Something for the weekend #168

Welcome to my round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus some links to debunking of alarmism, and to more general opinion articles on optimism vs. pessimism.

* SpaceX has made history by launching the first all-civilian crew to Earth orbit. With private finance, too.

* Alaska is welcoming back the first big holiday cruise ships. The U.S. state had experienced a cruise ship drought for “nearly two years” until late summer 2021.

* Bjorn Lomborg in the Wall Street Journal, countering alarmism with an article on how “Climate Change Saves More Lives Than You’d Think”. One of an ongoing series of articles Lomborg is publishing with the WSJ.

* Spiked! on how the doomster hijacking of “Environmentalism is a revolt against the people”. Such faux ‘environmentalism’… “so often looks like a revolt against the masses, an uprising of the elites against the throng. After all, greens’ greatest hatred is of mass society – with its industry and factories and supermarkets and cars – so it makes sense that they bristle so intolerantly against the inhabitants of mass society. It’s snobbery dolled up as radicalism.”

* The Spectator celebrates Australia and the new special relationship and also the new AUKUS alliance between the US, the UK and Australia. Though the latter has been little-reported… “It is hard to overstate the importance of this […] nuclear submarine pact between the US, the UK and Australia”. AUKUS also features co-operation on… “cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and quantum computing”. This is good news, depending on how you view it. Asia Times reports that AUKUS is… “expected to focus on underwater defence capabilities as a deterrence to the Chinese”. Who are laying claim to vast areas of ocean, building fortified islands and new bases, and threatening places such as little Taiwan. So all this is a cause for optimism if AUKUS helps curb China’s increasingly unhinged military rhetoric. But bad news if it provokes China’s leaders into such a frothing fury that they invade Taiwan.

* In Bangladesh… “Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told Parliament that the tiger population in the world’s largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, is rising.” Only rising slightly, admittedly — from 106 to 114 seen in surveys, and there has been no camera survey there for nearly three years now. But eco-worriers apparently like to claim in the media that sea-level rise is “wiping out” the vast World Heritage Site, implying its tigers must also be nearly gone. Which seems a curious claim, since the new tourism season has just started there and the locals have produced a record honey crop. “Fewer natural calamities” is said to be a key factor in the honey boom there.

* And finally, “India’s leading media house India Today has launched a new TV channel that will broadcast only good and positive news”, reports the Indian press. Good News Today will focus on… “stories of human achievements, hopes, inventions and performers in various walks of life from India and other parts of the world.”

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New documentary: Corporate Welfare

A new CATO documentary with Johan Norberg. Corporate Welfare… “tells personal stories of the effects of tax exemptions, subsidies, government regulations, and bailouts [and] takes viewers across America to talk with individuals whose lives and livelihood have been directly affected by the outrages of corporate welfare.”

Giving companies ‘tax breaks’ sounds vaguely progressive, but actual lower taxes would benefit all… and not just a few big companies with hot-shot lobbyists and accountants. It also sounds progressive to give successful mega-farms ‘subsidies’. Because without such taxpayer-funded subsidies we’d all starve, right? Wrong… “fruit and vegetable farmers get no subsidies” and they do just fine, and can sell to whoever they want in a free market. Norberg also wonders about the curious lack of outrage from leftists over such massive and ongoing corporate subsidies.

Available in full on YouTube.

Something for the weekend #167

Welcome to my round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus some links to debunking of alarmist claims, and to more general opinion articles on optimism vs. pessimism.

* The University of Chicago has demonstrated a simple genetic modification that will allow plants to yield far more abundant crops, while also growing much better roots and having greatly increased drought-tolerance. They added a protein to rice and potatoes and saw real-world field tests yield a ~50% bigger crop. The researchers added… “it worked with almost every type of plant we tried it with so far, and it’s a very simple modification to make.”

* The River Thames runs through London, and was almost dead within living memory. Yet the mighty river is now ‘full of life’. The latest research is from the Zoological Society of London, in which its annual spotting survey found the river alive with breeding seals… “2,866 grey seals and 797 harbour seals [were counted] following the most recent pupping season.” There has been a slight dip in seal numbers in recent years, but such populations naturally fluctuate and spotting has been disrupted by lockdowns. The once-famous London eel is however faring much worse, and has nearly disappeared from the Thames. This is probably due to… “the illegal export market [in] European eel smuggling, [an illicit industry that sends eels to China and] may be worth as much as £2.5 billion”.

* In Country Life magazine, “The tale of how London Zoo survived and thrived through the lockdowns”.

* The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has moved the Atlantic bluefin tuna from “critically endangered” to “endangered” as its ocean stocks recover. This is the massive fish that is famously made into sushi. Stock conservation programmes are credited. Two other commercial tuna species, albacore and yellowfin tuna are now classified as of “least concern”.

* Bjorn Lomborg is in The Wall Street Journal this week, describing how “The World Is Getting Safer From Floods”. The article is part of his new series there. His slightly earlier article in his WSJ series observed that… “despite what you may have heard, Atlantic hurricanes are not becoming more frequent. In fact, the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the continental U.S. has declined slightly since 1900.”

* University College London has made a scientific breakthrough in finding the causes of rheumatoid arthritis, a common disease of older people. The… “researchers have found, for the first time, that damage to the lining of the gut plays a key role in disease by making it leaky. This allows bacteria to cross the gut lining into the body, intensifying inflammation in the stomach and the joints.” This opens the way to a treatment, says the article, perhaps in as little as four years.

* Japanese car firm Nissan has made a “Breakthrough On Recycling Rare Earth Metals”. No need for complex manual disassembly of the scrap or reject motors, it seems. Just melt the whole motors at 1,400 degrees, add a common element and some new flux, and the valuable Rare Earth Elements all float to the top of the bubbling cauldron.

* The staid architectural profession is “Still making dystopia”, according to a pithy article in the latest edition of The Critic. Despite cogent criticism and growing alternatives, too many architects more or less deliver the same old modernist boxes that are… “a standardized, very cheap way of bulk building that totally ignores the emotion and psychology of the user.”

* GBNews worries that a significant number of the next generation are being intensively raised “to view the world as a fearful, dangerous place”.

* There had been growing optimism about an ice-free summer sea-route for shipping in the high Arctic. However, the U.S. National Snow & Ice Data Center’s latest newsletter states that… “The Northern Sea Route appears closed off in 2021, despite being open each summer since 2008”.

* And finally, The Spectator decides that “Covid has been great for drawing”… “Confined to quarters, artists have turned to pen, pencil and biro, as this year’s Drawing Biennial shows … While coronavirus has put other arts in a chokehold, it’s a shot in the arm for drawing.”

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Something for the weekend #166

Welcome to my round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. A bit light on real news this week, due to the long holiday in the U.S. and U.K. Thus I’m forced to be more than usually ‘scattergun’ on the choice of topics.

* SpaceX is reportedly rapidly developing a new “ruggedized” version of its Starlink Internet dish, for work on boats, light aircraft, freighters, airships and in places such as Africa and the Arctic. The current dish costs $500, and it seems likely that the smaller “ruggedized” versions would command a premium price. A pigeon-zapper will also likely be a must-have add-on for buyers, because the birds are cause outages by pooping on the current design.

* The UK government has launched a £10m “Chewing Gum Task Force to clean up our high streets”. Time for a national pigeon-cull too, I’d suggest, which will also help the cause of cleaner streets and driveways.

* In breakthrough 5G trials, Ericsson and Vodafone halve network energy consumption.

* Good news: ‘Red’ Len McCluskey has at last left office after far too many decades as the bolshy head of the UK’s biggest trades-union, Unite. Bad news: his newly elected successor is said to be the preferred choice of hard-left Trotskyites. Also someone who sounds like a militant, in 2019 vowing to build “strike-ready workplaces” and to work “outside the law”.

* The UK government appears to be set to roll back the EU’s despised GDPR ‘cookie’ regulations… “In an interview with The Telegraph, culture secretary Oliver Dowden promised to get rid of some of the red tape imposed on businesses by GDPR, by, for example, abolishing the requirement for cookie permission pop-up boxes on websites.”

* New British research has discovered which robotic lawnmowers offer most danger to hedgehogs… “some models did only lightly touch or push the dead [test] hedgehog after which they changed direction”. The good models have not yet been named, it appears. Presumably because the researchers now want to work with the industry, to help them build and sell more wildlife-friendly models.

* And finally, the welcome news that someone has at last written a decent modern book surveying (in a non-PC way) the classic books of western literature for children. Sadly it’s been saddled with a ungainly and rather off-putting title by the publisher, Before Austen Comes Aesop: The Children’s Great Books and How to Experience Them. I guess such keyword-soup works well with Amazon’s dire excuse for a search-box. But at least such a guide now exists. Reviews state the selected tales are rigorously evaluated to be either ‘Foundational’ ‘Important’ or ‘Parents Cautioned!’. The key aspect is that all the choices have stood the tests of time and changing fashions, and come through.

Enjoyed this post? There’s more at the ‘Something for the Weekend’ newsletter archive.

Something for the weekend #165

Welcome to my round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus some links to debunking of alarmism, and to discussion of optimism vs. pessimism. Sometimes, also some debunking of unfounded optimism.

* PayPal is to allow users in the UK… “to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency”. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash are the currencies. No Dogecoin, at least for now.

* The Wall Street Journal on how in the U.S. “The Media Ignores Optimistic Black Leaders”… “The ones you don’t hear about reject narratives of self-pity and resentment.”

* The Federalist celebrates that “Homeschooling Is Surging Across America” and probes behind the headlines for the full range of reasons. Well over a million U.S. kids have forever dropped school for home schooling, since the virus emerged.

* There is little chance of future sea-level rise being due to melting of the Antarctic ice sheet. So concludes an authoritative sea-level rise project made up of 60 researchers from 44 institutions, and using the official IPCC computer-models. One of the lead researchers summed up the findings by saying that models suggest sea-levels will rise, but that… “There is little change, however, in projected sea level rise from the Antarctic ice sheet.” Looks like Matt Ridley has another failed alarmism to add to his tick-list, then.

* A bumper harvest in Australia. Key firm GrainCorp says… “We are building one million tonnes of new storage capacity in time for harvest”. Neighbouring New Zealand is also having an outstanding harvest across many crops.

* The Spectator takes the time to look into a report on “What caused the German floods?” The actual report, when read… “paints a very different picture of the event and any causal link with climate change.” The corporate media had parroted “deadly floods nine times more likely” because.. climate change. But The Spectator finds that… “The ‘nine times figure’ comes from analysis of rainfall intensity in the localised Meuse and Ahr areas over a two day period”. On these two days was built a very wobbly house-of-cards of historical comparisons and suppositions, as the report’s authors admit. The Spectator concludes… “the ‘nine times’ figure is the extreme upper limit of a range” based on shaky assumptions.

* An eco-optimism debunked. Supposedly eco-friendly LED street-lights… “are even more harmful for insect populations than the traditional yellow sodium bulbs”, says new UK research published this week. The LED streetlights are especially bad for moths, killing nearly 50% more of them than the old lights when sited near hedges. The LEDs also produce much more light pollution.

* In the U.S., new moves to take down miles of un-needed old fences “to help migrating wildlife”.

* Kenya’s first genetically-modified cotton is ready for harvest.

* In Qatar, the first ever General Election is set for 2nd October. This small step for democracy will elect the nation’s key 45 member advisory group, formerly appointed by fiat. Only Qataris over 18 will be able to vote, not the migrant workers. But all women will be included as voters, which is a good start.

* And finally, Swedish researchers are developing a new battery concept made with cost-efficient, abundant and sustainable metals. Double-sided graphene layers are organised into a structure that suits sodium ions. In time this could mean viable sodium-ion batteries replacing lithium ones. I very rarely post battery news, but… commercial batteries made of graphite and salt? That sound very promising, and the researchers even talk of “high-capacity energy storage” uses.

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