Something for the weekend #199

Welcome to my round-up of recent causes for some optimism, as noticed in the media, among the think-tanks and sometimes on relevant podcasts. I also offer occasional links to debunking of alarmism, and articles on the gaps between optimists and pessimists.

* Elon Musk has made a firm purchase offer for Twitter… “using $21 billion in cash and $25.5 billion in debt. The deal must still be approved by a vote of the shareholders”, although his offer price is generous and that seems very likely. Users are already noticing a difference in traffic, though if the purchase is really a cause for optimism on free speech may take a few months to decide.

* The Federalist notes a “Credit Card That Will Allow You To Avoid Financing Woke Banks”. In the U.S. a… “new credit card will allow conservatives to counter the compulsory financing of woke financial institutions, with profits sent to right-of-center charities.”

* The U.S. desert state of Arizona is being held up as a model of post-pandemic economic restoration.

* Restoring America ponders “Why teenagers are so sad?” and pessimistic. More so than usual, for rapidly-growing teenagers. The Atlantic, the article notes, is pushing four possible causes: heavy ‘instant media’ use; not being able to hang out with friends during the pandemic; dire and doomy world news, and pushy 24/7 parenting. But another key possibility is suggested by Restoring America, one the left doesn’t want to hear about. Parents who don’t stay together… “more than half of children will be raised by a single parent for some point before they reach adulthood”. I’d add an education system which largely pushes a toxic mix of ‘learned helplessness’, unearned entitlement, and narcissism.

* There’ll be more teenagers along soon enough, due to… “The Trump Baby Bump”… “Research suggests that Republicans’ increased economic optimism during the Trump presidency may have motivated them to have more children”.

* Johan Norberg has a new New and Improved episode, celebrating the success of Artificial Fertilizer for growing crops.

* In the UK, Rolls-Royce’s electric plane is a speedy success… the “Spirit of Innovation set two world records for speed, above a testing area in Wiltshire, England.”

* Drones equipped with special disease-detecting cameras are whizzing through the groves of Italy… “to spot trees infected with Xylella fastidiosa, a deadly bacterium that has been devastating the country’s olive crops for almost a decade.”

* As widely expected, last week the UK Education Secretary announced the establishment of a new GCSE exam in Natural History. An old term meaning the study of wildlife and its histories and ecologies. Hopefully, very strong measures will be taken to prevent it being instantly hijacked by leftists, and turned into a propaganda vehicle. The exam will now go to a short public consultation, and should be piloted from September 2023, before becoming available as a national classroom subject by September 2025.

* And finally, a nation-sized field of solar panels in the Sahara will connect to the world’s longest undersea cable. The cable will, apparently, come ashore at Devon and plug straight into the British electricity grid by 2027. It’s still a pipe-dream at the moment, but is one that just might come true.

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Listen to Archishop Brand…

Well, I had idly thought that the Church of England had very sensibly gone very quiet on political matters. And that they were just getting on with the job down at the grassroots. But no, the apparent silence just shows how well insulated I am, despite skimming a zillion RSS feeds each day.

Because I see the UK’s nominally conservative newspaper Daily Telegraph is today filled with letters re: “Justin Welby’s political salvoes set him at odds with public opinion”. One link for which slipped through to my RSS feeds, because it contained the word Staffordshire. So it seems the current Archbishop of Canterbury is being just as bolshy as his maudlin predecessor. Thankfully I don’t have to hear it.

Much better listening, I would say, is a new Long Now podcast on a new biography of the venerable Stewart Brand, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. Available now.

The podcast intro ends at 1:55 minutes. Stewart himself takes part in the fascinating conversation.

Something for the weekend #198

Welcome to my round-up of recent causes for some optimism, as found in the media and among the think-tanks and sometimes on podcasts. Also occasional links to debunking of alarmism, and to more general opinion articles on the curious gaps between optimists and pessimists.

* Where can U.S. bird conservation efforts best be targeted? Researchers have crunched 18 years of North American Breeding Bird Survey data to find out. 24 breeding ‘success predictor variables’ can now be plotted into new high resolution maps, creating… “the first consistent, occurrence-based, and nationwide maps of breeding bird richness” for the USA.

* The high Ecuadorian cloud forest of the Centinela ridge was once… “a mythical place for tropical botanists”. Then the forest was widely said to have “gone”. But recently some researchers refused to accept this consensus-of-doom, and instead simply started looking. First on satellite imagery, then with boots on the ground. And sure enough… “as soon as we got on the ground we found remnants of intact cloud forest” and rare plants that were supposed to be extinct.

* A few months ago the Australian Ministry of Environment quietly removed humpback whales from the ‘endangered’ list… “According to reports, Australia’s humpbacks have jumped in number from about 1,500 in the early 1980s to 40,000 today. … Australia’s de-listing of humpbacks follows that of other countries, including Canada and the United States.”

* “Polish Movie Uses AI to Create English Version”. A convincingly English version, apparently, rather than old-school dubbing.

* Microsoft’s new tool “fixes the bugs in software code written by AI”.

* The music magazine The Quietus this week surveys the latest “attempts to create a viable ‘eco-vinyl'” for vinyl music records.

* International Policy Digest on “Fighting the Pessimism Pandemic”… “The danger is not only the individual threats but also their combined psychological effect. We are witnessing a pessimism pandemic. […] Doom-mongering by the media and often well-intentioned public figures compounds this gloominess.”

* Elon Musk launches takeover bid for Twitter, apparently intending to restore freedom of speech. Which sounds good to me. Meanwhile, his “Tesla car company opens Texas factory” which is… “expected to double the company’s annual production capacity to 2 million vehicles”.

* Want to triple the life of Elon’s electric car batteries? Just fuse silicon nanowires directly onto the graphite on the battery anodes. Though according to Automotive World it’s still, like so many battery technology ‘advances’, at the stage of “could be game-changing” and “potentially revolutionary”. But sooner or later, someone really will make a really viable longevity breakthrough. Probably Elon.

* In the UK, the Daily Mail reports a “plan to force landlords to offer retail units that have been vacant for six months”. Sounds good, if it happens and there are some takers. Though they’re fighting an uphill battle, against changing tastes, changing shopping methods, and reduced household spending.

* And finally, a new type of ‘plant armour’. Many destructive insects begin life so small they can wriggle through almost any protective mesh or screen. Researchers and a local company in North Carolina have found a solution: make a new type of mesh that forms a ‘maze’. Even the smallest insects wander around in this for as much as ten vital days before they get out, yet the same mesh still lets in sun and water for the plant… “In small field plot studies for three summer months, cabbage plants grew approximately twice as fast when covered”. It may not be for all farmers, but they say… “We think this design could help farmers in extreme environments, or where crop production is limited in certain areas.”

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A new Elon Musk interview

New on YouTube, a new Elon Musk interview about what’s coming and why humanity should be optimistic about the future (April 2022).

Something for the weekend #197

Welcome to my round-up of recent causes for some optimism, as found in the media and among the think-tanks and sometimes on podcasts. Also occasional links to debunking of alarmism, and to more general opinion articles on the curious gaps between optimists and pessimists.

* This week IEEE Spectrum reports on “AI-Directed Algae Blooms Boost Biofuel Prospects”… “Producing large enough amounts of algae to be cost-effective has proven immensely challenging and kept algae biofuels from reaching the market. But now researchers have tapped into artificial intelligence to grow algae at a record pace, and that could bring down algae fuel cost.”

* PennWatch on how “Prunes Prevent Bone Loss at Hip and Protect Against Fracture Risk” in older women, who are prone to bone loss… “This new study represents a milestone in prune research as it is the largest clinical trial to date with a sample size of 235 postmenopausal women.” 5-6 prunes a day was the test diet in the research.

* A new paper in the journal Nature ($ paywall) finds evidence that the planetary… “combined land–ocean [carbon] sink has been able to grow at least as fast as [human] emissions.” This is a good thing, and there’s also good news from the tropics where… “tropical deforestation emissions” are judged to be being more than compensated for by tropical vegetation growth.

* The National Review surveys the alarmism of the “Thirty Years of the ‘Now or Never’ Climate Cry”… “since the 19th century all the ecological apocalypses announced offer a single recipe for salvation, [one] that coincides exactly with the economic programs of the Left. More taxes, more interventionism, less capitalism, and less freedom.”

* In the UK, “Progress on Natural England’s seagrass restoration project”… the £2.5m pilot project is restoring small “seabed habitats in five SACs in southern England”. The four-year project will end in 2023, and if judged a success it will hopefully be followed by larger-scale restorations.

* As expected, a ban on bottom trawling fishing gear will be brought in for Dogger Bank in the North Sea and four other sensitive sites around the UK coastline. To come into force in June 2022. The Dogger Bank is a very large area of shallows in the North Sea, and is set to be the site of the largest offshore wind farm in the world when operational in 2026 — which may just have something to do with why powerful bottom-scraping fishing trawlers are no longer wanted in the area.

* Also here in the UK, “UK jobless rate falls further below pre-pandemic rate”.

* The UK’s space industry was a media laughing-stock when the strategy launched, as the pessimists scoffed. Now, “3,000 jobs created in one year by ‘resilient’ UK space sector”.

* Reason magazine on how “The U.K. has a new plan to attract ‘high potential individuals.'”… “Graduates of the world’s top universities will soon be eligible for a new multi-year visa in the U.K.” Sounds good but the last set of such measures were said to have been a flop, though that was perhaps because of the lockdowns. Let’s hope the new ones work better.

* And finally, in Wales someone forgot to tell the puffins they’re supposed to be going extinct. The local Wildlife Trust reports this week that… “our April 2022 Skomer Island puffin count has confirmed that these iconic birds are back in their thousands… 38,896 to be exact. The Atlantic Puffin population on Skomer has increased by a massive 240% in the last ten years.” In the slightly wider area they… “recorded at least 49,507 puffins in Skomer, Skokholm and seas off Pembrokeshire Special Protection Area”.

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