Annan warned about the bio-threat yesterday, as reported by today's NY Times: “As biological research expands, and technologies become increasingly accessible, this potential for accidental or intentional harm grows exponentially,” he said, according to the text of his speech. “Even novices working in small laboratories will be able to carry out gene manipulation.”
In May, Mr. Annan called for a global forum on biological terrorism, saying current treaties were too weak and governmental and commercial initiatives too scattered. I think the term "exponential" is key here in that the biotech revolution is wholly dependent upon the infotech revolution, which has followed Moore's law by doubling processor speed every two years or less. The power to analyze biological data has grown at the same exponential rate as processor speed. Related advances in our ability to quickly and cheaply manipulate at a physical level individual genes and sequences of genes give us the power to make all this analysis fruitful.
The Times continued by noting the lack of an effective inspection regime for bioweapons and dangerous types of civilian biotech: Mr. Annan likened the current consensus-building phase over rules for life sciences to the debate over nuclear technology in the 1950s that preceded the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.“We lack an international system of safeguards to manage those risks,” he said. Annan makes a fairly optimistic analogy here; unfortunately it is not justified by reality. None of the major powers are yet willing submit to the necessary infringements upon their sovereignty that would be necessary to form an effective control mechanism. The infringements, to be effective, would have to be far, far more intrusive than was the case for nuclear inspection regimes. But, hopefully Mr. Annan will make this issue a priority for the remainder of his tenure. That way its international profile will be raised, perhaps increasing the likelihood of substantive progress in the post-Bush world.

Renewable Energy Costs

RAND Institute report on renewable energy costs:
The RAND Institute just released a report that predicts what the cost to the American economy would be if by 2025 we increased our use of renewable energy to a level of 25% of electical generation and 25% of ground transportation (which would make for about 18% of our total energy consumption—ie, 28% of our energy consumption is not included in this plan to increase renewables). http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2006/RAND_TR384.pdf
They find that energy prices will be about the same whether we proceed down this aggressive path to renewable energy adoption or move much more slowly (to 10-12% renewable by 2025). They base this conclusion on the assumption that the price of renewable energy will decline at historical rates through the prediction period and on the further assumption that this rapid adoption of renewables will cause the price of fossil fuels to drop to a lower level than would have been seen with slower adoption (ie, lower demand = cheaper supply). Of course, in reality, such a price drop would probably slow the adoption of renewables by making them less price-competitive. Also, note that if fossil fuel prices are lower in the aggressive scenario and overall energy prices remain the same, this means that the renewables replacing some of the fossil fuel supply are proportionately more expensive than the fuels they replace. It is quite clear that the 25% mark would constitute an entirely artificial imposition upon the energy market and could only be achieved (barring some incredible near-term technological breakthrough) by major government intervention. Nevertheless, it must be encouraging to policymakers that a faster imposed adoption rate can be marketed to constituents as essentially cost-free. What manner of madman would want publicly to make the counterargument that he prefers coal power plants to wind farms, given that both cost the same (it’s a bit more complicated than that, but this is how it would play in political, editorial, and television debates).
One debatable assumption embedded in the RAND analysis is that nonrenewable energy sources will become moderately more expensive over the twenty year period. Historically, despite the anomaly of the last few years, such energy prices have shown a long-term downtrend. Based on EIA (Energy Information Administration) figures, RAND estimates that these prices will rise due to the costs of environmental regulations, possibly including taxes or specific limitations on greenhouse gas emissions. This type of thing is already in progress at the state and local level—as well as internationally, under the Kyoto treaty and associated agreements. In other words, this assumption merely extrapolates from current trends. It seems highly likely, though, that nonrenewable energy prices would decline if government did not interfere in the market, particularly because we have currently plenty of quality, accessible coal, there is no foreseeable shortage of coal, and coal-to-liquids processes have become competitive in the market (largely eliminating concerns about peak-oil).
RAND completed 1,500 different scenarios that result in 25% renewable use by 2025. Under the worst case, they estimate that energy expenditures would exceed the base case by only 4%. It is also highly relevant to note that energy expenditures in the U.S. are projected by the EIA to be 5% of total GDP by 2025, down from 8% today. So, under the worst case, this means our energy expenditures would be 0.2% of GDP higher with aggressive renewables adoption. This sounds like a prescription for a no-regrets policy—it reduces greenhouse gas emissions, is as likely to save money as to cost money, provides a hedge against energy price volatility (renewables’ prices are much more stable than nonrenewables’), and enables us to reduce dependence upon foreign sources of energy.
The authors note some significant areas of uncertainty. One that they stress is the potential for renewables to become more costly than historical trends would suggest due to encountering higher marginal costs as they reach higher rates of market penetration. I consider this concern to be exaggerated. Wind power will probably form the major part of renewables emplaced between now and 2025, and there are plenty of good locations for wind farms in the U.S. The emergent issue here is rather the extent and quality of transmission infrastructure available to transport electricity from prime high wind locations to population centers. Proper long-term planning for efficient transmission routes should keep this expense modest. Also, the authors do not seem to fully recognize the potential of offshore windfarms to provide a massive addition to the high-efficiency locations available to utilities. The technology here is still unproven, but the wind quality offshore is generally higher than that onshore--which means there is signficant potential for cost-effectiveness if the technological hurdles can be overcome. The problem of rising marginal costs really does not apply to solar (at least not in the 2005-2025 time frame), especially as solar-generated electicity parallels peak demand, limiting concerns about storage. Thermal solar has relatively low storage costs, but upgraded transmission lines would be necessary here as well to take full advantage of the best locations for energy production. There will be some costs involved in upgrading the electrical grid, though much of that money would have been necessary just to maintain our aging grid.
The study is limited by its inability to calculate the costs/benefits of externalities (like pollution) and government subsidies—the former because the value cannot be objectively monetized and the latter because it's impossible to predict what they will be. Obviously, not counting the former makes fossil fuels appear more attractive; but, this is counterbalanced by not counting the latter, which makes renewables seem cheaper than they are. Yet, even with their dependence on government subsidies, renewables receive far less largesse in absolute terms than the oil majors and other established players in the old energy game.

Value Judgements

I consider myself a libertarian environmentalist. Of course, this would become clear to a regular reader without my explicit confession. But a simple confession provides a quick bridge to what is more interesting: the subtleties and details, the reasonings and implications of such a value system--the sort of political philosophy to which it may lead and the policies preferences that follow.

Unfortunately, the two greatest problems facing the world today constitute catastrophic threats to my primary values. Proliferation of WMDs is likely to destroy the semblance of liberty, even in the civilized realms; and global warming is in the process of causing a greater alteration to the earth’s environment than any that has occurred since humans became human. When I play out the chronological scenarios that we may witness over the next few decades, it seems to me that the proliferation issue will be so serious as to overwhelm concerns about the other, will, indeed, render the world so metamorphosized as to warp our value conceptions into far other modes than those prevalent today. It is, after all, one thing to lament the decline in the richness and diversity and beauty of our natural environment—but, it's quite another order of anxiety to fear for one’s life and the lives of one’s family and friends, to fear for the future of civilization and of the hyper-cognitive biological phenomenon that we are.
Given the bleakness of all this, I will try to add some occasional levity because, in the end, Hamlet was not speaking north-northwest when he averred: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” Christ said much the same thing elsewhere. It is difficult to defy the mutually-reinforced moral wisdom evinced by the most brilliant of all literary characters and the most noble of men. Besides which, I recall that my attempt to read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States failed miserably precisely because I could not endure the unremitting negativity of his selective presentation and moralistic interpretation of the historical facts. (I might add that the more schematized or biased your context, the less truth it contains.) His book was unbearably repetitious and blatantly tendentious, a crude, tactless, rabble-loving monstrosity—a long variation on a whine: “why isn’t everyone else a nice little peace-loving herd animal like me, how could people dare to seek power or to compete with one another, why can’t we simply abolish the abominable theory and practice of the survival of the fittest”? In any event, it does seem apposite that Zinn's invitation to the advent of the last man (or perhaps it was the expression of the advent of the last man), that this particular heralding-forth should take the form of a mindless, moralated succession of whimpers that one fears will never, ever end.
I can no longer bear to read much history: the stupidity of it, the animalistic predominance of action over thought, the mundaneity of its interpreters, the poignant rarity of superior men (most of whom are crushed or distorted by their doltish contemporaries) melts my wings—more so even than the constant “evil” of it--evil is a subjective judgment and these characteristics of history constitute for me precisely that which is evil in it. Playing forward the neverchanging themes to be discovered through some historical immersion, one returns with the conviction that, in a world of proliferating power to inflict mass destruction, we will require more than just a few favorable variations on these themes to avert catastrophe. Somehow the themes themselves must change—but I suspect the only way to that end is to reprogram the species, to recode its DNA—that is, in order to change the patterns of human history, the traditional "human" type must be relieved of its historical privileges and responsibilities. And so it follows...

I found a couple of solid articles on the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC). The first addresses some efforts made during the Clinton administration to increase its efficacy (which is about null at present) by involving America in it. The concerns of the Bush administration as expressed in the article are quite legitimate and difficult to assuage--the turning point in such attitudes will probably not come until attacks begin because risks of biowar are virtually unquantifiable in the pre-attack world (which means the statistically ignorant will tend to ignore such risks), whereas the economic and military risks of the inspection regime are clear enough and probably huge. http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0824/p11s3-coop.html
The second article is a little more tendentious in tone with an overtly anti-American bias, but it covers some significant secondary issues and gives a better sense of the perspectives of other nations on the appeal of the Convention. It also provides a useful reminder of the diversity of potential targets for bioweapons--agricultural production and livestock among them. However, it largely skirts the main threats, those to human health. http://www.organicconsumers.org/patent/biowar100501.cfm

I found an interesting story detailing the lack of hurdles bioscientists face in creating bioweapons. The main part of the information jibes with what I have read elsewhere. The bottom line is that the biotech revolution has ridden piggyback on the amazing infotech revolution with its unprecedented (technologically and economically) Moore's law. And the show goes on. http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/stories/storyReader$1439

Climate Change Science



This post covers the science of global warming, as I understand it. The graph above is one of the most instructive to be found in the IPCC report on climate change. It will make more sense after reading what follows. The IPCC makes the following notes on it: "Figure 3: Many external factors force climate change. These radiative forcings arise from changes in the atmospheric composition, alteration of surface reflectance by land use, and variation in the output of the sun. Except for solar variation, some form of human activity is linked to each. The rectangular bars represent estimates of the contributions of these forcings - some of which yield warming, and some cooling. Forcing due to episodic volcanic events, which lead to a negative forcing lasting only for a few years, is not shown. The indirect effect of aerosols shown is their effect on the size and number of cloud droplets. A second indirect effect of aerosols on clouds, namely their effect on cloud lifetime, which would also lead to a negative forcing, is not shown. Effects of aviation on greenhouse gases are included in the individual bars. The vertical line about the rectangular bars indicates a range of estimates, guided by the spread in the published values of the forcings and physical understanding. Some of the forcings possess a much greater degree of certainty than others. A vertical line without a rectangular bar denotes a forcing for which no best estimate can be given owing to large uncertainties. The overall level of scientific understanding for each forcing varies considerably, as noted. Some of the radiative forcing agents are well mixed over the globe, such as CO2, thereby perturbing the global heat balance. Others represent perturbations with stronger regional signatures because of their spatial distribution, such as aerosols. For this and other reasons, a simple sum of the positive and negative bars cannot be expected to yield the net effect on the climate system. The simulations of this assessment report (for example, Figure 5) indicate that the estimated net effect of these perturbations is to have warmed the global climate since 1750."



Let us run through a few conclusions gleaned from the IPCC report on global climate change, focusing first on the scientific basis for believing anthropogenic effects on the climate are real. At a 95% confidence level, the temperature records indicate that the global temperature average has increased by 0.4 to 0.8 degrees centigrade over the past century. The industrial revolution, source of most anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, kicked into gear in the late nineteenth century, precisely the time period when temperatures began to rise. By the way, the instrumental record for climate observations begins in 1861.
There is a greater than 90% chance that snow cover has decreased at least 10% in the last 40 years. That a few areas of the globe have not warmed according to the records does not diminish the significance of the overall trends and averages--it is well known that within recognized global climate trends will be found regional and local exceptions and countertrends; this is due principally to unique geographical factors.
The IPCC report articulates a useful way to think about the climate and the influences which bear upon it:
"Changes in climate occur as a result of both internal variability within the climate system and external factors (both natural and anthropogenic). The influence of external factors on climate can be broadly compared using the concept of radiative forcing. A positive radiative forcing, such as that produced by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, tends to warm the surface. A negative radiative forcing, which can arise from an increase in some types of aerosols (microscopic airborne particles) tends to cool the surface. Natural factors, such as changes in solar output or explosive volcanic activity, can also cause radiative forcing. Characterisation of these climate forcing agents and their changes over time is required to understand past climate changes in the context of natural variations and to project what climate changes could lie ahead."
The IPCC estimates that carbon dioxide causes 60% of the current unnatural (human-caused) excess of radiative forcing, methane 20%, halocarbons 15% and nitrous oxide about 5%. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have increased about 33% in the last 150 years--it has reached a concentration definitely not exceeded in the past 420,000 years and probably not in 20 million years. A quarter of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are traceable to deforestation, the rest to coal, oil, and natural gas usage. The average rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations has been, in recent years, 0.4% a year.
On methane the IPCC reports, "The atmospheric concentration of methane (CH4) has increased by...151% since 1750 and continues to increase. The present CH4 concentration has [definitely] not been exceeded during the past 420,000 years. The annual growth in CH4 concentration slowed and became more variable in the 1990s, compared with the 1980s. Slightly more than half of current CH4 emissions are anthropogenic (e.g., use of fossil fuels, cattle, rice agriculture and landfills)."
On halocarbons the summary provided is: "Since 1995, the atmospheric concentrations of many of those halocarbon gases that are both ozone-depleting and greenhouse gases (e.g., CFCl3 and CF2Cl2), are either increasing more slowly or decreasing, both in response to reduced emissions under the regulations of the Montreal Protocol and its Amendments. Their substitute compounds (e.g., CHF2Cl and CF3CH2F) and some other synthetic compounds (e.g., perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6)) are also greenhouse gases, and their concentrations are currently increasing." Note that some of these synthetic compounds have enormously high rates of radiative forcing.
On the graph first presented it is worth remarking that the greatest potential negative radiative forcing is aerosols generated by human activity. However, these aerosol are very short-lived in the atmosphere and, moreover, as the graph indicates, the magnitude of the negative radiative forcing cannot be ascertained with any degree of accuracy. If it is small, then we have lost a counterweight to the preponderant positive forcing, one that we might have found it necessary deliberately to magnify in the future. Yet, if it is large, we have still to contend with the observed fact that, in spite of its power, the positive forcings have overwhelmed it to such a degree that the earth is warming, snow receding, etc.
To conclude with the relatively obvious: "Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and the gases that control their concentration would be necessary to stabilise radiative forcing. For example...carbon cycle models indicate that stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 concentrations at 450, 650 or 1,000 ppm would require global anthropogenic CO2 emissions to drop below 1990 levels, within a few decades, about a century, or about two centuries, respectively, and continue to decrease steadily thereafter. Eventually CO2 emissions would need to decline to a very small fraction of current emissions." This could be rather challenging without major technological advances in the near future, especially if we want to keep CO2 levels at less than twice pre-industrial levels (ie, 560 ppm), which would require cutting CO2 emissions to 1990 levels within 50 years or so. To achieve such a reduction within that timeframe we would have to hit an inflection point in total yearly emissions well before the 50 year mark. But, with the emerging economies of Asia pressing hard into their industrial prime with their 3 billion people (compared to 1 billion in the first world), and considering the current state of technology, it appears from the present vantage a feat nigh impossible.
The appearance may be deceptive. What is wanted is political will. This is the ingredient we presently lack, more even than technological magic.
But, back to the scientfic evidence for now. The average temperature is projected to rise by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees centigrade over the next century. The range of projections is fairly large. This is due to the manifold uncertainties which necessarily inhere in climatology. The climatic system is so complex, has so many interrelated variables, so many causes and effects and feedback loops, that, in mathematical terms, it is theoretically, and not only practically, impossible for a computer ever to calculate the variables accurately enough to deliver up a certain prediction of the future of the earth's climate. Instead, what we have to deal with and base decisions upon is probabilities, great systems of probabilities with their attendant possibilities. One of the early climate modelers was sufficiently astounded by the system's complexity that he questioned whether it was even deterministic--"We may never know for sure." Hilarious. A scientist so baffled in his noble quest as to actually question the determinism of a physical system--this is as much as for him to question the first premise of scientific reasoning (that every effect has a cause). Who knows, maybe the climate even possesses free will--
The IPCC mentions also some long-term considerations:
"Emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases (i.e., CO2, N2O, PFCs, SF6) have a lasting effect on atmospheric composition, radiative forcing and climate. For example, several centuries after CO2 emissions occur, about a quarter of the increase in CO2 concentration caused by these emissions is still present in the atmosphere.
After greenhouse gas concentrations have stabilised, global average surface temperatures would rise at a rate of only a few tenths of a degree per century rather than several degrees per century as projected for the 21st century without stabilisation. The lower the level at which concentrations are stabilised, the smaller the total temperature change.
Global mean surface temperature increases and rising sea level from thermal expansion of the ocean are projected to continue for hundreds of years after stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations (even at present levels), owing to the long timescales on which the deep ocean adjusts to climate change."
The two criticisms of the science of global warming which most impress me are those that focus on the admitted uncertainties in climatic sciences (eg, the unknown magnitude of the aerosol effect) and the temptation for scientists to make arbitrary adjustments in their computer models of the climate so that those models come to reflect the scientists' preconceived conclusions (which means such models would effectively be designed to predict anthropogenically caused global warming because there is near univeral agreement among scientists that this is actually happening--peril of groupthink, a trap to which scientists [and everyone else] are historically susceptible). But, as to the first criticism, we can only work to reduce the uncertainties, for they will never vanish. The related issue of modelling deceptions calls for critical, skeptical, intelligent, independent investigations of the reasoning and data behind the headline predictions.

A Bioweapons Inspection Regime

In the age of biowar, it will be necessary for the nations of power to agree among themselves to institute an exceptionless inspection regime worldwide. The U.S., the EU, Russia, India, China, Japan, and possibly a few other nations (eg, Brazil, Mexico, Iran, South Africa, Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel) will control large, comprehensive inspection agencies with unhindered access to every square foot of the earth. Each national inspectorate will operate autonomously, cross-checking each other and overseeing developments in the rest of the world. Perhaps the greatest practical difficulty in this schema is the espionage threat to nuclear programs and defenses. Another problem is that access to biodefense research would necessarily have to be rendered up to the multinational inspectors (since there is virtually no practical difference between research on bioweapons defense and research on bioweapons)--this would increase vulnerability to attacks with weapons that slip through the inspection regime, since the attackers would know the nature of the available defenses. The nations must also come up with a set of rules to define permissible biological research and development activities, and all parties must be held to these rules without exception. Effective punishment must be predetermined and enforced for violators. It may be needful to recognize spheres of influence in underdeveloped parts of the world, where the dominant power in the region will be held to account for any untoward developments in the backward regions. Otherwise, major powers might feel incentivized to transfer their R & D and production facilities to Congo or Bolivia under the aegis of the local government or some ostensibly non-affiliated organization.
But, even if all this comes to pass--unprecedented international cooperation, responsibility, interdependence, interpenetration--the world will certainly remain highly vulnerable to attacks. Some of these weapons are simply too easy to produce and many are almost indistinguishable from legitimate drugs, medicines, and antidotes to bioweapons. Bioresearch is the Tree of Knowledge. I think the alternative to some such inspection regime is a rapid descent into a violent anarchic condition between states (and probably nonstate organizations) when once the cycle of attacks and counterattacks and preemptive attacks begins. Within states the land will be cleared for totalitarian lockdowns as defensive measures. Part of the momentum of war will derive from the virtual impossibility of tracing the ultimate source of bioattacks. Being untraceable, such attacks are essentially undeterrable (this lack of deterrence is the greatest distinction between nuclear and bioweapons, along with the greater ease of producing the latter). Bioweapons are undeterrable, relatively easy to produce (and becoming easier at the rapid pace of the biotechnology revolution), probably impossible to defend against, potentially hypervirulent, and capable of infecting selected populations with almost any known disease as well as carefully created and tested new diseases. This is why I consider bioweapons the greatest threat faced by the human species at the present time. Nanoweapons or nano-bioweapons may pose a still greater threat in the future, but for now bioweapons constitute the most powerful culling tool yet invented. Of course, if nuclear proliferation is permitted to run its natural course we may face an approximately equal danger from that direction. The difference is that we are positioned to stop nuclear proliferation. It is doable. Climate change poses a huge threat as well, but, again, we can control it with an application of will. Bioweapons can be invented to control the will, to alter our personalities, to play dice with our genetic expression--if a bioscientist so pleases.
If we can invent an actionable plan to evade the fate I have just sketched out, one which does not enslave or dehumanize us, I may be able to return to a point of tentative optimism about the future of the species.

I shall focus primarily upon political issues in this blog. This mode or form of human relations, the political, unnatural as it is, will fate us forth. On our course I resense the hurtling world man has made, his artifices beckoning abstraction to the throne of the mind, unearthing us, unfounding our fundaments, making new pieces and patterns out of the puzzle of our original nature--to what end I mean to tell you.
For the priests have come now, come to reclaim their lost titles and powers unrenounced. They sense it, marrow-keen perceivers of moral climates and weather-shifts in patterns of human will, this new world's hard birthing. The fatal logic of the will to power presses us onward, and, as human power exponentializes for good and for evil, a counterrevolution is at hand, the clerics' last gambit.