Something for the weekend #96

Welcome to another edition of my regular newsletter, offering a round-up of the week’s causes for optimism as seen in the media. Plus links to discussion of optimism and pessimism.

* In the journal Nature, strong doubts about the RCP 8.5 climate scenario. RCP 8.5 has long been mis-represented as a ‘business as usual’ climate-planning scenario, supposedly arising from a firm scientific ‘consensus’. It has been relied on by thousands of the most alarmist journal papers predicting future catastrophe.

* Barry Brownstein, professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore, on “The myth that our planet faces an overpopulation crisis.”

* In Macleans, “A belief in African and South Asian countries over-breeding the earth into catastrophe has a lengthy history steeped in scientific racism, imperialist arrogance and western paternalism.”

* Marian L. Tupy, on how “The Battle to Feed All of Humanity Is Over. Humanity Has Won.”

* “Will the Optimist Trump Run Away With the Election?” muses William F. Marshall at Town Hall… “Donald Trump’s optimism is not the sunny, cheerful optimism of a Californian actor steeped in history and conservative political philosophy, like that of Ronald Reagan. [President Trump has been] too busy experiencing freedom and free markets to worry about their intellectual underpinnings. His conservatism – and his visceral belief in the bedrock principles of conservatism – is born of real-life lessons that the rest of us can relate to.”

* Daily Business, “Hold tight and try to avoid the bad news sickness”… “[Since ancient times] Generation after generation are attracted to negative news, preferring pessimism for some reason. And it’s always been that way. Bad news spreads like a virus.”

* From this week’s edition of the UK’s leading magazine, Country Life, news of… “A £20m trial for on-demand buses in rural and suburban areas was announced this week, allowing passengers to order rides through a mobile app. Some £30m of further funding will be spent to improve or restore bus services that have been cut.”

* And finally, NASA has an open call for astronauts to travel to the Moon and Mars.

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Something for the weekend #95

Welcome. This is an edition of my regular newsletter that offers a round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus links to discussion of optimism and pessimism.

* A taste of President Trump’s ‘State of the Union Address’ for 2020… “This Nation is our canvas, and this country is our masterpiece. We look at tomorrow and see unlimited frontiers just waiting to be explored. Our brightest discoveries are not yet known. Our most thrilling stories are not yet told. Our grandest journeys are not yet made. The American Age, the American Epic, the American Adventure, has only just begun.” He backed this up with impressive range of hard figures and new announcements.

* Just released, the new book Moonshots : Creating a World of Abundance. Created, the book suggests, through an abundance of interconnected “entrepreneurial thinking”.

* From Mises Wire, “Predictions of Economic Doom Show Why People Ignore ‘Experts'”.

* In The Spectator, “Climate doomsayers keep putting sell-by dates on their credibility”.

* The Young IPA Podcast, Episode 143: Matt Ridley, January 2020. The author of The Rational Optimist appears from 16:40 to 36:05 minutes.

* ‘Clean water from air’ extraction machines are still making good progress on the basic science, albeit slowly. The aim is an optimal, cheap, large-capacity machine that’s fit to spend years working steadily in tropical field conditions.

* “Flushing nitrogen from seawater-based toilets”. A Red Sea bacteria is found to be… “around 90 percent effective in treating wastewater with a salinity of about 1.2 percent and [also] demonstrated high nitrogen removal rates. The tests were on real seawater — unlike other studies that used artificial versions.” If brackish water or salty seawater could be used to flush toilets, massive amounts of freshwater could be conserved on coasts and islands around the world.

* From 2017, “Popular song lyrics have become more negative over time”, a free summary by the author of what was later the full ($ paywalled) 2018 journal paper “The Quantitative Sentiment Analysis of Lyrics in Popular Music”.

* The UK has produced the final report of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, on embedding good design and beauty in the coming wave of building and development across the British Isles. Meanwhile, over in the USA, President Trump drafts an order that… “the Classical architectural style will be the preferred and default style” for the nation’s new and upgraded federal buildings.

* And finally, there’s lies, damn lies, statistics, and then there’s… creative industries statistics. But, for what it’s worth, the 2018 UK creative industries statistics are now tabulated and out. “Up 7.4 per cent on the previous year” and accounting “for 11.7 per cent of the economy”, allegedly. Such figures become increasingly shaky, though, once you start digging down into them. One discovers that, for instance, your entire local branch of Currys (washing machines and fridges included) is supposedly part of the ‘creative industries’. But the creative sectors of the economy are definitely broadly healthy in the UK, despite the speed-bumps of Brexit and three years of wailing by the doom-mongers.

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Something for the weekend #93

Welcome. This is another edition of my newsletter offering a round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus links to discussion of optimism and pessimism.

* “To embrace the possibilities of tomorrow we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the Apocalypse. They are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers, and they want to see us do badly but we won’t let that happen. They predicted an overpopulation crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the 70s, and an end of oil in the 1990s. These alarmists always demand the same thing: absolute power to dominate, transform and control every aspect of our lives.” — President Trump speaking before the assembled World Economic Forum (aka DAVOS), 21st January 2020. Full Speech via The Telegraph‘s YouTube Channel. Well worth listening to in its entirety.

* From the Randian right, Robert Tracinski on “Against the Sweet Meteor of Death”… “The best way to avoid the apocalypse is to stop thinking that we’re heading toward the apocalypse.”

* From the left, Tom Vaughan on how the “Doomsday Clock Robs Us of Political Agency. Apocalypse Is Not Inevitable”… “the clock is a remarkably unscientific medium for representing civilizational threats. [and] we are asked to take the Elders’ word that a carefully considered methodology is behind each decision to inch the minute-hand forward or back.”

* Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times ($ paywall), on “The darkness where the future should be”… “The dearth of optimistic visions of the future, at least in the United States, is central to the psychic atmosphere of this bleak era. Pessimism is everywhere” [being pushed for political purposes, and another problem is that… “from artificial intelligence to genetic engineering to mass surveillance [new technologies] are frequently [presented by the news and entertainment media as] sources of horror.”

* How Africa notes that, over in the USA, “Women Win In President Trump’s Economy”.

* “Air-filtering buses to be deployed in English towns and cities”… “Buses equipped with fans to capture pollutants from the air are being rolled out to six towns and cities in England, following a successful trial last year.”

* All the UK’s music-capable children will leave school with the ability to read and write music, thanks to a new £85m Government plan.

* The BBC is finally set to face some direct competition, at least in speech radio. In spring 2020 Rupert Murdoch will launch a direct rival to the monolithic BBC Radio 4, called Times Radio. The new channel will be ad-free and “opinion-driven”, and will appeal to a younger audience of the type likely to buy a subscription to the Times newspaper.

* The Next Web has a ‘tech optimism’-debunking opinion article on “Why using AI to screen job applicants is almost always a bunch of crap”… “there is no scientific basis by which an AI can determine human desirability traits [for a complex work role] by applying computer vision/natural language-processing techniques to short video/audio clips.”

* And finally, “U.S. West Coast rockfish recovery hailed as success story”… “Thanks to conservation efforts, a recovery effort has been massively successful [via] “permanent protection of thousands of miles worth of reefs and coral beds” off the shores of Oregon and California.

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Heinlein Society scholarship essay contest

The Heinlein Society’s eighth annual scholarship essay contest for 2020, with prizes. Heinlein being the famous science-fiction author, and he is not to be confused with Hubbard by the clueless. Deadline: 1st April 2020. Some of the questions are…

* Robert Heinlein said “The golden age of science has yet to begin.” Evaluate this statement compared to your technical field.

* Discuss the advantages to the human race of a permanent settlement on the Moon or Mars.

* How might advances in your chosen field of study affect how people live 50 years from now? What changes, good or bad, might society see?

Something for the weekend #92

Welcome to another edition of my newsletter, offering a round-up of the week’s media coverage of causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus links to discussions of the whys and wherefores of optimism vs. pessimism.

* The UK’s “National Trust is to create 42 new Sherwood Forests”, on farmland it owns across the UK. Sherwood Forest being the vast Robin Hood type of British forest. They’ll be planted and growing before 2030.

* Brexit will enable the UK’s “Farmers to be rewarded for protecting wildlife”… in “a shift away from the current EU subsidy system … future payments will reward farmers for measures taken to protect land, water and air; to support thriving plants and wildlife…” with the changes being “brought in over seven years, from 2021 to the end of 2027”.

* “Restricting trade in endangered species can backfire, triggering market booms”, reports someone who’s had her boots-on-the-ground in China. Who knew?

* New in the journal Nature, “Ocean acidification does not impair the behaviour of coral reef fishes”. An exhaustive and very rigorous three-year study… “comprehensively and transparently show[s] that — in contrast to previous studies — end-of-century ocean acidification levels have negligible effects on important behaviours of coral reef fishes”. The new research examined many fish types and finds that the previously… “reported effects of ocean acidification on the behaviour of coral reef fishes are not reproducible”. Which rather raises the question: were the previous ‘research’ reports all just rather fishy exercises in headline-grabbing?

* The Critic magazine brings “Greek good news” about the formerly dire economy there… “A virtuous cycle of fiscal probity since the crisis […] has brought back fiscal sustainability, ushered in resumed growth and at least hinted at future prosperity. [thus proving that] Budget balancing works — and naive spendthrift Keynesianism doesn’t.”

* While Greece is still a bit fragile, the media should have no reason to be as quiet about the sustained economic success of robustly conservative Poland. If that booming nation were even remotely socialist, we’d hear constantly about their success story. But the Financial Times did feel obliged to crank out one good news story, just before Christmas 2019… “Poland’s booming economy fuels demand for life’s luxuries” (probable $ paywall).

* The anti-Trump Reason magazine on how “The Democratic Debates Are Downers. That’s a Big Problem for All of Us”… “They live in a world where dark, shadowy forces — billionaires, corporations, Russian operatives especially — conspire with near-perfect success to make us all poorer and sadder, dumber and sicker, more alienated and hopeless. … If last night’s rhetoric is any indication, the Democrats might have one more thing to be depressed about after election day.” And if they’re that crazy now, then how much more so when President Trump wins again?

* The Italian Italics magazine muses on our media’s near-medieval rapture at depicting pain and suffering… “If we are past this vision of humanity and the world, or should be, why do we continue to be so enraptured by it? Why do television studios invest millions of dollars to produce these programs and why are they so medieval in the details …?”

* Meanwhile, Project Starshot has demonstrated and documented its first stable experimental Beam Rider. The idea is to sail a larger version up to around 20% the speed of light, and thus send an unmanned probe to visit the star Alpha Centauri in about 20 years.

Picture: impression of Project Starshot / Breakthrough Starshot leaving Earth for Alpha Centauri.

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Something for the weekend #91

Welcome. This is another edition of my newsletter offering a round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus links to discussion of optimism and pessimism.

* The Federalist observes that “To The Liberal Media’s Dismay, There Will Be No Disastrous War With Iran”, as President Trump once again changes the course of history in a positive direction.

* The Jerusalem Post reports that “Israel unveils breakthrough laser to intercept missiles, aerial threats”. The system works and is… “drastically cheaper than the [existing] Iron Dome system”. Thus it will alter the strategic reality of protecting Israel. Since it can apparently also protect against drones, it would seem to have potential to be exported around the world.

* The Spectator editor Fraser Nelson has a fine new podcast, “A Small Matter of Hope“. He asks why, when… “life is getting better [are] so many of us convinced that we’re heading for hell in a handcart?” Start at 7.00 minutes, to get past the ads and introductory cow-catchers.

* Spectator Life on “Why 2019 wasn’t the ‘worst year on record’ for retailers”… “Contrary to the claim that 2019 was the ‘worst year’ for retail in a quarter of a century, the annual sales value of Britain’s retailing sector has been on a fairly consistent rise for well over a decade. [thus] to brand 2019 ‘the worst year for retail’ ignores the promising trends in new kinds of retail, giving consumers more choice and flexibility in their lifestyles than ever before.”

* “Australian wildfires caused by humans, not climate change”. It appears to be the usual story. Years of neglect of controlled seasonal burning and scrub clearance, at the behest of eco-worriers, causes a huge build-up of flammable wood and debris. Then a drought and a naturally hot summer arrives, and brings with it arsonists and careless tourists.

* “Conservation For Endangered Reef Fish Yields Results”… “While many governments have enacted regional or seasonal fishing closures in an attempt to allow recovery of overfished stocks of aggregating reef fishes, this is one of the first studies to provide evidence that these measures can be successful.” The on-reef research was long-term and also especially heroic… “[the fish] has the unfortunate habit of aggregating at inconvenient and often dangerous locations along the reef shelf edge [but] the team has been able to maintain their monitoring efforts for over 15 years.”

* “These Breakthroughs Made the 2010s the Decade of the Brain”, suggests the Singularity Hub. The author points out that brain research now has many more valuable tools, that the brain is far better understood, and that we are increasingly able to safely wire the brain of disabled people to useful prosthetics.

* AMD will ship its 64-core 3990X Threadripper desktop chip in early February 2020. It’s a rather expensive miracle at present, but by 2022 we should see incredibly powerful pre-built 64-core desktop workstations at around $5,000.

* Despite the politically-correct squib of a “boycott” by the Hollywood elite, the U.S. state of Georgia had a “outstanding success” in 2019… “$40.6 billion in exports, total trade $139 billion. $66.2 billion in economic impact from Georgia’s tourism industry, and 455 TV and film productions completed in Georgia with the film tax credit generating $9.5 billion in economic impact.”

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Something for the weekend #90

Welcome to another edition of my newsletter, offering a round-up of the week’s causes for optimism as noticed in the media. Plus Web links to discussion of optimism and pessimism. This past week has produced mostly editorials, as journalists struggle with their hangovers, though there is some very positive agricultural news that bodes well for the future of food.

* Johan Norberg in The Wall Street Journal, “The 2010s Have Been Amazing”… “mankind creates faster than the [looters] can squander, and repairs more than they can destroy.”

* Jonah Goldberg muses on why “We just had a global super-decade” and yet our media and “politics is wildly out of sync” with reality.

* Despite a return to the usual humdrum weather in the UK, the nation saw a record cereal yield from our farms in 2019. Optimism for the future of farming is also said by Farming Today to be at a record high among young farmers, as we prepare to Brexit.

* Over in India, the nation will also see record wheat output this year… “India’s wheat production may touch all-time high” reports the India Times. Also noted is that India has quadrupled its wheat production in five (often very difficult) decades, making the success all the more remarkable.

* An editorial in the Thai Business Mirror suggests that “Faulty information creates pessimism” and observes that… “The ‘doomsayers’ think that they are leading people to action by preaching hopelessness when, in fact, exactly the opposite is true.”

* Brian Wang suggests there needs… “to be a revolution in writing [for the screen, around] the depiction of technology, economics and technological progress” to match the times we actually live in and our likely future. Yet “drama writers generally have a poor understanding of technology and the world. [and even] long-running science fiction series have difficulty representing education, learning and progress.”

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