Underwater flying

Pictures of Rays from NationalGeographic.com

Mr. W

Environmental Disasters

As we're  on the edge of our seats about the BP spill in the gulf, the Nigerian Delta has experienced the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every year since the 1960's.  Foreign Policy lists 5 on-going environmental disasters, from underground coal fires in China and Pennsylvania, which produce 2-3% of global greenhouse gas every year to the Eastern Garbage Patch, which is a mess of garbage and plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean larger than the size of the continental US and about 100 feet deep.

What you need for summer

I just invented a fabulous drink:

1. Put watermelon chunks and some Pimms in a blender
2. Blend
3. Drink

You heard it here first....

Black Swans

Another interesting article from foreignpolicy.com, speculating on what kind of excitement we could see this summer. (And this was written last week, before the weekend's events off Gaza). Here is the beginning, click here for the whole article.

1. Wars of Summer, Part I: The Koreas

As we've seen just in the past couple of days, "engagement" doesn't seem to be doing the trick with North Korea. When you have two countries that have been pointing guns at each other for half a century and one of them is run by the kind of guy who makes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad look like Albert Schweitzer trouble is always just a Dear Leader moodswing away. When one of those countries starts firing torpedoes at the other, that raises the temperature a bit ... and when that same country has a diplomatic tantrum because its neighbor actually doesn't like having its ships sunk, you get a sense of how off-balance and dangerous the whole thing is. (You also get dictionary editors everywhere rushing to insert North Korea's reaction into the official definition ofchutzpah right where "burying your husband in a rented suit" used to be.) While most people assume this is just one of those periodic Korean peninsula hiccups, you never know.

2. Wars of Summer, Part II: Somalia, Yemen, etc.

These places are just two examples of plenty where conditions are chronically horrible and getting worse. If you're going to worry about the Koreas where the stakes are high and both sides would pay an unimaginable price for a conflict, don't rule out conflicts in places where everyone has a gun and life is cheap.

3. Wars of Summer, Part III: Israel, Syria, Lebanon

Speaking of places not to rule out, over the years few places have proven themselves more reliable breeding grounds for warfare than the borders of the state of Israel. And tensions are rising along the most northern of these as we speak. The Israelis are worried about growing stockpiles of missiles being deployed in Lebanon, new missile capabilities in Syria and Iranian mischief in both places. Of all the possibilities for tensions turning to a shooting war this summer, this one may top the list. And, what a great distraction it would make from Iran's nuclear issues (or what great cover for an Israeli strike against the Iranians who are paying for the missiles and underwriting Hezbollah trouble-makers in Lebanon and elsewhere).  

Afghanistan in the '50s

There's an amazing set of pictures on foreignpolicy.com looking at Afghanistan in the 1950s and '60s, showing that it has not always been this "medieval" place of thugs and misogynists we see today, at least not in Kabul.

Privacy - moving in many directions

There are two big news items about privacy today. The first is that the new coalition government in the UK  is going to do away with systems that would collect masses of data about its citizens. The other is concerns directed at Google for its face recognition software that some fear would make stalking and surveillance too easy.

There's also the dichotomy here of information that governments hold versus what is available publicly on the internet. The British government is far more meddlesome that most and a correction is certainly warranted. I hope this is indicative of a trend away from big government data bases of personal information.

Over dinner last night, we were discussing the future of privacy. What will it look like in 20-30 years when the Facebook generation, people who have grown up putting their every movement, thought and picture into the public eye, are making the rules. For them, sharing masses of information is the norm. Given that fundamentally new baseline expectation, what will privacy look like. Either, privacy will continue to erode,  or there will be some event which triggers a massive backlash against sharing private information. I think the first is more likely.

Oil Spill

The oil slick may be reaching the shore of Louisiana today, endangering wildlife as well as an enormous oyster cultivation industry. BP has said it would welcome military/national guard intervention, which has been discussed by Louisiana's governor.

I've avoided writing about it because I just didn't want to think about it at all.

For more from NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/us/01gulf.html

From National Geographic: Gulf Oil Spill Pictures: Aerial Views Show Leak's Size

Leap-frogging

When you don't have the bother of pre-existing infrastructure, like Mongolian nomads, you can skip right to solar-powered satellite telephones.

Nomad Photos -- National Geographic

On a lighter note....

I bring you, 10 Tragic Moments in Pants. The only one I disagree with is the Skort - yes, I have proudly worn them.

WTF?

North Korea may be blowing up South Korean warships IN South Korean waters! What is Kim Jong-Il playing at?

IT WAS a dignified address. Before wiping tears from his eyes with a folded handkerchief, President Lee Myung-bak... read out the names of 46 sailors who died last month when their ship, the Cheonan, exploded in South Korean waters. He carefully avoided pinning the blame on anyone, but on April 22nd, Yonhap, South Korea’s news agency, reported that the government’s military-intelligence agency, using intelligence gathered jointly with America, had concluded the regime in North Korea had deliberately attacked and destroyed the 1,200-tonne warship.

Even if tangible evidence of North Korean involvement emerges, the president’s caution on April 19th will nevertheless be understandable. Hot-blooded retaliation against a nuclear-armed despot would be fraught with danger for the peninsula, and for relations between America and China, the main backers of south and north respectively.

But ever since a preliminary investigation of the Cheonan’s salvaged stern concluded that the blast did not come from on board the vessel, suspicions have turned towards North Korea. This, analysts say, puts Mr Lee in the most delicate position of his two-year-old administration. If the suspicions prove correct, a tough response would be expected and perhaps unavoidable... 

So far, the regime in Pyongyang has only indirectly denied involvement. After three weeks of silence on the incident, it said on April 17th in a news report: “Failing to probe the cause of the sinking of the ship, the puppet military warmongers, right-wing conservative politicians and other traitors in South Korea are now foolishly seeking to link the sinking with the North at any cost.” A non-denial denial. [economist.com]

Religious Zealots with no sense of humor

George and I never watch South Park, but about 2 days ago we stopped as we were flipping through the channels. Little did we realize it would prove to be news-worthy.

All I can say is that it's clear there are some people with ZERO sense of humor.

Energy for Brazil

The vast majority of Brazil's energy already comes from hydropower and they're looking to add the world's third largest hydropower project. The cast of Avatar has been protesting in the Amazon, but the auction went ahead this week, and the Belo Monte project will be built.

The fundamental question is how to walk the line among environmental preservation, forcible relocations and economic development. Some of the fundamental problems with developing hydropower in the Amazon are that in many places the river carries quite a large load of silt, which will eventually diminish the power generation, and that because the Amazon is so far from where the power will be consumed, the line losses in transmission can be 20-30%.

Brazil’s rapidly growing economy needs more energy, preferably renewable. The scale of the dam—it will be the world’s third-largest hydroelectric station after China’s Three Gorges and Brazil’s own Itaipu—is epic. So is the investment, of at least 19 billion reais (nearly $11 billion). But ever since the engineers in Brasília rolled out the blueprints for damming the Xingu two decades ago, the project has attracted powerful opposition.

Environmental groups and river dwellers say Belo Monte will flood vast patches of rainforest while desiccating others. “The forest is our butcher shop, the river is our market,” Indian leaders wrote in a newspaper. They were aided by greens from Europe and the United States, including the tribes of Hollywood. James Cameron, a film director, flew in to daub his face in red paint, hug an Indian and join the protest...

Yet greens were not alone in their lack of enthusiasm for the project. Some of the country’s leading builders, such as Odebrecht and Camargo Corrêa, pulled out of the auction, convinced that the government-dictated power rates, capped at 83 reais ($47) per megawatt-hour, were too low to assure a fair return on their investment. (The winning consortium offered a slightly lower rate.) The government had to pledge billions of dollars in soft loans and tax breaks to lure bidders. Even so, two firms in the winning consortium immediately dropped out, apparently because they thought the tariff too low.

Not since a military government quartered the Amazon basin with roads, dams and settlements in the 1970s has Brazil seen such a row over the rainforest. Ironically, Belo Monte is a project shaped by the lessons of the past, drawn and redrawn to cull the power of the forests without razing them. That challenge—developing the wilds and having them too—is in many ways the riddle of modern Brazil. The rest of the developing world is watching closely to see whether it can be solved.

A generation ago similar protests over an earlier version of the same dam—known then as Kararao—forced officials to rethink their strategy. They came up with Belo Monte. It was not just a marketing ploy. Instead of building a great wall across the Xingu to create a massive reservoir, Belo Monte is designed as a run-of-river dam, a technique that harnesses the natural flow of the river to drive the turbines. [economist.com]

Rahmbo for Chicago?

The subject of Emanuel running for mayor was brought up on last night's episode of Charlie Rose on PBS. Rose asked the former Congressman from Chicago's North Side if there's any other job he'd like in government and Emanuel said he'd like to run for mayor of Chicago. That is, if the current mayor, Richard Daley, does not seek re-election.

Emanuel said he misses having contact with constituents. He also emphasized he loves being the president's chief of staff. [http://www.wbez.org/Content.aspx?audioID=41432]

I'm not sure Chicago needs a partisan bull-dog for mayor. Well, we now have a non-partisan cult-of-personality, so take your pick.

A nascent Slow Travel movement?

As one who has just had a trip to the Riviera cancelled because of uncooperative volcanos, who shall remain nameless, the following article caught my eye:

Governments, businesses and most travelers, irritated by disrupted itineraries and worried about lost productivity, are delighted to see planes back in the sky. But I, for one, wish this blessedly jet-free interlude could have continued a little longer. In the eccentric, ground-level adventures of some stranded passengers — 700-mile taxi rides through Scandinavia, for instance, perhaps a horse-drawn stagecoach over the Alps if things got really desperate — I’m reminded of the romance we trade away each time we shuffle aboard an airplane. [nytimes.com]

If only I'd booked the QE2 in the first place...

Burma with nukes!

Even as President Obama won agreement from world leaders this week to block the spread of nuclear weapons, the United States is facing a new—and unexpected—nuclear foe: Burma.

National-security officials tell The Daily Beast that U.S. spy agencies and their Asian counterparts have stepped up surveillance of potential nuclear sites in Burma in recent weeks in light of evidence that suggests the country’s brutal junta is trying to buy nuclear-weapons technology from North Korea. [dailybeast.com]

Fatwa against Terrorism

The jihadists, it seemed, had just added a new target to one of their death lists. His name is Tahir ul-Qadri, and he's no government official. He's one of Pakistan's leading Islamic scholars, an authority on the Quran and Islamic religious law.

It's no wonder the terrorists want to see Qadri dead. Last month he promulgated a 600-page legal ruling, a fatwa, that condemns terrorism as un-Islamic. A few Western media outlets gave the news a nod, but the coverage quickly petered out. And that's a pity, because the story of this fatwa is just beginning to get interesting. "I have declared a jihad against terrorism," says the 59-year-old Qadri in an interview. "I am trying to bring [the terrorists] back towards humanism. This is a jihad against brutality, to bring them back towards normality. This is an intellectual jihad." This isn't empty rhetoric. Last year militants killed one of Qadri's colleagues, a scholar named Sarfraz Ahmed Naeem, for expressing similar positions. [foreignpolicy.com]

Worth seeing again

You've got to love our elected representatives, who think that islands can tip over. Has this guy ever been to an island?

Hats off to Adm. Willard for not laughing out loud. I wouldn't have been able to manage this with a straight face.

And the appropriate response...

Guam anti-capsize relief program - funny.

Central Asia Primer

Here's a nice summary of the situation in Central Asia, as well as on how the US views the region:

U.S. policymakers increasingly view Central Asia as a transit point to somewhere else. It is a region through which oil and natural gas flow to Europe, reducing U.S. allies' dependence on Russian energy supplies. It is a region through which fuel, food, and spare parts flow to surging U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, reducing their dependence on a precarious Pakistani supply route. Officials and policy experts even have a new name for this region that captures its status as a logistical intermediary, rather than a set of distinct countries that matter in their own right: They call it the "Northern Distribution Network."

Remember - Putin was KGB

I can't even imagine the national trauma that Poland is going through and how this is going to effect the country for years to come. Many have noted how suddenly warm and fuzzy Putin is towards the Poles. Amazing that he has to actively demonstrate that he isn't responsible for the elimination of the top of Poland's government.

Russia's never been known for its smooth diplomacy, or its empathy. So what was going on?

More...

Kremlin-watchers say Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev were determined to quash speculation that Russia was responsible for the disaster. "This was a natural PR move, designed to neutralize any possible speculation about this very delicate and tragic event," said Yevgeny Volk, head of the Moscow office of the Heritage Foundation.

The matter is especially sensitive because the crash that killed Kaczynski took place as he was about to mark the 70th anniversary of a grim event that continues to poison Russian-Polish relations: the 1940 massacre of 22,000 Polish officers, Stalin's effort to decapitate the Polish leadership during the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland. [foreginpolicy.com]

Water - where is it?

Did you know that yesterday was World Water Day? It seems like water is getting higher visibility these days, from the Chairman of Nestle giving dire warnings to National Geographic devoting this month's issue to it.

Here is an interesting map showing where the water is. I'm pretty comfy here on the shores of the Great Lakes, but most of the rest of the world is not in as easy a situation.

Freedom to Fail

From last week's Time magazine...

At this point, freedom to fail probably ranks right around freedom to remove your own appendix.

That's a pity, because failure is one of the most economically important tools we have. The goal shouldn't be to eliminate failure; it should be to build a system resilient enough to withstand it. Our bankruptcy system's generosity, for instance, has been convincingly linked to higher rates of entrepreneurship.

Green Meanie

You all know my green leanings and interest in energy security & conservation. This article in the Telegraph tells you about the real me.  (Just kidding, but it's quite funny.)
Hat tip: Dad.

Do Green Products Make Us Better People?, a paper in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science, argues that those who wear what the authors call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. Faced with various moral choices – whether to stick to the rules in games, for example, or to pay themselves an appropriate wage – the green participants behaved much worse in the experiments than their conventional counterparts. The short answer to the paper's question, then, is: No. Greens are mean.

The authors, two Canadian psychologists, came up with an intriguing explanation for this. "Virtuous acts," they write, "can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviour." It's the yin-yang theory of psychology, or "compensatory ethics", to give it its proper name. Buy an organic potato, then go home and beat your wife with The Guardian. Hop smugly into a green hybrid car, then use it to run over little old ladies doing their shopping.

This "moral balancing" argument, however, clearly has its limits. Most people are sufficiently balanced without having to swing to opposite ends of the moral spectrum. We can give money to charity without dipping into the company till at the same time. Every good act doesn't necessitate a bad one. To every action, there is not an equal and opposite reaction. Buying an expensive courgette with a bit of mud on it need not turn you into a tyrant.

...

As with the worst type of religious zealot, there is nothing more annoying than the zeal of the converted, especially when it is tainted with the hypocrisy of self-righteousness. As we report today, people are more likely to buy environmentally friendly produce in shops than on the internet. Being seen to be green is more important than anything else. I wonder whether that will change if it now becomes a case of being seen to be mean.

...

And now, at last, we have confirmation that they're tight as well. They might be willing to pay over the odds for a lovingly tended carrot, but in every other area of normal human activity, their greenness is merely a mask for miserliness. The wind turbine, the tandem bike with a dangerous little buggy on the back for the twins, the self-denying holidays in Wales… Get a boiler! Get a car! Get out of here!

We have been kind to these unkind people for far too long. Now that their halo has fallen and they can no longer boast their green credentials as a shorthand for moral superiority, it is time to fight fire with fire. How about a little compensatory ethics of our own? Double the tax on organic food as a deterrent; it is clearly a starter drug to a lifetime of amorality. Stop and search anyone in a Prius. Conduct dawn raids on north London allotments. Otherwise, one can only imagine the sort of dystopia that would ensue if these mean little green men were allowed to run amok.

Oil demand rising

This article seems to say that we won't see the wild swings in oil prices that we saw in the 2000s, which is good. Economies can survive and thrive with high oil prices. The thing that kills them is unpredictable oil prices. If this is really the case, it's good news. Also interesting that Daniel Yergin believes that developed countries have hit their peak oil demand, because any further energy growth demand will be satisfied by renewables.

Chinese oil demand is once more growing fast, rebel militants are threatening to attack pipelines in Nigeria, and tensions are again rising in the Gulf. Recent headlines are increasingly making it seem like 2003 all over again.

Now, as much of the world emerges from recession and as geopolitics and threats to energy supplies return to the fore, oil consumption is expected to rebound again, driven mostly by Asia and the Middle East.In recent times, oil has taken a back seat while the world has focused on the recession. As economies slowed, oil demand fell for two consecutive years, the first time that has happened since the early 1980s. 

But the market is better equipped to handle the stresses this time around.
Thanks to the slowdown in energy consumption, OPEC producers now hold an estimated six million barrels a day of spare capacity, equal to roughly 7 percent of current demand, much of it in Saudi Arabia alone. 

Such a cushion should shield the market from the wild excesses of the 2003-8 period, when prices rose as demand expanded, supplies fell, and spare capacity dwindled to a precariously slim level of well under two million barrels per day. 

Yet considerable uncertainties remain. How fast will production drop in many of the world’s more mature regions, including Mexico and the North Sea? Will Russia surprise with another increase in its production this year? How effective will OPEC producers be in managing the market? And perhaps most importantly, how fast will demand grow? 

In large part, the answer to many of these questions lies in what happens next to two countries that will be increasingly crucial in shaping the direction of oil markets well into the next decade: China and Iraq. Each captures the challenges that oil companies, OPEC producers and policy makers face in meeting energy demand and managing global supplies in the long term.