Science – Page 40 – a sibilant intake of breath

The Economist mentions runaway climate change

For the first time, I found a reference to the possibility of runaway climate change in an article in The Economist. Oddly enough, it is not in an article on climate change, but rather in a survey on water from last month:

Few people have dwelt on the worst possibility, even if it is highly unlikely to come about: that the extra water vapour held by a warmer atmosphere might set in train a runaway greenhouse effect in which temperatures rose ever faster and tipping-points for, say, the melting of ice sheets were reached. This possibility has received little consideration outside academia, perhaps because less improbable consequences of climate change provide enough to be gloomy about. The wise conclusion to be drawn may be that all planning should allow for greater uncertainty, and probably also greater variability, so every plan will need to have a greater degree of resilience built into it than in the past.

This account doesn’t even mention the most shocking possible form of runaway climate change, where the oceans boil away and the Earth becomes permanently uninhabitable for life as we know it.

I wonder how long it will be before the main opinion pieces in The Economist take this risk into consideration. So far, they seem to remain convinced that climate change is a rather secondary problem – certainly less important than maintaining global GDP growth – and that it will eventually be efficiently dealt with through carbon pricing schemes.

As I have said countless times before, the major risk with climate change is that the lags between emissions and effects will conceal just how gigantic a problem climate change could be until it has become too late to prevent the worst effects.

Switching subjects

I am relieved to say that my most active area of reading has turned away from biological weapons and towards the question of what makes humans happy. Toward that end, I am reading Yale psychologist Paul Bloom’s new book: How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like. He taught the psychology course that I discussed at length earlier, and which included some discussion of happiness.

Just a few pages into the book, there is a nice nugget from Steven Pinker, who explains that humans are happiest when “healthy, well-fed, comfortable, safe, prosperous, knowledgeable, respected, non-celibate, and loved.” In addition to providing some interesting intellectual insights, I am hoping the book will provide some additional practical advice and insight into how humans operate. In particular, it is always useful and intriguing to learn what people generally misunderstand about themselves.

Biohazard

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ken Alibek – a formerly high ranking official within the Russian biological weapons program – defected to the United States. His 1999 book can be seen as a declassified, commercial, civilian version of what he told the American intelligence officials who he initially debriefed. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Biological Weapons Program in the World focuses on the facilities of Biopreparat: an ostensibly civilian organization that was actually the major developer and stockpiler of biological weapons. They made anthrax and smallpox by the tonne, and developed mechanisms for deploying these agents ranging from assassination-type mechanisms to delivery via intercontinental ballistic missile.

Alibek makes a number of serious allegations:

Russia developed biological weapons as far back as 1928, when work was done on weaponizing typhus;
That Russia violated the Biological Weapons Convention from the start;
That biological agents like plague and smallpox were genetically modified to be resistant to treatments and vaccines, to be more virulent, and to produce additional toxins;
That Russia continued to develop and stockpile biological weapons after the Cold War ended;
And that Russia used biological weapons, both against the Germans during WWII and against the Afghans during the Soviet invasion. In the first case, an attack on German Panzer troops ultimately ended up sickening far more Russian civilians than enemy soldiers.

Alibek’s book also provides considerable insight into the character of the Soviet system of government, including military and security matters. His perspective as an insider in the system is one of the most interesting aspects of the book, including his account of American inspections of Biopreparat facilities (and how he helped to trick them) and the Soviet inspections of US facilities like Fort Detrick that followed.

The book does have some flaws. As with any document on sensitive security matters, it is impossible to know how much of what is claimed is really accurate. Furthermore, this is the work of a defector, and Alibek goes to some length to try to highlight the good things he did. For example, he talks about trying to divert more of the production of a facility he ended up directing towards civilian medical purposes. He also omits any mention of the ‘Alibek’ strain of anthrax that he was responsible for developing. The book also jumps around chronologically in a way that can be confusing, and the chapter titles do not provide a very good sense of the content.

All told, Alibek’s book is interesting and worthwhile to read. It highlights how, alongside all the nuclear dangers of the Cold War, there was another separate type of appalling risk to civilian populations that had been created, and for which the legacy is enduring. Indeed, proliferation of biological weapons may well be a far more serious matter than proliferation of nuclear weapons. Building a working atomic bomb requires fissile material, knowledge, and engineering capability. By contrast, a biological weapon smuggled out of a lab in the pocket of an underpaid Soviet scientist can be duplicated to mass quantity in fermentors, with relatively little technological sophistication required.

That being said, it is worth nothing how biological weapons haven’t yet seemed to live up to their frightening potential. Alibek mentions the Japanese Aum cult as an example of a non-state entity that developed biological capabilities, and yet their attempts to actually employ biological agents failed to produce significant damage. That said, weapons in the hands of states like Russia that have had sophisticated weaponization and testing programs for decades are likely much more dangerous, as all the deaths from the accidental Sverdlovsk anthrax leak illustrate.

The book talks very little about delivery systems for biological agents; quite possibly, that is in response to the particular sensitivity of such information, which may not yet be in the hands of groups that do have access to dangerous strains of bacteria and viruses. Alibek explains that:

Bioweapons are not rocket launchers. They cannot be loaded and fired. The most virulent culture in a test tube is useless as an offensive weapon until it has been put through a process that gives it stability and predictability. The manufacturing technique is, in a sense, the real weapon, and it is harder to develop than individual agents. (p.97 paperback)

He goes on to explain that detailed recipes for the production and weaponization of biological agents were developed by Biopreparat, and that they were retained by the Russian government even after the collapse of communism. In a few months time, facilities re-purposed for civilian use could go back to making smallpox, anthrax, and plague by the tonne.

In light of the increasing authoritarianism of the Russian government, this book makes especially worrisome reading. Back in the Soviet era, the government blamed the Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak on ‘contaminated meat.’ Black market vendors were even punished for their supposed role in causing the disaster. For a span after the fall of communism, the reality that it arose from a leak in a bioweapon production plant was acknowledged. More recently, the government has gone back to the old contaminated meat deception.

On smallpox

In 1977, smallpox was eradicated as the result of a massive global effort. Rather than completely eliminate the virus, it was decided that the United States and Russia would each keep a sample. Part of the reasoning for this is that pox viruses are common in the animal world, and could potentially jump between species. Having samples of human smallpox could be useful, in the event that such a thing occurred.

Unfortunately – and rather threateningly – the Russian smallpox sample didn’t sit idly in a freezer. Smallpox is a highly contagious, highly lethal disease and yet Biopreparat, the Soviet Union’s biological weapons agency, made some twenty tonnes of the stuff, tested it on animals, and developed mechanisms to use it as a weapon, including delivery via warheads on intercontinental missiles. This was done at the State Research Institute of Virology and Biotechnology (also called Vector), outside the city of Novosibirsk, in Siberia, as well as at a more secret facility in Sergiyev Posad. It was also tested on Vozrozhdeniya Island. The Soviets made so much that it couldn’t all be accounted for. Quite possibly, some found its way into biological weapons programs in other states, such as China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Cuba, and Serbia.

Whereas human beings once had two major forms of protection from smallpox – immunity resulting from exposure to the virus, and vaccination campaigns – the former is now absent and the latter defunct and potentially difficult to restore. A single case, perhaps arising from some accident, could directly infect hundreds of people and kick off an escalating series of waves of infection, spaced fourteen days apart, as people go through the incubation period and become infectious. Such a global outbreak could kill a massive number of people.

The idea of an accidental release is not fanciful. In 1978, medical photographer Janet Parker became one of the two last people to contract smallpox, working in the anatomy department of the University of Birmingham Medical School. It seems entirely plausible that accidental exposure could occur at some shady biological weapon lab in Cuba, Pakstan, or North Korea.

If anything like that ever happens, people may end up looking on the decision not to stick to just one frozen sample of smallpox as the worst thing the Soviet Union ever did. Hopefully, all the concern and money expended on security since 2001 has at least left the world in a better position to launch a mass vaccination campaign, should the need ever arise.

Our imperfect memories

Slate has produced a good series highlighting the limitations of human memory, particularly how easily it can be manipulated and people can be made to remember things that never took place.

The imperfect nature of human memory has important consequences, including in situations like criminal proceedings and psychotherapy. It is also discussed in this Paul Bloom lecture:

It turns out that the same sort of experiments and the same sort of research has been done with considerable success in implanting false memories in adults. There are dramatic cases of people remembering terrible crimes and confessing to them when actually, they didn’t commit them. And this is not because they are lying. It’s not even because they’re, in some obvious sense, deranged or schizophrenic or delusional. Rather, they have persuaded themselves, or more often been persuaded by others, that these things have actually happened.

Psychologists have studied in the laboratory how one could do this, how one can implant memories in other people. And some things are sort of standard. Suppose I was to tell you a story about a trip I took to the dentist or a visit I took to–or a time when I ate out at a restaurant and I’m to omit certain details. I omit the fact that I paid the bill in a restaurant, let’s say or I finished the meal and then I went home. Still, you will tend to fill in the blanks. You’ll tend to fill in the blanks with things you know. So, you might remember this later saying, “Okay. He told me he finished eating, paid the bill and left,” because paying the bill is what you do in a restaurant.

This is benign enough. You fill in the blanks. You also can integrate suppositions made by others. And the clearest case of this is eyewitness testimony. And the best research on this has been done by Elizabeth Loftus who has done a series of studies, some discussed in the textbook, showing how people’s memories can be swayed by leading questions. And it can be extremely subtle. In one experiment, the person was just asked in the course of a series of questions–shown a scene where there’s a car accident and asked either, “Did you see a broken headlight?” or “Did you see the broken headlight?” The ‘the’ presupposes that there was a broken headlight and in fact, the people told–asked, “Did you see the broken headlight?” later on are more likely to remember one. It creates an image and they fill it in.

It is always troubling to be reminded that we cannot entirely trust our own minds. That said, it is far better to be aware of the limitation and suffer from its troubling implications than it is to ignorantly assume that our memories are an accurate record of past events that cannot be altered.

2010 Arctic sea ice

The extent of Arctic sea ice has dipped below where it was at this time of year in 2007, the worst year recorded for sea ice. Within the next few months, we will see whether it goes on to set a new record low. If so, perhaps it could be the sort of dramatic event that drives people to take climate change more seriously.

It is important to understand that the maximum extent of sea ice during the winter is a less important climatic indicator than the minimum extent in summer. The Arctic is always going to be cold and dark in the winter, when it is hardly receiving any sunlight. As a result, at least a thin layer of ice will form, establishing a large extent of frozen ocean. What is vanishing is the multi-year ice, which endures from year to year. Climate deniers trumpeted how the maximum extent of ice this year was close to the 1979 to 2000 average, yet the major trend in ice extent and volume is ever downwards.

If the Arctic ends up ice-free in the summer, there will be numerous consequences. Species that depend on sea ice – including narwhals, seals, and polar bears – will be threatened. Also, migration between the Pacific and Atlantic will likely allow the emergence of invasive species. Because losing summer sea ice means losing a big white sheet that reflects sunlight back into space, it would also cause further warming.

Consequences of coal in China

The issue of how much China is really doing to fight climate change has arisen here before. One section from Barbara Freese’s book on coal provides some information pertinent to that discussion. She argues that the Chinese government has made great efforts to improve energy efficiency. Between 1996 and 1999, the Chinese economy grew by a startling 36%, while total energy use fell by 17% and greenhouse gas emissions fell by 14%.

One motivation for an official shift towards reduced coal usage is the sheer number of deaths from air pollution. While coal-fired power plants in the United States probably kill a few tens of thousands of people per year, those in China likely kill around one million. Indeed, it is estimated that one in eight deaths in China is the consequence of coal use – whether from particulate emissions, sulfur dioxide, reduced indoor air quality, mercury toxicity, or other factors.

That said, Freese acknowledges that continued economic growth is likely to reverse that trend, unless China commits itself aggressively to a low-carbon approach to development. That choice is very important to human welfare around the world and needs to be made soon. There are coal plants in the United States that have been operating since the 1920s. The world cannot afford for China to continue to deploy coal-fired power plants that cause such climatic damage, and which may prove equally enduring.

The nature of addiction

Over on XUP’s blog, there is an interesting discussion on addiction. It is certainly a difficult topic on which to get good information: the academic literature is complicated and conflicting.

Perhaps it is a topic about which our understanding will improve considerably as we delve deeper into cognitive and behavioural psychology, as well as into the relationships between complex dynamic systems like genetics and cognition.

On this site, I have repeatedly argued that the best public policy approach to addictive drugs is legalization, regulation, and the treatment of addiction as a medical problem. Bad as it is to be addicted to legal drugs, at least those thus afflicted don’t need to worry about being poisoned or surprised by a major change in the concentration of active ingredients, since those drugs are manufactured by reputable companies and regulated. Those people also don’t need to worry about the pitfalls of production and supply chains that are dominated by organized criminal groups. Paradoxically, addicts may have the most to gain from drug legalization.

In addition, society at large doesn’t need to worry about the violent and harmful side-effects that arise from that criminal economy. The links between drug criminalization, organized crime, and political corruption are both self-evident and demonstrated by numerous historical examples, from alcohol prohibition in the United States to the largely pointless attempts to stamp out poppy growing in Afghanistan now.

Perhaps an important corollary to the legalize, regulate, and treat approach is to hold producers responsible to some extent for the inevitable addictions to their products that will exist in society. They could, for instance, be required to pay part of the cost for treatment, counseling, and rehabilitation programs.

Call for action from American scientific organizations

Four American national scientific academies have just released three reports on climate change, and called for a price to be put on emissions through either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme: the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council. There is one report on climate science, one on mitigation, and one on adaptation. The reports were requested by Congress and is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They endorsed emissions reductions in the range of 57% to 83% by 2050, for the United States.

Hopefully, this will restore a bit of life to the wheezing efforts ongoing in the US Congress to produce climate legislation.

Are high speed trains good for the climate?

High speed rail is often held up as a model transport option for a carbon constrained world. By offering speed and convenience, the idea is that such trains will displace flights and thus lead to lower emissions. Of course, running a train at high speed requires using more energy to get up to speed and to combat air resistance. In a recent column, George Monbiot points out this and other issues with high speed trains as a cimate change solution:

Throughout the recent government documents there’s an assumption that the new railway will be sustainable because it will draw people out of planes. But buried on page 162 of the report on which the department has based its case, published in March 2010, are the figures which derail this assumption. Of the passengers expected to use the new railway, 57% would otherwise have travelled by conventional train, 27% wouldn’t have travelled at all, 8% would have gone by car and 8% by air. In other words, 92% of its customers are expected to switch to high speed rail from less polluting alternatives. Yet the same report contains a table (page 179) suggesting that the savings from flights not taken outweigh the entire carbon costs of the railway. It provides neither source nor justification.

The 2007 report shows that even if everyone flying between London and Manchester switched to the train, the savings wouldn’t compensate for the extra emissions a new line would cause. “There is no potential carbon benefit in building a new line on the London to Manchester route over the 60 year appraisal period.” A switch from plane to train could even increase emissions. Unless the landing slots currently used by domestic flights are withdrawn by the government, they are likely to be used instead for international flights. The government has no plan for reducing total airport space.

I do think there are situations where high speed rail could provide environmental benefits. In particular, it could be good to connecting major urban centres that are not too far apart, and where zero carbon forms of electricity are available. Many such connections could be made between cities on the east and west coasts of North America.