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 a very authoritative sea-level rise project on Antarctica, 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 global sea-levels will rise, but that… “There is little change, however, in projected sea level rise from the Antarctic ice sheet.” The latest research on the Thwaites so-called ‘doomsday’ glacier does suggests there may be some increased area of iceberg calving there by 2030-35, due to the geothermal activity and the sub-sea ‘grounding points’ there. And yes doubtless the eco-worriers will scream and shout about that. But for the continent as a whole, it looks like Matt Ridley has another failed alarmism to add to his tick-list.

* 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. Qataris over 18 will be able to vote and 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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Toxic shock

In the gloomy dungeons of the therapeutic left, everything is oppression, all the time. There’s no escape from the toxicity and fear of being unwittingly politically incorrect. Even trying to be a bit cheerful about things is now to be frowned on, comrade. Because toxic positivity is their latest oppression-label…

Toxic positivity occurs when people use or demand positive emotion or optimism in an oppressive way…

Oppressive being defined by the beholder, of course. “It’s oppressive because… I say it is. And I rank higher in the oppression hierarchy than you do, comrade, so my word goes.” (I’ve been on the left, I know how that game works).

But I do see how being abruptly told to ‘snap out of it and cheer up’ could be very annoying, if you have just broken your leg or have a mental illness about which nothing can be done. So there’s something to be said for the idea. But medicalizing it as ‘toxic positivity’ sounds to me like a licence for depressives to continually dampen down the politically-correct into a slough of despond. Even more so than at present, when such groups are presumably depressed enough as they survey the leaky raft of non-issues on which their little bands now perilously float.

I’d suspect that “toxic positivity” also risks being expanded in scope, no matter how well-intentioned at the start, once it becomes a trendy shorthand bandied about in the media. We may see it used as a scare-phrase in attacks on rational optimism, as well as used to put down any optimist who dares to stray into a meeting of the therapeutic left.

I further idly wonder if this isn’t partly an aspect of the bitter civil-wars inside the left? A way to defend against a drift in such groups toward the left’s small but seductively optimistic and technocratic ‘post-capitalist abundance’ grouplets, of the sort that rather ludicrously promise ‘fully-automated luxury socialism’?

Something for the weekend #164

Here is another round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus links to debunking of alarmism. We’re still in the August ‘silly season’ for news, and there’s not much to be gleaned at present.

* The UK’s government’s new Blue Planet ocean recovery fund rolls out the first projects.

* The World in Data has debunked a key ‘pollinators and crops’ claim… “many of our largest producing crops (staples such as cereals) are not dependent on them at all. Very few crops are completely dependent. Most [crops] would see a decline in yields if pollinator insects disappeared, but would not collapse completely. Taking all this in account, studies suggest crop production would decline by around 5% in higher income countries, and 8% at low-to-middle incomes if pollinator insects vanished.”

* In ProMarket Steven Koonin (author of Unsettled) debunks alarmist claims about the economic impact of greenhouse warming… “contrary to popular belief, even the official assessment reports indicate that significant human-induced climate change would have negligible net economic impact on either the world or the US economies by the end of this century.”

* Reason magazine’s latest podcast talks with Roger Pielke Jr. about “Why We Shouldn’t Fear a Climate Apocalypse”… “Reason‘s Nick Gillespie talked with Pielke about why apocalyptic scenarios about temperature change are at odds with trends in energy use, how the planet is actually getting more hospitable to human life, and how ongoing incremental improvements in energy technologies will almost certainly lead to a brighter, cleaner future for all.”

* Trade journal Professional Planner on why greenwashing is now so pervasive… “governments continue to sign on to [‘net zero’] mandates they cannot meet, and investors pledge commitments they cannot redeem, creating a lucrative industry in greenwashing. [While] the real [useful, sustainable] change is coming from consumers and responsive producers”. Good news on the latter. But the large-scale free-market innovation needed there is often stifled, and in key areas such as solar power, by Chinese state subsidies. With such subsidies Chinese companies are “able to destroy other companies that were more incentivized to innovate”.

* Tesla has unveiled its breakthrough Dojo processor… “the fastest AI training computer in the world with four times the performance, 1.3X better performance and 5X smaller footprint compared to what exists”. Might also be used for a humanoid robot gardener or two, Elon has revealed.

* And finally… “Beaver numbers in Scotland have more than doubled in the last three years to around 1,000 animals, according to a NatureScot survey published this week.” It’s not a questionable ‘computer modelling’ claim either, as they did an “extensive survey” in the field. The creatures have been re-introduced in re-wilding programmes. Elsewhere in the UK, public consultations have begun on their re-introduction to England. There are real risks to consider, notably that they can sometimes dam small ditches and thus flood valuable farm crops.

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Crop a load of this…

Eco-worriers often claim that a suspiciously-rounded figure of ‘75% of crops are dependent on insect pollinators’. Now The World in Data has debunked this claim in a long new article…

“many of our largest producing crops (staples such as cereals) are not dependent on them at all. Very few crops are completely dependent. Most [crops] would see a decline in yields if pollinator insects disappeared, but […] studies suggest [total] crop production would decline by around 5% in higher income countries, and 8% at low-to-middle incomes if pollinator insects vanished.”

Yes, it can always be plausibly claimed that some pollinator populations are “in decline”. Because, as any entomologist will tell you, many flying insect populations have huge natural fluctuations from year to year. That has always been the case, since records began. Some insects are always “in decline” over the short term, while others boom. But only the declines get the ‘insect apocalypse’ headlines and the big fundraising ads. Semi-domesticated honey-bees are of course a case apart, being heavily dependent on human hive-keepers and hive transportation.

Anyway, this relative lack of dependence on crop pollinators seems like good news for other types of farming. Good for activities such as future bug-free underwater crop-growing, and for dome / underground farms on an insect-free Mars.

Something for the weekend #163

Welcome again to my round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. And some links to debunking of alarmism.

* Matt Ridley (The Rational Optimist) is interviewed by the Wall Street Journal on “How Science Lost the Public’s Trust”.

* Matt Ridley in The Telegraph on the ‘insect apocalypse’ that wasn’t. ($ paywall)

* A breakthrough in “invisible graphene barriers”, potentially very useful for protecting things that need to be protected but also seen, from sensitive electronics to fragile Old Master paintings.

* The latest Mises Institute podcast surveys the likely reasons why “China Won’t Be Taking Over the World”.

* The Philippines has approved genetically modified ‘Golden Rice’ for commercial growing.

* “A Bright Vision of a Positive Future” is a blogger’s positive reaction to the practical can-do optimism on display in the recent technology documentary “The Great Electric Airplane Race” (2021). Start at 12:20 to skip the ten-minute PBS climate lecture. This section heavily and graphically promotes the theory that jet aircraft con-trails cause strong greenhouse warming. Yet the UK government’s latest scientific summary-briefing on the topic concludes… “a large uncertainty remains as to whether contrails and contrail-cirrus warm the Earth’s surface”. And the latest modelling paper on the topic finds when contrail effects are looked at annually there is… “no net significant global ERF [Effective Radiative Forcing], [and] because of the spatial and seasonal timing of contrail ERF, [there are] some land regions that would have cooled slightly (minimum -0.2K)”. … “In Western Europe … little temperature change results. In Eastern N. America, SW [i.e. the U.S. South West] … there is little annual temperature change”.

* Spiked! on “Apocalypse Porn”… “every natural calamity – regardless of whether it can actually be linked to climate change – is politicised and exploited. Every fire and flood is turned into a horror film that the West’s bored middle classes then use to promote their drab green agenda. [While also conveniently letting] various political establishments off the hook” [for the role played by their negligence or mismanagement in forest-fires, floods etc]. We’re also seeing a ludicrous ‘spread’ of this catch-all explanation, to non-weather current events. Taliban takeover in Afghanistan? Blame global warming, not the U.S. President. Low IQ babies in Rhode Island? Blame global warming, not the lockdowns. A short run of warm days in your region? Always call it ‘a heatwave’, if you’re a journalist.

* Bjorn Lomborg on why the “IPCC global warming report is more chill than you have read” about in the corporate media.

* “Sales of The Spectator jump 27 per cent to a new all-time high”. The digital nay-sayers in magazine publishing are proved wrong again… “Print is at an all-time high, thanks to digital.”

* Spiked! debunks the supposedly widespread ‘outburst’ of racism after the Euro [soccer] final”… “We now know that just 34 vile racist messages were sent by people in the UK. Thirty-four. That’s it. … There was no wave of racial hatred.”

* The Spectator reviews the book Cider Country: How an Ancient Craft Became a Way of Life. It’s been a sorry story of a long decline since the 17th century heyday, with the real craft clinging on only in the English county of Somerset. Today on the store shelves… “most commercial products are made from 30-50% apple concentrate, which could be imported from China” … “but happily there’s a quiet renaissance going on, as a new generation of cider-makers are reconnecting with their heritage. This spirit is epitomised by Find & Foster — husband and wife Mat and Polly Hilton — who revitalise old orchards in Devon. Try one of their ciders, or something from Tom Oliver in Herefordshire or Starvecrow in Sussex”.

* And finally, seven new species of tobacco plant have been discovered in Australia. Seeds were shipped to the giant greenhouses at the famous Kew Gardens in London, and have grown into healthy plants. One of the new species is carnivorous and traps insects. There is no report yet on the smoking qualities of the dried leaves.

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