A Call for Support

I’m writing today to ask for your financial support. I’ve been looking for a job for a while now, and it seemed like I was close to getting one when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. While the UK hasn’t gone into total lockdown, people are getting fired, and job interviews are being cancelled or indefinitely postponed for both myself, and my wife. Our funds are running out, and at this point it seems unlikely that we’ll be able to get wage labor to cover our expenses.

More importantly, it looks like it’ll be a couple months before anyone really tries to claim that the crisis is “over”, and a year before there’s a vaccine widely available. There’s an effective hiring freeze right now as people rightly practice social distancing, but that seems more than likely to turn into a long-term economic recession. We’re both working hard to find sources of income, and at this point this seems as viable as any other.

And so I’m asking for people to support me through Patreon.

For those who don’t know how it works, Patreon is a way for people like me to crowdsource funding for work we want to do. People who want to help me in making this blog can contribute a small amount per month, to support the content I make for free, and to get access to certain other perks, depending on how much you contribute. You control the monthly amount, and you can stop your contributions at any time if you feel you can’t afford them.

Beyond supporting my work, patrons get a few additional perks, depending on how much they give. These currently include things like links to additional news and resources I come across while researching my posts, extra articles written just for patrons, the ability to influence what topics I cover, and more.

If I hit 250 monthly patrons, I will write, record, and sing a parody of “Lady in Red” telling the story of Poe’s Masque of the Red Death, accompanied by my wife on accordion. At that point in time I’ll work out what the reward for my next goal will be.

While I’d love for this to be a long-term gig, all I’m asking for right now is support to keep a roof over our heads until we have enough other income to keep us off the streets. When we get to that point, I’ll notify my patrons, and those who were just helping out of solidarity can re-assign their contribution elsewhere if they so desire.

Whether you can afford to patronize my work or not, it would help me a great deal if you could share this post – and other posts I write – with your respective networks, or send friends and family to www.patreon.com/oceanoxia

Times are tough right now, but with a little solidarity we can pull through and keep working to build a better world. Thank you all, and may you and yours live long and prosper.

NASA is delaying climate science missions due to the pandemic, and that’s a good thing

It should surprise no one that the folks at NASA pay attention to the advice of scientists, particularly after years of having their own advice on climate science ignored. Just for the sake of repeating it, here’s where we’re at on the pandemic response: Epidemiologists and the experience of places like Italy indicate that all of our efforts should be in the direction of reducing the speed at which the disease spreads through the population. The basic arithmetic is pretty straightforward – a certain percent of those infected require hospital beds and ventilators. As the number of people infected rises, hospitals run out of resources, and have to start letting people go untreated. When that happens, the death rate rises from somewhere around 1-3%, to something closer to 10-15%. This is why Iran, which is suffering both from a badly planned response to the virus, and decades of economic sanctions, is reportedly digging mass graves.

Our job, as people who aren’t actively involved in the treatment of this pandemic, is to do everything we can to avoid catching COVID-19, and to avoid spreading it. In the case of NASA, this means that three climate science missions have been cancelled, following the confirmation that one of the scientists connected to the missions has tested positive for the virus.

“In addition, due to the current uncertainty about the coronavirus situation in the United States and its potential impact on travel during the next few weeks, three NASA Earth Science airborne science campaigns slated to deploy across the country this spring have rescheduled their field activity until later in the year. The campaigns are DeltaX, Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere (DCOTTS), and Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE), which would include flights from Ames. The scientific returns of these projects are not expected to be impacted by this change of plans.

The image shows NASA's ER-2 plane in flight. It's a small, sleek, white jet with NASA's name on the tailfin. The photograph is from above, showing a patchwork of homes, roads, and trees on the ground far below.

NASA’s ER-2 approaching to land

This delay in research is unfortunate, but necessary. The whole point of trying to do something about man-made climate change is to reduce the death and suffering that will come with the various predicted upheavals. Grounding these flights to help slow the spread of COVID-19 is in keeping with those ideals. Looking through history, it’s not hard to find examples of science being pursued without regard for the health, rights, or humanity of various human individuals or populations. That’s not a pattern we should be following, any more than we should be continuing the massive, profit-driven environmental destruction that came with those abuses. In that regard, this is a good example of how to respect human life while pursuing science.

At the same time, this can serve as a sort of early warning. As the global climate continues to destabilize, there will be more disruptions that get in the way of doing things like climate research. Emergencies will arise (or be manufactured), and the cost of responding to them will be used to justify defunding research, along with a great many other things that are designed to improve human health and happiness. Just as the Trump administration, and various other authoritarian governments around the world, suppressed testing and public awareness of the COVID-19 outbreak, similar regimes will suppress public understanding of climate change and the harm it is doing. Indeed, they have already spent a great deal of effort doing that, and as with this pandemic, it has made the whole situation much, much worse.

With so many suffering and dying from this disease, it would be a waste for us not to take as many lessons as we can, or to put them to work building a better future.

The Doomsday mindset or: No room for doom and gloom

An article by a British professor that predicts the imminent collapse of society, as a result of climate change, has been downloaded over half a million times. Many mainstream climate scientists totally reject his claims, but his followers are already preparing for the worst.

I spent a short while indulging in this kind of thinking a couple years ago. It was easy to piece together bits of information to forecast total devastation within months.

I saw articles like this at the time, predicting mass famine, nuclear war, and successive nuclear power plant meltdowns by this time last year.

Needless to say, that didn’t happen, but while I was in the middle of it, it seemed inevitable. This kind of thinking is paralyzing and weirdly seductive. It’s like conspiracy theories that way. It’s also not much different from the various religious doomsday cults.

Every bit of negative news proves that the world is about to end, and no bit of positive news is enough to prove otherwise. If it doesn’t happen now, that just means you were off by a year, and then two years, and then 10 years, until you’ve spent a huge portion of your life living in a hellish “end times” world of your own making, and getting little, if anything, done.

 

Crisis, opportunity, change, and perception

With the COVID-19 pandemic, people all over the world have been changing how they conduct their affairs, in an effort to slow down the spread of the disease. Many of these changes are highlighting ways in which our lives could be different, but aren’t:

As a species, humans seem to be very good at adjusting to new circumstances. The term “the new normal” is used constantly to discuss everything from climate change to Trump’s disastrous presidency, and I think it’s easy to slip into feeling like things have always been -and will always be – the way they are now. This is one example of how our sense of the world is often inaccurate, and why the use of tools like science and critical thinking are so important to keep from lying to ourselves.

Ollie Thorn of the Youtube channel Philosophy Tube made a video in September of 2018 about the changes that followed 9/11 that discusses this tendency, and how changes to things like airport security that were initially claimed to be temporary seem to have become just… the way things are now:

 

In a recent article for Slate, Dan Kois writes about some of the changes to “fact of life” rules that have been happening in the last couple weeks, due to this virus outbreak:

The Transportation Security Administration announced Friday that due to the coronavirus outbreak, they’re waiving the familiar four-ounce limit for liquids and gels—for hand sanitizer only. You may now bring a bottle of Purell as large as 12 ounces onto the plane to assist in your constant sanitizing of yourself, your family, your seat, your bag of peanuts, and everything else. All other liquids and gels, however, are still restricted to four ounces.

Among many shocks of the last week—school closures, Tom Hanks, the shuttering of one sports league after another—this rule change registers as major. The liquid restriction has been a key component of air travel ever since 2006. If people are now allowed to bring 12-ounce bottles of hand sanitizer onto planes, won’t the planes blow up?

The TSA can declare this rule change because the limit was always arbitrary, just one of the countless rituals of security theater to which air passengers are subjected every day. Flights are no more dangerous today, with the hand sanitizer, than yesterday, and if the TSA allowed you to bring 12 ounces of shampoo on a flight tomorrow, flights would be no more dangerous then. The limit was bullshit. The ease with which the TSA can toss it aside makes that clear.

There are a number of trite sayings about how times of crisis bring opportunity, and as with any persistent idea, there’s some truth to that. For all the horror that people are experiencing today, and that seems to be headed our way in the coming weeks due to inadequate resources and incompetent governments, this is an opportunity for everyone to think about what could be, rather than just what is. The case for universal healthcare has never been stronger, for example, and as the tweet earlier in this article said, we’re seeing that a lot of things we were told aren’t feasible, actually are.

Each day of this public health crisis brings a new example. People thrown in jail for minor offenses? San Antonio is one of many jurisdictions to announce that, to keep jails from being crowded with sick citizens, they’ll stop doing that. Why were they doing it in the first place?

The federal government charging interest on loans to attend college? Well, Donald Trump has  instructed government agencies who administer loans to waive interest accrual for the duration of the crisis. But why on earth is our government charging its own citizens interest anyway?

Broadband data caps and throttled internet? Those have been eliminated by AT&T and other ISPs, because of the coronavirus. But data caps and throttling were really just veiled price hikes that served no real technical purpose. Why did we put up with them?

Police helping landlords evict tenants in times of financial trouble? Due to the coronavirus, not anymore in New York, Miami, and New Orleans. But—and you see where this is going—why do the police aid evictions when tenants are stricken with other, non-coronavirus illnesses?

The city shutting off your water, or your power, as punishment for hardship? During this public health emergency, plenty of cities and companies have suddenly found a way to keep service turned on. “As long as COVID-19 remains a health concern,” said Detroit mayor Mike Duggan, “no Detroit resident should have concerns about whether their water service will be interrupted.” Why in the hell should any Detroit resident have concerns about their water service being interrupted, ever? Shouldn’t clean water be the absolute base level of service delivered by a city to its residents?

Sick employees forced to take unpaid leave or work while sick if they want to keep their jobs? Walmart recently announced it would provide up to two weeks of paid leave for any employee who contracts the coronavirus. And the House just passed a bill to address the problem, though as the New York Times editorial board notes, the House’s failure to make the bill universal “is an embarrassment that endangers the health of workers, consumers and the broader American public.” But why should any sick worker fear losing their pay or their job at any time? And why are the most vulnerable to punitive sick leave practices the workers making the lowest wages?

As Kois points out, when the crisis has passed, there will be a strong push to “return to normal”, but it’s important to remember that “normal”, for a lot of people, has been a really bad situation for a really long time, and we’ll have a chance to hold on to some of the changes that we’ve seen, and to compare them to what went before.

It’s also worth noting that as with 9/11, it’s very likely that this crisis will be used to further the global surge in far-right governance around the world. Those of us who value human life are not the only ones who see the opportunity to “make a better world”, but not everybody has the same idea of what that better world should look like.

Take care of yourselves and those you love. Talk to those who share your hopes and dreams for the future. Guard against those who would burn the world to rule the ashes. Work to hold on to progress, and to gain new ground.

And remember that how things are now is neither how they always were, nor how they must be.

An apology to Eunice Foote, the scientist and activist who first published on the role of CO2 in our atmosphere

Image shows two pages of Eunice Foote's article, "Circumstances affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays", published in The American Journal of Science and Arts, November 1956. Full text can be found

If you want a text version of this article, and description of the tables in it, click here.

For some time now, I’ve had a basic history of climate science more or less memorized. It’s useful to know what we knew and when we knew it, particularly when talking to people who still believe long-debunked misinformation like the idea that the theory of man-made global warming was a post-hoc creation to explain observed warming.

For that entire time, I have been wrong about who first discovered the role that carbon dioxide plays in Earth’s climate.

My go-to narrative generally went from Fourier in the 1820s, to Tyndall in the 1850s and 1860s, to Arrhenius in the 1890s and early 1900s, to Keeling in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s a decent map of key moments in our understanding of CO2 and the global climate, and an effective demonstration of the ways in which the theory was developed, and how it was -and is – a predictive theory that has been supported by a vast body of evidence since its inception.

With simplicity, however, comes inaccuracy. I do not subscribe to the Great Man theory of history – none of the men listed above made their achievements alone, and all of them built on the work of people who had gone before. They were part of communities of people working to understand the universe. The act of singling them out to create a simple, punchy narrative necessarily hides the work of countless other people that contributed to the publications that “history” chooses to single out.

My error, however, goes beyond this necessary over-simplification of history. The reality is that Tyndall, for all his many accomplishments, should not occupy that spot in the story. That place rightfully belongs to one Eunice Newton Foote, who published on the role of CO2 in our climate in 1856 – four years before Tyndall did. Whether through ignorance or malice, Tyndall did not reference her work when he published his own work on the subject. As my discussion of communication between scientists implies, and this linked abstract notes, “From a contemporary perspective, one might expect that Tyndall would have known of her findings.”, particularly since much of that communication is centered around such publications.

Beyond her work as a scientist, Foote was active in the movement for women’s suffrage in the United States, and was a signatory on the Declaration of Sentiments from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.

For a woman like Eunice Foote—who was also active in the women’s rights movement—it could not have been easy to be relegated to the audience of her own discovery. The Road to Seneca Falls by Judith Wellman shows that Foote signed the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention Declaration of Sentiments, and was appointed alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton herself to prepare the Convention proceedings for later publication. As with many women scientists forgotten by history, Foote’s story highlights the more subtle forms of discrimination that have kept women on the sidelines of science.

Foote’s role in history was uncovered by researcher Raymond Sorenson, who published a paper on her in 2011. The greatest service historians provide to us is in their work to sort through the various accounts and records of history, and dig up truths about our past which are so often buried under layers of ego, bigotry, and political power games. In a society founded on science, that lionizes those who first discover new facts about the world, it’s good to see recognition of a woman whose efforts were wrongly ignored for so long.

COVID-19, priorities, and “successful” communist countries.

In the midst of all the news about the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s understandable that not everything is being reported on. One thing that should be reported on, but that I’m having trouble finding articles about, is how the Marxist-Leninist government of Vietnam is handling the outbreak and quarantine.  As of March 6th, they were mass-producing testing kits, and claimed to have the capacity to export testing kits while meeting their own needs.

They’ve had people in isolation and quarantine, and have been making that easier by providing groceries to people in lockdown, for free.

The image shows a tweet with the caption text, and four different pictures. The top two pictures show packaged meals stacked up on tables. The bottom two show a woman in scrubs and a surgical mask covering mouth and nose, handing out meals to various Vietnamese citizens, also wearing masks.

“western media wont talk about this but the vietnamese government is helping citizens fight the coronavirus by offering free /proper/ meals for people in quarantine areas and free groceries/necessities for a whole neighborhood in lockdown”

 

Image shows a twitter thread with the captioned text, plus two pictures of pre-packaged meals including rice, vegetables, and other stuff I can't personally identify

“- here people will be placed in quarantine due to travel history, showing symptoms or recent contact with current patients – the neighborhood in lockdown is because the 17th patient, possibly a “super spreader”, resided there” ** “some korean travelers are also in quarantine so they were given korean meals because what if they aren’t used to vietnamese food” ** “i ran out of characters but this is also meant to poke fun at how the usa and some european nations respond to this outbreak, both their government and people. anw if you constantly think of countries in the global south with your shallow eurocentric bias then karma will get you.” ** “Muting this now reach me through DM if you need to! Appreciate all the good sentiments” ** “your gov may be shitty but extend your appreciation and support to doctors & healthcare workers on the frontline of this crisis! if you cant wear masks, wash hands often, avoid touching MEN (Mouth Eyes Nose), and avoid crowds (PLEASE). the system is in shambles so be proactive”

They’re taking steps to reduce stigma surrounding people who’ve fallen victim to the virus, to make quarantine economically feasible for those undergoing it, and to actively take care of the population. From what I can tell, their response to this crisis is putting capitalist countries to shame, and while I don’t want their precise form of government, or all of the restrictions on dissent they have, I think it would be a mistake to ignore the good things they have going as well. I’m less interested in political labels than I am in the wellbeing of humans as a whole, and there is no reason why we cannot have a system that can respond to a crisis the way the Vietnamese government is doing, while also having the freedoms that some in the West believe are somehow inextricably tied to capitalism.

We can have a better world,

 

“Green” hydrogen: Where are we at?

One of the biggest challenges in transitioning to renewable energy has been the usefulness of fossil products for fueling long-distance transportation. Cars, trucks, planes, and boats all generally rely on fossil fuels for power. Hydrogen is periodically proposed as an alternative, for those vehicles that can’t functionally be run from batteries, or tied to a grid like trains. The problem is that most hydrogen currently available also comes from processing of fossil fuels, which is why George W. Bush was so willing to promote it as an “alternative” to oil. Disingenuous greenwashing aside, however, hydrogen does work, and as with the power for electric cars, the question is more about where it comes from.

The idea of using renewable energy to produce hydrogen for fuel has been around for a long time, as have proposals to use nuclear power for the same purpose. In both cases the scale of production needed will be massive to make any real dent in the fossil fuel economy. Whether or not hydrogen from splitting water becomes a major part of fueling human society, it has the potential as a portable fuel source to replace oil or gas, and I think it’s good that it’s being explored. Japan’s efforts to rebuild and re-invent the Fukushima region are what drew my attention back to this. They’ve opened a solar powered electrolysis plant to act as a pilot project for later mass production.

The Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Field (FH2R) uses a 20MW solar array, backed up by renewable power from the grid, to run a 10MW electrolyser at the site in Namie Town, Fukushima Prefecture.

A consortium including Toshiba, Tohoku Electric Power and Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) said the project is the largest electrolyser yet to produce hydrogen from clean power sources. The FH2R system can produce up to 100kg of hydrogen an hour, said the partners.

The project will be used as a test bed for mass production of green H2, with initial output directed to fuel hydrogen cars and buses in Japan – including some to be used at the Tokyo Olympics later this year.

My rough calculation based on the numbers from this article indicates that that’s enough to fuel about an average week’s commute for 18 fuel cell-powered cars. That’s not a lot, but it’s not meant to be at this stage.

Shell is partnering with the Gasunie natural gas company, and the Groningen Port Authority in the Netherlands for a much larger installation powered by offshore wind turbines: 

The electricity would be brought onshore at Eemshaven where it would be used to produce hydrogen for northern European industry and distributed via Gasunie’s current network.

The factory will have capacity to produce 800,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year. ‘Green hydrogen, produced via renewable sources such as wind and solar power, is central in the Dutch climate agreement and in the European Green Deal,’ the three companies say.

Hydrogen is widely used in industry but is currently mainly produced with gas.

Last October, Groningen hosted a major conference on developing a hydrogen based economy.

Economic affairs minister Erik Wiebes said at the time the region has everything it needs, including infrastructure (gas pipelines, deep-sea port), the space and the knowledge to make the transition to a hydrogen economy a reality.

Households
The offshore wind farm will kick off with production of some three to four gigawatts by 2030, expanding to 10 gigawatts by 2040. This would be enough to supply 12.5 million households, or more than the total number of households in the Netherlands, the project group said.

This is encouraging news, if it holds up. The fact that it’s being run by fossil fuel corporations make me worry that it’s an attempt at greenwashing that will never amount to much. Fossil fuel corporations should have turned their vast resources to creating alternative energy sources decades ago, when the climate had not yet been destabilized, but better late than never, I suppose.

Another concern has been transport and storage of hydrogen. The Groningen project, and a plan to power LA with hydrogen both rely on existing natural gas infrastructure, and in the case of LA, on continued use of natural gas, at least in the short term. The potential of hydrogen should not be used as an excuse to increase use of natural gas, and I am worried that that’s what this is. On the surface that seems to be a matter of putting the matter into the hands of people who know how to handle volatile gasses, but the record of neglect and incompetence by gas companies, and the associated ruptures and leaks makes me worried about letting those corporations handle hydrogen, given the energy required to produce the stuff, and the amount that could be lost to their profit-driven corner-cutting.

A project in Australia is exploring a different method of storage: 

The 4.5MW Manilla Community Solar array will backed by a unique 2MW/17MWh storage system that takes green hydrogen — produced in electrolysers powered by the solar panels — and stores it in a salt-like substance call sodium borohydride (NaBH4).

This non-toxic solid material can absorb hydrogen like a sponge, store the gas until it is required, and then release the H2 with the application of heat. The released hydrogen is then run through a fuel cell to generate electricity.

This system allows hydrogen to be stored cheaply at high density and low pressure without the need for energy-intensive compression or liquefaction.

I don’t know if this would be a viable way to transport hydrogen – it seems more designed to use as a static “tank” – but I think there would be value in having options other than pipelines run by corporations who’ve already shown themselves incapable of responsible behavior.

It’s still unclear to me whether hydrogen will ever become more than a prop for the bogus argument that natural gas is a “bridge fuel”, but it seems like something that ought to be within the realm of possibility. If it happens, it will require a massive scale-up in renewable energy and/or nuclear power beyond what’s needed to power the grid. As always, that work needs to be happening faster.