously taken up for four, five, or eight years and then abandoned in favour of aggressive exploitation campaigns for unconventional fossil fuels and loosened environmental planning regulations.

Climate and the right

Besides, climate change is something that can be integrated into the political traditions of the right in several ways. Conservatives should love carbon taxes, since they are a mechanism to keep one person’s behaviour from impacting unduly on the freedom of others, while also allowing the maximum range of possible means for stopping the harm. Such taxes demonstrate faith in markets, innovation, and the capability of people to respond rationally and effectively to appropriate incentives. Further, there is a long tradition in conservative political philosophy of seeing the current generation of human beings as trustees of the planet, with a duty to pass it along in an improved or at least preserved state.

That being said, climate change is a major challenge to the libertarian view that people are essentially autonomous and should be free to do as they like. Laissez faire policies that ignore ever-rising greenhouse gas concentrations are likely to create the need for a far harsher eventual clampdown, once the harms associated with climate change become entirely undeniable. Also, given the lag time between emissions and their consequences, those concerned for the future state of the world cannot continue to tolerate ethical systems that include an unlimited right to pollute. Political thinkers across the political spectrum need to come to grips with what climate science has taught us, and think deeply about how that affects both the factual inputs to their moral reasoning and the moral precepts that serve as the foundation of their political philosophy.

Blocking opportunism

Broad political consensus on dealing with climate change would also have another important role, as protection against populist opportunists. Once serious carbon prices have become common, making things like travel significantly more expensive, it seems inevitable that political parties will crop us that campaign to eradicate the fetters people have put upon themselves and return to the happy free-wheeling days of unlimited greenhouse gas emissions. In order to head off such short-sighted but potentially popular responses, it is necessary for serious politicians and parties of all stripes to continue to publicly express their appreciation for how cutting global emissions to zero is a practical necessity, and a project that cannot be abandoned because of the impracticalities it imposes on people.

Eventually, climate change denial must become entirely discredited among all serious politically active people, and the political conversation about climate change must shift to being about the mechanisms through which deep cuts can be rapidly achieved, rather than about whether such cuts are necessary, or whether we should condemn future generations to a harsh and unstable world for the sake of short-term economic benefits for us.

Peak oil and climate change

Given the multiple lines of evidence demonstrating that humanity is causing the climate to change in potentially dangerous ways, climate change has to be part of medium- to long-term planning for almost everybody, and part of the policy development processes of government. At the same time, there is a plausible case that global production of oil will peak at some point in the relatively near future, with potentially important economic, political, and geopolitical effects.

How will these two phenomena interact? I can think of lots of possibilities. These are not ranked in any way, and are not equally plausible.

1) Worries about peak oil prove premature or overblown. Liquid fuels stay cheap for the foreseable future, causing more climate change than there would have been in a scenario where they became more costly.

2) Natural reserves of petroleum cannot keep pace with rising demand, initially driving liquid fuel prices through the roof. Some combination of biofuels and coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology counteracts that, also worsening climate change. (Coal-to-liquids and fuels like palm oil grown in rainforest have huge climate impact per unit of energy)

3) Peak oil proves serious, and biofuel and CTL alternatives prove very costly. This has potentially large social and economic consequences, but makes climate change mitigation easier. For many people, the world gets a whole lot smaller.

4) Climate change occurs much more quickly than expected, perhaps because of major positive feedbacks like melting permafrost or burning rainforest. Governments sense their increased vulnerability and abandon attempts to cooperate internationally, seeking to make themselves as robust as possible in the face of the chaos ahead.

5) Climate change occurs much more quickly than expected, perhaps because of major positive feedbacks like melting permafrost or burning rainforest. Governments finally get the picture and introduce harsh policies restricting fossil fuel production domestically. Powerful states now profoundly concerned about climate change (the US, EU, China, Japan, etc) force petrostates like Canada and Kuwait to shut down production.

6) Not only does oil production peak, but so does gas and coal production. Dealing with climate change becomes much easier politically, given that there is no longer any real alternatives to switching to renewables and nuclear as principal sources of energy.

7) Peak oil proves serious, but cellulosic and algae-based biofuels finally emerge as commercially viable alternatives.

Personally, I think peak oil is a much less serious problem than climate change. For one thing, it is just the sort of phenomenon that markets deal with relatively automatically – something gets scarce and people find ways to use less, while developing alternatives. For another, it doesn’t include the same dangerous lag times. It is quite possible that we could emit enough to cause catastrophic warming, but only see concrete proof of that decades later. Peak oil, by contrast, seems likely to unfold with fewer surprises. Finally, there aren’t really any positive natural feedbacks that would further constrain the availability of oil, as it began to get scarce (though falling energy return on investment (EROI) is an issue). By contrast, warming is likely to beget more warming as ice vanishes, forests dry out an burn, permafrost and methane clathrates melt, etc.

Surely there are many other possibilities, aside from those listed above. Please post some below, and comment on those listed above. How do the different possible scenarios effect how we ought to be hedging our bets, both climatically and in terms of energy sources?