Steve Bull's Blog, page 1295
October 5, 2017
Our Shoggoths, Ourselves
There are many ways I could talk about the point I want to make in this week’s post, but when it comes to the really difficult issues—and yes, we’re going to be talking about one of those—the indirect routes are generally the most useful. For that reason, I want to start out with a seeming irrelevancy, and talk a bit about shoggoths.
Some of my readers already know about shoggoths. For the benefit of those who don’t, I’ll note that they’re one of the many species of imaginary critters that slithered out of the perfervid brain of iconic American fantasy-horror author H.P. Lovecraft. Shoggoths look a bit like huge hungry masses of iridescent black soap bubbles, fitted out with a random scattering of phosphorescent green eyes that ooze to the surface and then sink again. They’re big, they’re strong, they’re nightmarishly fast, and like most of the other critters in the Lovecraftian universe, their entire purpose in existence is to give investigators something to run away from as quickly as possible, screaming in terror all the while.
That sort of thing is a staple of bad horror fiction, but Lovecraft was doing something at once highly subtle and unpleasantly familiar with it. Central to his worldview was the belief that the eight-inch-long lump of meat called the human brain is completely out of its league when it tries to make sense of the cosmos in which we live, and can all too easily go stark staring crazy if it makes the attempt. His monstrous beings and tentacled devil-gods get most of their power over the reader from their sheer incomprehensibility. In his very best stories—“The Color Out Of Space” is perhaps the finest example—that theme takes center stage, and lives are destroyed and minds shattered by a force without malice and without meaning, irrupting from an impersonal cosmos serenely indifferent to the pretensions of our species.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Poll Shows Majority Of Americans Want Government To Act On Climate Change, But There’s A Catch
New polling data provides some inspiring news about the prospects for climate change action in the United States. According to public policy polling conducted by AP–NORC and the Energy Policy Institute at The University of Chicago, 61% of American citizens believe that climate change is a threat that the federal government should actively work to prevent. The poll also reveals that majorities in both major political parties – Democrats and Republicans – accept the fact that climate change is actually happening and that human activity is making it worse.
This data reinforces previous polling data indicating that a majority of American citizens, regardless of party affiliation, believe that climate change is a serious issue demanding urgent political action.
What sets the new set of data apart from the rest is also the part that makes it slightly less uplifting.
The poll found that 51% of Americans are willing to pay $1 per month to combat the growing threat of climate change, but when you start look at numbers higher than a dollar per month, the willingness of American citizens to foot the bill begins to decline sharply.
Additionally, the poll found a majority of citizens are against fracking, especially when they learn about the negative health effects from the oil and gas drilling process. However, support for fracking rises to nearly 41% when citizens are told that it could save them a few hundred dollars each year on their electric bills.
The new data helps to provide a clearer picture of how American citizens tend to view most non-social issues, and that is through the lens of finance.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Nuclear Fallacies: the Problems With James Hansen’s Promotion of Generation IV Reactors
Photo by Lennart Tange | CC BY 2.0
Dr James Hansen is rightly admired for his scientific and political work drawing attention to climate change. His advocacy of nuclear power ‒ and in particular novel Generation IV nuclear concepts ‒ deserves serious scrutiny.
In a nutshell, Dr Hansen (among others) claims that some Generation IV reactors are a triple threat: they can convert weapons-usable (fissile) material and long-lived nuclear waste into low-carbon electricity. Let’s take the weapons and waste issues in turn.
The risks
Dr Hansen says Generation IV reactors can be made “more resistant to weapons proliferation than today’s reactors” and he claims that “modern nuclear technology can reduce proliferation risks”.
But are new reactors being made more resistant to weapons proliferation and are they reducing proliferation risks? In a word: No.
Fast neutron reactors have been used for weapons production in the past (e.g. by France) and will likely be used for weapons production in future (e.g. by India).
India plans to produce weapons-grade plutonium in fast breeder reactors for use as driver fuel in thorium reactors. Compared to conventional uranium reactors, India’s plan is far worse on both proliferation and security grounds. To make matters worse, India refuses to place its fast breeder / thorium program under IAEA safeguards.
Dr Hansen claims that thorium-based fuel cycles are “inherently proliferation-resistant”. But in fact, thorium has been used to produce fissile material (uranium-233) for nuclear weapons tests. Again, India’s plans provide a striking real-world refutation of Hansen’s claims.
Dr Hansen claims that integral fast reactors (IFR) ‒ a non-existent variant of fast neutron reactors ‒ “could be inherently free from the risk of proliferation”. Unfortunately, that isn’t true. Dr George Stanford, who worked on an IFR R&D program in the US, notes that proliferators “could do [with IFRs] what they could do with any other reactor − operate it on a special cycle to produce good quality weapons material.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Social Destruction by the Abuse of Money
In Britain, the top 1% of earners pay over a quarter of all income tax collected, and while super-rich British residents perhaps don’t have the tax breaks the Macklowes enjoy, the bulk of the burden falls on lawyers, bankers, company executives and owners of successful private enterprises. And it should, say the collectivists….
One of the juicier stories doing the rounds in New York society is the Macklowe divorce. Harry, the husband, kept a French mistress for two years before seeking a divorce from his wife of 58 years. So far, this is a run-of-the-mill marital split. But what made it the subject of gossip is the extraordinary lifestyle of the Macklowes, the mud being slung, and the expectations of the wronged 79-year old wife, seeking a billion or so to see out her remaining days.
They say hell hath no fury, and all that. Here is one of New York’s richest couples, washing their laundry in public, and it emerges that Harry has not paid tax since 1983. Harry’s lawyer bluntly stated in court that “people in real estate don’t pay taxes”. It echoes Leona Hemsley’s infamous quote that emerged at her trial thirty years ago, when the Queen of Mean said “We don’t pay taxes, only little people pay taxes.”
This still surprises many of us little people, but we must believe a top New York lawyer when he makes a statement in a court of law. The source of immense personal wealth in cities like New York is often from property development, and if this is a tax-free activity, it makes a mockery of the state redistributing money from the haves to the have-nots.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
October 3, 2017
Kolanovic: “This Is What The Next Crisis Will Look Like”
There are two distinct parts to the latest, just released research note from JPM’s quant “wizard” Marko Kolanovic.
In the first part, the infamous predictor of market swoons takes on an unexpectedly cheerful demeanor, and explains why contrary to his recent market outlooks, near-term risks for a market selloff appear to have abated. First, he looks at the tax-related rotations within the market in the past month, and notes that in September “the administration drip-fed US tax reform news, which propped up the market and spurred large sector rotations.” As a result, “financials, Industrials, and Materials were up ~5%, Energy ~9% and Small Caps ~7%. On the other side of the Tax trade were bond proxies (Utilities, Staples, REITs) down ~2-3% and Technology-heavy Nasdaq that was down ~0.5%. These offsetting sector moves reduced the typically elevated September volatility to its lowest level since 1964.”
He then goes on to note that in addition to the tax rotations, “volatility was reduced as market rose and got pinned at the 2,500 level for most of the month (this level was popular with option sellers, leaving dealers locally long gamma).”
Picking up on what Deutsche Bank’s Aleksandar Kocic has been writing about in recent weeks, namely the apparent failure of “exogenous shocks to shock the market”, as shocks themselves become endogenous phenomena, Kolanovic also writes that in fading daily headline risk, “tax reform and infrastructure will remain a central focus for investors, and it seems that bits and pieces of information can still excite fund managers”, something he previously called the ‘Trump Put’ effect.
As a result, between rotations and fundamentals, the coast – at least for the near-term – appears to be clear:
“With the upcoming positive Q3 earnings season, uptick in global growth, promise of tax reform keeping fundamental funds invested, and low volatility keeping systematic strategies invested, near-term risks of a sell-off have abated.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A House-Sized Asteroid Will ‘Skim By’ Earth In A Matter Of Days
On October 12, an asteroid the size of a house will barely miss earth as it skims by at a distance of 27,000 miles. This will be a close call considering the size of the otherworldly body.
Asteroid 2012 TC4 will skim by earth a little too close for comfort. The latest observations, made on July 27, 31, and then again on August 5, revealed 2012 TC4 will pass within one-eighth of the moon’s distance from the planet.
Scientists believe it will shave past Earth at a distance of around 44,000 kilometers. That’s only 27,300 miles. With this close approach, NASA will have the opportunity to test its network of observatories for its planetary defense system, in case an asteroid did actually hit Earth.
“Scientists have always appreciated knowing when an asteroid will make a close approach to and safely pass the Earth because they can make preparations to collect data to characterize and learn as much as possible about it,” said Dr. Michael Kelley, a scientist working on the NASA TC4 observation campaign. “This time we are adding in another layer of effort, using this asteroid flyby to test the worldwide asteroid detection and tracking network, assessing our capability to work together in response to finding a potential real asteroid threat.”
Scientists tracked the house-sized asteroid using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. While they had expected the TC4 asteroid to pass by earth, they weren’t certain how close it would actually come.
“It’s damn close,” said Rolf Densing, who heads the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. But that’s also far enough away that it will miss all of the geostationary satellites currently in orbit. “The farthest satellites are 36,000 kilometers (22,400 miles) out, so this is indeed a close miss,” he told AFP. “As close as it is right now, I think this prediction is pretty safe, meaning that it will miss.”
The asteroid was still very far from Earth, about 35 million miles at the time of the latest observations. It is traveling at speeds of around 30,000 mph (14 km per second).
Sleepwalking is a Death Sentence for Humanity
Manifesto for a Sociology of the Climate Crisis and of Climate Justice
Ed. note: The following is Chapter 14 of the new book: Cimate Futures: Re-imagining Global Climate Justice, edited by Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran, Priya Kurian, and Debashish Munshi (Berkeley: UC Press/Luminos)
Many intellectuals in the social sciences and humanities do not concede that Earth scientists have anything to say that could impinge on their understanding of the world, because the “world” consists only of humans engaging with humans, with nature no more than a passive backdrop to draw on as we please.– Clive Hamilton (2017)
New realities have always called for new paradigms, and sociology – the study of how societies are structured by inequalities and how they might change – is built on the foundational work of giants like Karl Marx and Max Weber, who grappled with explaining the rise, functioning, and possible future of capitalism as it burst onto the scene in the nineteenth century. The most original and critical works of 20th-century sociology did a decent job of keeping up with the great changes that followed: corporate control of the global economy, the great social revolutions and other attempts to make societies fairer and more just, the rise of social movements demanding rights for women, for people of color, for gendered others, for all humans’ rights generally, and now humans’ responsibilities toward animals, the planet, and the very future we hope to have.
But even while doing so, much of the discipline lost its critical punch, and nowhere has this been so dramatic and fateful as in the inattention of both mainstream and critical sociologists alike to issues of environmental and climate-induced destruction as the 21st century has rolled into being, and as their effects have inexorably become inescapable realities.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Cost of Food Insecurity
THE COST OF FOOD INSECURITY
In many developing countries, undernutrition is a recognized – and well documented – crisis. However, with increasing urbanization, another health concern is beginning to emerge as people choose to consume foods of convenience rather than exert the effort it takes to grow their own produce.
While nutritious foods are still readily available in rural areas, the industrial urban systems involved with food processing and supply means these healthy foods are being replaced by cheaper alternatives. High in carbohydrates and sugars, these are often very energy-dense but lack the nutritional value of traditional foods.
Studies have revealed that income is a major factor when it comes to nutrition. Since lower-calorie foods that contain higher amounts of nutrients (including fresh produce) is generally quite expensive, populations who earn less money turn to the less healthy options, which are usually more affordable. A good example of this is whole wheat bread, which costs anywhere from 10 to 60 percent more than nutritionally-lacking white bread.
“Access to good, healthy food is what the urban poor need for a more productive and longer life,” said Jonathon Crush with the African Food Security Urban Network (Afsun), noting that there is a need for government interventions to provide increased access to more nutritious foods.
However, with the option of purchasing low-cost produce, fewer people will recognize the benefits of growing their own food. And while they may be able to acquire fruits and vegetables for a smaller financial investment, the cost to their health remains a concern. When you’re not growing your food yourself, you’re blind to the methods of production.
“Low prices at the grocery store give us a false sense that our food comes cheap,” the paper continues. “The higher yields of industrial agriculture have come at great cost to the environment and the social fabric – costs that are not involved in the price of our food.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Whose Bright Idea Was RussiaGate?
The answer to the question in the title of this article is that Russiagate was created by CIA director John Brennan.The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia. The CIA and the military/security complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia has been assigned that role. The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary and to have him impeached. I don’t think the Democrats have considered the consequence of further worsening the relations between the US and Russia.
Public Russia bashing pre-dates Trump. It has been going on privately in neoconservative circles for years, but appeared publicly during the Obama regime when Russia blocked Washington’s plans to invade Syria and to bomb Iran.
Russia bashing became more intense when Washington’s coup in Ukraine failed to deliver Crimea. Washington had intended for the new Ukrainian regime to evict the Russians from their naval base on the Black Sea. This goal was frustrated when Crimea voted to rejoin Russia.
The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony requires the principal goal of US foreign policy to be to prevent the rise of other countries that can serve as a restraint on US unilateralism. This is the main basis for the hostility of US foreign policy toward Russia, and of course there also is the material interests of the military/security complex.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Scotland To Permanently Ban Fracking
The Scottish government said on Tuesday that it wants to extend a current moratorium on fracking into a permanent full ban, with a final vote likely taking place at the Scottish Parliament later this year.
“I can confirm that the decision of the Scottish Government is that we will not support the development of unconventional oil and gas in Scotland,” Scotland’s Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse told the Scottish Parliament today.
In January 2015, the Scottish Government put in place a moratorium on granting consents for unconventional oil and gas developments in Scotland. Back then, the government promised to undertake further research on potential impacts before holding a full public consultation. The consultation ran from January 31 to May 31, 2017, and received more than 60,000 responses, the government said.
Today, Minister Wheelhouse told the Parliament that 99 percent of respondents in the consultation were against fracking. The ministers have a “moral responsibility” to tackle climate change, he noted.
“Fracking cannot, and will not take place in Scotland,” Wheelhouse said.
First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, tweeted that “Scottish government backs ban on fracking”.
Just yesterday, The Scotsman reported that ministers of the SNP party of government had been warned by other parties that a failure to ban fracking would be a “betrayal” to climate change commitments Scotland has made.
The Labour Party, Greens, and Liberal Democrats are all opposing fracking and supporting a ban, so they would likely support the Scottish government in a Parliament vote on banning fracking.
Friends of the Earth Scotland welcomed the decision to ban fracking, which they described as a “truly momentous win for the anti-fracking movement.”
A British Geological Survey report from 2014 said that there were “modest” shale reserves in Scotland. The estimate of shale gas in place is 80 trillion cubic feet, and the central estimate for shale oil in place is 6 billion barrels of oil. The volumes of oil and gas that could be commercially extracted are likely to be much lower, according to the 2014 report.
