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Analogies are risky things, but I think there’s a useful analogy between (1) the belief that global conservation is a sufficient antidote to rising atmospheric CO2 and (2) the belief that herd immunity is a sufficient antidote to pandemics. Herd immunity is the model in which, as a deadly pathogen moves through the population, enough survivors with immunity will remain to attenuate further transmission, protecting uninfected individuals. The track record of herd immunity is well-known. A familiar example is the plague. In the absence of vaccination and antibiotics, a large fraction of the infected population died, while the survivors possessed immunity that protected the remaining people for a generation. The point here is that the price of herd immunity is enormous suffering and death. In the COVID pandemic, there were many ignorant folks who advocated for just letting herd immunity take care of it, rather than embracing masking, social distancing and vaccination. It’s one thing to ta...

I’ve mentioned previously the hypothesis that iron fertilization of the ocean and consequent phytoplankton blooms is one feasible method to achieve global carbon capture. Small-scale experiments have been done already. The results have been mixed insofar as documenting the scale of phytoplankton blooms, but there has been no reported harm. Another strategy relies on chemical sequestration of atmospheric CO2 through alkalinization of surface seawater. The ocean is a well-documented sink for CO2, which freely exchanges at the surface. A consequence of dissolved CO2 is acidification, and the lower the pH, the less CO2 can be dissolved. So the theory is that raising ocean pH on a large scale will sequester more CO2 as stable bicarbonate. “ That is the basic hypothesis behind a controversial geoengineering experiment planned by scientists at the highly respected Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,   a private marine research non-profit organization. “The scientists are awaiting federa...

Dementia is becoming a growing societal burden throughout the world, especially in the industrialized world where increase longevity results in larger numbers of people experiencing dementia. So far, advances in medical treatments to mitigate this burden have been modest, at best. There are known genetic risk factors for Alzheimers and frontotemporal lobe dementia. I’ve had my genome sequenced and I have none of the currently recognized variants associated with elevated dementia risk. Of course, none of us can control our genetics. But there are environmental inputs to dementia risk that we can control for ourselves, regardless of our genome makeup. “ The Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention, and care has raised the number of modifiable risk factors definitively linked to cognitive loss to 14, based on research conducted since its last update in 2020.” “The 14 factors include: Education Hearing loss Depression Head trauma from sports and bike riding Physical activity ...

  The “baby boom” began in 1946 and ended in 1964. I’m a boomer. In fact, I was born in the mathematical center of the baby boom. I was 14 when Woodstock happened. Boomers have been credited (or blamed) for the tumultuous ‘60s of civil rights and hippie fame. But that’s anachronistic. Here’s Louis Manand in his recent New Yorker article “What happened to the yuppie?” “Most of the baby boomers had nothing to do with the civil-rights movement or the launch of the women’s-liberation movement, and only a few who were born before 1950 had much to do with the antiwar movement. When the first U.S. combat troops were deployed to Vietnam, in 1965, the oldest baby boomers were nineteen, and still in college. The youngest were not yet one, and teething. On the other hand, the yuppies, if we define them as people between twenty-five and thirty-nine in 1984, were indeed baby boomers. The yuppie, not the hippie, is the baby boom’s contribution to American social history. “ . . . [Jerry] Rubin wa...

We’ve been subscribing to the Boston Globe since we moved east. I seldom read the editorials, but have sampled some of the writers. One writer I’ve learned to ignore is Jeff Jacoby. I’m pretty conservative*, but Jeff’s columns were too predictably right-wing and shallow for my taste.  Recently, I broke my fast and read Jeff’s column on JD Vance, Trump’s VPOTUS selection. My boy Jeff was totally on target. We completely agree. “Of course America is the homeland of people who have lived here for generations. Of course there are millions of Americans who feel bound to that homeland by their “shared history.” But much of what makes the United States so extraordinary is that for more than two centuries it has also been the homeland of millions of people — immigrants and the children of immigrants — with no lengthy family or property ties in America. At the heart of Americanness is   not   blood or soil but the embrace of fundamental principles and beliefs. Vance is wrong. Amer...

Yesterday, I posted about geoengineering the ocean as a promising form of carbon capture. But why do we need carbon capture at all? Can’t we just conserve our way out of global warming? No. Here are a couple of reasons why the *only* way to avert climate disaster is to start removing carbon from the atmosphere: 1. The half-life of CO 2  in the atmosphere is ca. 120 years. What that means is that if all sources of CO 2 —man-made, forest fires, vulcanism, etc—ceased worldwide starting tomorrow, it would take 120 years for atmospheric CO 2  to drop by half. So conservation isn’t enough to reverse the march to climate crisis. Suggesting that carbon capture is just a distraction from having Americans drive less is, to put it gently, hopelessly and tragically naïve.  2. The global anthropogenic sources of CO 2  will only expand. Developing world nations want the economies that the industrialized nation built with burning coal, oil and gas, and it is futile (and arrogant) t...

Global heating continues unabated. While decarbonizing our energy sources is certainly important, it is too late to prevent global disaster. Coastal flooding, desertification, wildfires will continue to increase, driving vulnerable populations to migrate and igniting resource wars for fresh water and arable land. It’s already driving migration and violence in the Middle East and Central America. We must find a way to decarbonize the atmosphere on a global scale to prevent an existential threat to humanity. Currently, the most promising path to global carbon capture is geoengineering the worlds oceans.    “There will be tradeoffs involved in carrying out any method of carbon removal on a global scale. Ocean alkalinity enhancement would require major new mining efforts. Ocean iron fertilization could affect the fishing industry and fish stocks in unpredictable ways. We have been unintentionally geoengineering our atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, and as unpalatable as ...