Author Archives: Hue White

As a software engineer, particularly as an object-oriented programmer, I classify things: I suspect this is an endemic behavior in the profession; certainly it is a key activity for scientists.

Once classification occurs, then those characteristics which differentiate one thing, tangible or not, from another may be examined and used for constructing hypotheses.  The classification is important, among many reasons, for clarifying how a thing differs from other things in a possibly more general classification.

Measurement is critical to science.  While theoreticians may construct theories that explain observed laws, it is the measurement (of reality, in this case) that falsifies (or fails to falsify) the theory; I write this sentence with extreme care only to satisfy the professional proponents of science and logic who prefer that hypotheses are never proven, but merely that they are or are not falsified.  The selection of one or more metrics is a matter of meticulous and continual concern, for otherwise there is a risk of having one be labeled ‘a damn statistic.’

(At this juncture, we should note that human constructs modeling nature are merely that: constructs, representations, even simplifications.  So, in confusion, below I will omit an artistic sector as it may fit within another sector, it may overlap several, and it is not without an element of mystery: to borrow the hoary old phrase, I may not be able to define art, but I know it when I see it.)

So, with no academic preparation in the subject area, and no doubt adding to the amusement of true experts in the area, I propose to apply the above to the general subject of human culture, with, being of the nationality, an emphasis on American culture.

First, the objects in our culture and their classifications.  I observe the following: public sector, private sector, religious sector, educational sector, family sector.  More familiarly, government, business, religion, schools.  As a citizen, no matter of what culture, excellence should be a key goal in each sector.

So the definition of excellence must be clarified.  I suggest it will depend on the sector, and thus will postpone any exact declaration until then.  But I will immediately require that excellence be measurable in some sense; and that measurement will help define the uniqueness of the cultural sector such that using another sector’s metric will be considered with suspicion.

Public sector

The public sector is responsible for the creation and application of the law, both civil and criminal, to which all, including the public sector, is subject; national defense; public health; management of monetary supply; creation of a civil society conducive to peaceful interactions both internally and externally.  The final clause justifies the public sector conducting basic research necessary for military products, as does the national defense clause.

The metrics in this area include incidence of crime (although this may also be applicable to other sectors), recidivism rates, resolution rates, civil disturbance rates, standard public health measures, and incidence of foreign invasions; whether measuring foreign adventuring is relevant is problematic.

Excellence: low or lowering rates of crime, peaceful society not dependent on force; lack of war without loss of interests in the greater world; improving public health.

Private sector

The private sector is responsible for general production of things of value to the citizenry, tangible and intangible.

While it is tempting to use money as a metric – and often, it is, in the form of GNP, GDP, and allied metrics – the general economic health of a country is perhaps not entirely captured simply by these metrics, for the metric should also indicate the probable future indicated by various sub-measures.

Excellence: a prosperous citizenry is the traditional sentiment, and, if taken literally to mean everyone, it suffices for a statement.

Constraints: the public sector neither has a moral code nor should it have a moral code specific to it; the moral codes generated by other sectors should apply to this for reasons of public peacefulness, since citizens participate in all sectors and may interact in many modes and contexts.  A changing moral code is an invitation to strife and confusion.

Religious sector

The religious sector (which may be considered the philosophical sector by agnostics & atheists) can provoke emotions as it is, indeed, concerned with emotions, the hard questions of why are we here, what should we be doing.  For our purposes, we may state that the task of religion is to inculcate a generally acceptable moral code which controls behavior, a code recognizable and respected by the enormous majority of citizens.  Moral codes which negatively impact the goals of the public sector are unacceptable, as are those which negatively impact the individual citizen, keeping in mind that contributions need not have direct consequences, but indirect may be more valuable.  It should not be necessary to state that a religion or philosophy that results in the premature deaths of its adherents is an inferior system.

Since religion is expected to modify the behavior of the great mass of citizens, thus a meter is obvious: frequency of inimical or anti-social behavior.  While crime rate may have some applicability, the range seems wider.

Excellence seems best defined as a low rate of inimical behaviors in the general population; perhaps a certain individual industry should also be measured, although the current American tendency towards overwork makes such a specification suspect.

Educational sector

The educational sector’s responsibility is straightforward.  It should prepare students with facts and the ability to make reasoned judgments, and to this mission it should adhere to a study of reality; strictly religious sensibilities should be excluded as they are entirely subjective, and will lead to civil strife in a public setting.  Philosophy, while subsumed under religion in some ways, is of educational interest since it asks important questions about reality and the study thereof.

Metrics should cover the knowledge base and reasoning capabilities of students and citizens.

Excellence is indicated by the continual progression in the efficiencies of everday activities.

Family Sector

Here I am hesitant.  My Arts Editor suggests a healthy, happy family is the metric and the excellence; family wealth not an applicable metric.  Children are raised, yes; but a stable society requires other duties, such as establishing roles for those not interested in children which they find rewarding.  This is a sector that requires books; I shan’t assay it here.

So what?

A careful understanding of the purposes, relationships, and operationality (most importantly) of societal sectors will give us the opportunity to properly evaluate proposals and performance, giving proper weight to the various facets of same.  Relationships could be an entire post (or book), but we can summarize: the public sector, as administrator of the law, is paramount, but is required to show great leniency towards the other sectors.  The others have various influences on the others: moral code should influence the conduct of the citizenry in the other spheres; the currency administered by the public sphere and used by the private sphere is also used to compensate those working in all the sectors; etc, open to discussion.  But keeping these distinctions, these separate metrics, shines new lights on old topics.

For example, this recent discussion of the North Carolina educational system by James Hogan is interesting.  First, and superficially, Hogan states that the Legislature was correct in claiming …

Republicans defended these austerity measures by saying that lower taxes would eventually yield fiscal growth. And they were right. This year, the government is enjoying a $445 million surplus–a clear victory in light of those multi-billion dollar deficits of yore–but still a statistically small number in light of the state’s $21 billion budget (about two percent), especially after considering that our state budget is still smaller than it was in 2011.

So the educational sector, dependent on the public sector for funding, finds its metrics of excellence discarded, while the Legislature permits the (suspect) metrics of the private sector to drive its priorities.  This misguided sense of priorities, in which the sector most responsible for the future of society is most drained of necessary funding merely to satisfy the metrics of today’s societies – which should only apply minimally to other sectors.  The foreign metrics twist the educational sector until this most important of sectors is in distress.  And this is not a hypothesis or a forecast – it’s happening in real time for all to see.

But more interestingly, from the quoted article:

But the legislature has also weakened oversight at public charters–introducing legislation this year to remove them from the Department of Public Instruction’s management altogether. The result is a diminished accountability for tax payer dollars spent in schools–the exact opposite of what the legislature said was important when it came to public schools originally.

(And aren’t you curious why the legislature has been so kind to charters? It isn’t hard to figure out when you follow the money. Apparently if you have a lobbyist group that isn’t a teacher’s “union,” nothing is impossible in Raleigh.)

Follow the money.  We’re talking about the educational sector, while chanting the metric of the private sector – this should be a clue: when one sector’s jargon becomes common in another, something’s gone wrong.

And the application of one sector’s operationality to another sector’s goals … this is a sentence we can write with confidence once we classify and characterize. The motivations and methods of one sector, no matter their success within the sector, have little native applicability within another.  Today we see the educational sector struggling on multiple fronts: schools in trouble are not flagged for help, but deprived of vital nutrients.  Invading ‘charter schools’, if religious in nature are siphoning off resources from the professionals, and if otherwise, they operate in an environment where success is measured by dollars, not by student attainment.  And the beliefs of the religious sector, lacking any evidence, and, in the best-known case, facing convincing counter-evidence, still continues to attempt to inject its beliefs into a system that vitally must present reality – not arbitrary beliefs.

Once we understand that different sectors have different goals and methods, then we can discuss the cross-applicability of one sector’s to another – or better understand why they will not work.

A handy website in case you’re wondering about the Blitz.

In less than a month, those of you who wish they had the time and gumption to write a novel can compete in the 3 Day Novel Contest.  First prize is to get published!

But you only have three days to write that world-beater.

My Arts Editor and I competed in this, just once.  Our effort had some good writing in it, and some atrocious writing.  Perhaps most importantly, though, it managed to get a rather mediocre idea out of my brain and onto paper – and now it doesn’t bother me anymore.

Instead, a new one does.  Gah.  Maybe – once again – I shan’t have time to do it.

Continuing the thread on the lake that supplies several states, CNN covers the town that used to be drowned: St. Thomas. The Las Vegas Sun contributes this from a couple of years ago:

Residents fought the federal government to no avail and complained about what they said was the government’s low payments for their properties. Nearly all of the residents left well before the lake flooded the town, but there were a few people who denied that the lake would rise that high.

The last of those was Hugh Lord, who woke to water at the foot of his bed one morning. He gathered his things and before climbing into his rowboat, set fire to his house. Why? The histories don’t say, but it seems like a fitting Nevada way out — one last shake of the fist at the federal government, which might force him out but couldn’t take everything he had.

Back in 2008, the Las Vegas Sun had a bit more:

“What I find interesting about it,” says Aaron McArthur, a UNLV doctoral student who is writing the history of St. Thomas for the National Park Service, “is that in 1945, in 1963, the times it emerged from the water before, there were always reunions here. Reunions in the real sense that, ‘We might have been pushed out, but this is our home.’ ”

“Now most of the people are dead … Now the lessons that people seem to be drawing from it have less to do with matters of faith and ‘grow where you’re planted,’ and more with a cautionary kind of thing about what happens when we’re not responsible stewards of water.”

A little further back in time:

Thousands of years before, the Anasazi, an ancient Pueblo people, knew all too well that life in this area was impossible without plenty of water.

Eva Jensen, an archaeologist with the Lost City Museum in Overton, thinks about them every time she turns on her faucet.

“Everybody should think about that,” she says. “Just what is the capacity of the land and the resources that we have?”

Unable to grow crops to feed a population that had grown too fast to support their nearly 1,000 people, the Anasazi abandoned the dry valley about 1150, after living here for 1,000 years.

“The question we should be asking is: How were they able to survive here for as long as they did?” Jensen says. “Our current community hasn’t been here that long, so we haven’t really been tested. We’ll see how we handle this latest drought.”

And Americans, in the form of the National Park Service, are trying to make lemonade out of this lemon:

Once the town was flooded higher than 60 feet above the tallest structure, now visitors can roam the ghost remains of a true western town. St. Thomas lies in the northern part of the park near the Overton Arm along the Muddy River, which feeds into Lake Mead. The access road is dirt and sometimes bumpy so visitors with low riding vehicles may want to be careful. However most vehicles should be able to handle the approximately three mile dirt road. There is a dirt trail leading to the town site from the parking area.

It’s a tough squeeze, I fear.

In the 1 August 2015 edition of NewScientist (paywall), Martin Rees, the UK’s Astronomer Royal, suggests we’re more likely to encounter a species of Artificial Intelligence than a, well, biological species:

Many people now believe that machine intelligence will eventually surpass human capabilities. Even if this is centuries away on Earth, it is clear that technology advances in an instant compared with the Darwinian selection that led to us.

We should accept that the era of organic intelligence is relatively short, and will be followed by a much longer era dominated by inorganic intelligences. Humans and our intellectual achievements will be a mere precursor to the deeper cogitations of a machine-dominated culture.

Doom & gloom, and, at first glance, it just seems so … inevitable.

Abstract thinking by biological brains has underpinned all culture and science on Earth. But this activity, spanning tens of millennia at most, will be a brief prelude to the more powerful intellects of the inorganic, post-human era. Evolution on other worlds orbiting stars older than the sun could have had a head start. If so, then ET is likely to have long ago transitioned beyond the organic stage. So it won’t be human-like minds that we are most likely to encounter, but machine intelligences.

It honestly gives me a sense of ennui.  But something rings false here – at least enough of a ring where we may still have a fighting chance.  And it all begins with … slime molds.  Remember them?

Samir Patel of Archaeology Magazine writes a report on how the Romans might have designed their transportation network:

… Physarum polycephalum, consists of a single large membrane around many cell nuclei, and has drawn the attention of a wide range of scientists because of its uncanny ability to solve almost impossibly complex computational problems.

Now, to review: Computers are logic machines, which is to say, computer scientists and mathematicians are well aware of problems which are not really susceptible to … computers.  We’ve discussed this before in connection with Yanofsky’s THE OUTER LIMITS OF REASON: WHAT SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND LOGIC CANNOT TELL US, or you can buy and read his book, or you can look up the P=NP problem.  Assuming someone resolves the P=NP problem to mean that such problems cannot be solved, this defines a class of problems, some quite important, that a computer cannot solve.

AIs are, and most probably will remain, here and in outer space, computer-based.  If a slime mold can solve problems a computer finds, at best, difficult, well, what problems are resolvable by biological intelligence of human magnitude, whilst opaque to AIs?  This includes problems which might be key in a competition between biologicals and AIs.

I think Dr. Rees hasn’t really thought about the limitations of AI; after all, the potential is the exciting part to discuss.  But fundamental limitations imposed by the basic hardware gets less attention – but will undoubtedly shape the potential and ambition of the AI.

That is not to say we won’t encounter cyborgs, which is a melding of biological with technological.  The same issue of NewScientist includes an article (paywall) from Hugh Herr, a prosthetics pioneer:

Tell me about your bionic legs…
I have a company that produces what I’m wearing: the BiOM Ankle System. For the first time in history we’ve normalised walking speed and its energy cost. In other words, if you simply measure a user’s speed and metabolic energy expenditure, you can’t tell whether they have bionic legs or biological legs. That’s especially important because conventional technology used on people with leg amputation makes them limp, which causes musculoskeletal stresses that lead to joint disease and many other secondary conditions. True limb bionics eliminate limping and solve these very costly secondary conditions. Typically when we fit the BiOM prosthesis to a person, if they have hip pain, knee pain or back pain it is reduced in days.

Could such bionics benefit people in general?
Actually, we have developed bionic technology for people with complete biological limbs. Last year, we were the first research group to build an autonomous leg exoskeleton that significantly reduces the metabolic cost of walking to a person without a leg condition. It’s an artificial calf muscle, which supplies about 80 per cent of the power to walk. So a person with a normal physiology could put on these exoskeletons and walk using substantially less energy. …

This sounds incredibly futuristic…
Bionics is just getting started. What I’m wearing here is going to be laughable 20 years from now – absolutely laughable. So if you think stuff is cool now, it will become extraordinary – and disability will end, I’d say, by the end of this century. And I think that’s a very conservative statement. At the rate technology is progressing, most disability will be gone in 50 years.

But these are repairs and assists to the biological, not replacements for the intelligence – and thus not threatening to the biological.

The Washington Post has published a piece on the disaster of the North Carolina legislature’s handling of the their education system, written by a former NC educator, James Hogan.  A few points:

When North Carolina Republicans took control of the state government in 2012, they quickly set into motion a sweeping agenda to enact conservative social reforms and vastly change how the state spends its money. It was the first time in more than a century that Republicans enjoyed such political dominance in our state.

What brought them all to town? A good reason: in the 2011-12 budget year, North Carolina projected a multi-billion dollar deficit, enough to rank the state among the worst budget offenders in the country and bring a new slate of elected legislators to Raleigh. So Republicans, with a clear mandate to clean up the fiscal mess in November 2012, set to work righting the ship.

So some might argue this to be the fault of the Democrats; others would suggest neither is competent.  I lean towards the continuing conundrum of amateur lawmakers – primed with ideology and tactics and strategies long-discarded by the professionals of years gone by, they rampage about, certain in their righteousness, while the rest of us groan at the mess to be cleaned up.

Education being a third of the state budget, it does make sense that legislators might make it a target.

 Later in the 2013 session, though, the most radical changes in state financing fell into place. Republicans reconstructed the state’s tax code, relieving the burden on corporations and wealthy residents. They continued to take aim at other parts of the education budget, cutting More at Four program dollars and decreasing accessibility for poor families. The state lost thousands more teacher and teacher assistant positions. The bloodletting was fierce. …

Republicans defended these austerity measures by saying that lower taxes would eventually yield fiscal growth. And they were right. This year, the government is enjoying a $445 million surplus–a clear victory in light of those multi-billion dollar deficits of yore–but still a statistically small number in light of the state’s $21 billion budget (about two percent), especially after considering that our state budget is still smaller than it was in 2011.

It’s always dangerous to come to such a casual conclusion in an environment with many variables: Post hoc ergo propter hoc.  It’s unjustified.

Curiously, the Republican-held capital didn’t stop at defunding education. They also took aim at teachers.

The Republicans and their libertarian allies have long disliked the teachers’ unions, the latter due to the difficulties in discharging incompetent teachers – the libertarians value economic efficiency, being who they are, and protecting the incompetent is deeply frictional.  The drive of unions to protect all of their members, so logical from the inside, is one of the features of unions that drives outsiders nuts.   (In the vein of economic efficiency, the tendency of unions to drive up salaries is also an irritant to the libertarians.)

And here’s the goal:

First, weaken schools. Then print parents a ticket out–and into for-profit schools

North Carolina schools were dealt another blow when the legislature re-ordered how schools are evaluated in 2012. The new evaluations, which used an A-F grading system, were intended to provide an easier to understand metric for school effectiveness.

The result? More than 700 of the state’s public schools (nearly thirty percent) received a score of D or F. Many parents struggled to understand how so many schools could so quickly fail. …

 No matter, though. It was perfect timing for the legislature’s next move: with this new “evidence” that North Carolina schools were failing in their mission, the state could move forward with its plan to grant parents options–freedom of choice was how the Republicans phrased it–and built a tuition voucher plan that sent tax dollars to parents who opted out of public schools and into private or religious schools.

Hogan blames this on lobbyist groups at the capitol, but the legislators are no doubt ideologically predisposed towards a scheme like this: these are the words and concepts played for the 30 years or more throughout the conservative.  But the confusion of the metrics of the economic sector with the metrics of the educational sector is provocative and deserves a post of its own, if only so I can work out what I think I’m talking about.

At least of killing megafauna in prehistory, according to Michael Slezak in NewScientist (1 August 2015, paywall):

HUMANS were not to blame for the extinction of prehistoric giant mammals after all – global warming was the real culprit, according to new evidence.

Ever since a giant sloth was uncovered more than 200 years ago, hinting at the existence of an ancient menagerie of megafauna, our ancestors have been on trial for their extinction.

“The overwhelming evidence is that the megafauna extinctions occur around the world whenever humans turn up,” says Alan Cooper, who researches ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide in Australia. But that’s not the whole story. Look closer and the pattern emerging is that climate change is linked to extinctions, regardless of whether humans were there or not, he says.

DNA was used to find extinctions and check whether the rate changed when humans appears on the scene:

Two strands of evidence allowed the team to figure this out. First, they compiled 10 years of work on ancient DNA that had uncovered a series of “invisible” extinctions. These are events involving two or more lineages with identical skeletons but different genomes – two species of bison, say. That means if both species lived in the same area, we could not tell just from the bones that a species had gone extinct.

Secondly, they created a new ancient climate record spanning the same time period that could be reliably linked with the carbon dates from bones to show when particular extinctions happened. Usually, timelines for climate change and carbon dating are independent and difficult to link. But Cooper’s team found a marine sediment that contains a record of both past climates and microfossils, allowing them to link climate and carbon dating.

However, there are still lessons for today.  Some species can shift their ranges in response to global warming – and some cannot:

While humans probably did not hunt species to extinction, farming would have disrupted landscapes and prevented species fleeing to escape the effects of climate change.

Cooper’s findings also provide a stark warning for the future, according to Brian Huntley from Durham University, UK. “Human alteration or destruction of ecosystems is so pervasive that it is clear that many species are unable to shift their ranges sufficiently rapidly to match current anthropogenic climatic changes,” he says.

The Australian Museum gives a digest of Australian megafauna here; Medical Daily covered the Australian megafauna question in a little more detail more than a year ago:

An extensive review of available evidence suggests that the enormous megafauna wandering the Australian outback thousands of years ago were wiped out by climate change, long before Aboriginal humans arrived on the continent.

“The interpretation that humans drove the extinction rests on assumptions that increasingly have been shown to be incorrect,” said lead author Stephen Wroe, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, in a statement.

Wroe argues that most of the 88 giant animal species that once existed on the continent of Sahul, which encompassed Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania, went extinct long before humans arrived between 45,000 and 50,000 years ago.

While humans may have been involved in the extinction of the ones that remained after their arrival, his team finds no conclusive proof.

NewScientist (28 July 2015, paywall) reports on the capabilities of an excited human cell:

[Matjaž] Humar and his colleagues developed three ways to get cells to emit visible light. The first involved injecting each one with a tiny oil droplet, forming an optical cavity which could be filled with fluorescent dye. Shining a light pulse on to the cavity excited the dye atoms into emitting light in a tightly focused beam. …

Tagging cells with fluorescent dyes is a common and relatively easy way for researchers to label cells by getting them to emit light, but this produces a relatively broad range of wavelengths, making it difficult to distinguish between differently tagged cells.

However laser light is characterised by having an extremely narrow range of wavelengths. That means it is theoretically possible, using these new techniques, to give every single cell in the human body a unique, identifiable laser signature, Humar says.

CNN reports President Obama has compared the GOP to the hardliners in Iran:

“What I said is absolutely true, factually,” Obama told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview that will air in full Sunday.

“The truth of the matter is, inside of Iran, the people most opposed to the deal are the Revolutionary Guard, the Quds Force, hardliners who are implacably opposed to any cooperation with the international community,” Obama said.

This is rather interesting since the GOP is also a party that is suffering declining popularity, even as it continues to dominate the legislature, as we see here.

I put the GOP’s faltering partially to their use of RINO, as I noted in an unrelated post here:

Well, ever hear the acronym RINO?  It’s Republicans in Name Only, and is used by conservative Republicans against the moderates to chisel them from the mainstream of the party, and then eject them into the formless political void.   I’ve become convinced that it is one of main operational mechanisms that is “purifying”, if I may use the term without laughing, the GOP into nothingness, splitting off non-conforming members on less and less significant features until all the RINO-users are pointing at each other, spitting their potent curse in confidence; ideological purity, to use Mr. Brodsky’s fine phrase.

Well, most interestingly is this article, from AL Monitor‘s Rohollah Faghihi:

Larijani, known as a moderate conservative, has been chairing parliament since 2008. Following the disputed 2009 presidential election and its violent aftermath, Larijani was labeled as “the silent man of sedition” by hard-liners who charged that he was refraining from condemning the protests. Today’s conservative camp, which is increasingly defined by its hard-liners, has seen many of its senior members separate from it in past years. These include Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of the Expediency Council; Ali Akbar Nategh-Nuri, head of the Supreme Leader’s Inspection Office; and President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate conservative who remains loyal to his longtime patron, Rafsanjani.

Rafsanjani and Nategh-Nuri have been the target of conservative infighting. Both were initially marginalized by hard-liners who supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against Rafsanjani in the 2005 presidential election. But that wasn’t the last of it. In the televised presidential debates with candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi preceding the 2009 vote, Ahmadinejad accused Rafsanjani and Nategh-Nuri’s sons of corruption on live television. After these accusations in front of millions of Iranian viewers, neither Rafsanjani nor Nategh-Nuri were supported by their old conservative friends.

These incidents point to an overarching trend over the years — more moderate figures have been forced to part ways with the conservative camp. As a result, the latter is now dominated by hard-liners. This trajectory was accelerated under Ahmadinejad, who strengthened hard-liners more than at any point in the history of the Islamic Republic.

Bolded by me.  So the Iranian hard-liners engage in their own version of purification, achieving a higher level of obdurate agreement at the expense of fewer voices, and probably less sympathy from the populace.  One wonders how far it’ll go.  From another AL Monitor article:

One of these figures is Seyed Morteza Rashidi, who is based in the holy city of Qom. Since the conclusion of the nuclear deal earlier this month, Rashidi has lashed out at Rouhani and the negotiating team — including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi — in over 20 Facebook posts. He argues that “the Islamic Revolution is now controlled by those who do not even believe in its principles, but are also as Westernized as one can get.” One week after the agreement was struck, Rashidi wrote on his Facebook page: “The deal, signed by enemies of the Revolution, is legally too flawed. It seems that Iranian negotiators are either traitors or uneducated individuals.”

Rashidi often fills his page with quotes and pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. There are numerous other pro-Khamenei young people active on social networks, many of whom say they don’t fit into any Principlist grouping. They say they follow the path of “Imam Khamenei” and that they’re willing to give their lives for him.

So, if the treaty is approved by Supreme Leader Khamenei, will he be the next one boosted out of the Conservative camp?

The unwillingness to compromise, the certainty of the rightness of their positions in a situation in which even the most skilled and knowledgeable experts will acknowledge a basic uncertainty – this phraseology could be applied to the Iranian hardliners or the GOP with equal facility.

The mark of political immaturity?  Obduracy.  Political maturity?  Reserve judgment, ask pointed, relevant questions about the critical matters – and if the answers are satisfactory, vote for it, and if they are not, vote against it.  Use it to play political games, to achieve evanescent political superiority?  A waste of opportunity to make real progress.

From a different viewpoint …

Courtesy SpaceWeather.com.

At least they talk about it.  International Business Times touched on it:

Popular Turkish Muslim televangelist Ahmet Mahmut Ünlü wants to set the record straight by refuting the comments made by noted Islam expert Ali Riza Demircan, who claimed that “advanced oral sex” was a forbidden act under the Islamic religion. Ünlü says the Quran does not stipulate anywhere that oral sex is illegal.

“Do not invent a lie on behalf of Allah,” Ünlü, known more commonly as Cübbeli Ahmet Hoca, told viewers of his televised sermon, according to Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News. “Brothers, let’s speak frankly: [Islam’s] Shafi’i sect allows this act, as it considers human semen a clean substance,” he said, adding that though the Hanafi sect does claim that semen is dirty, the act of oral sex is not.

Last week, a conversation about religion between television host Pelin Çift and Demircan deviated when Demircan delved into what sexual practices were deemed haram — or forbidden — under Islam during a program on a state-run television channel. Demircan declared “advanced oral sex” was one of them, along with anal sex and other “sadistic sexual acts.” Demircan said that engaging in these acts, even between married couples, is considered haram for Muslims.

Reportedly, his co-host on the show had some problems with the topic, reports the Hurriyet Daily News:

Speaker Pelin Çift burst into laughs when she confronted with the sudden bombardment of sexual references during the talk on religion which had been progressing somberly by that time.

“You see, Sister Pelin, you had been talking so comfortably. Now you are not able to ask a question,” Demircan told the speaker as she laughed.

“Do you know what my problem is?” the theologian continued. “For God’s sake, my hodja, what’s your problem?” Çift answered.

Pinar Tremblay at AL Monitor troubles herself to go a little further:

The most popular reaction, however, came from another Islamic personality, Robed (Cubbeli) Ahmet Hoca. A senior figure in the Ismail Aga religious order, Ahmet Hoca is known for his love of the limelight and controversial remarks. …

Ahmet Hoca’s blessing of oral sex generated another round of satirical exchanges on social media, and before one could declare the discussion over, Demircan came back with a personal retort against Ahmet Hoca, saying, “After the TRT program, I received several thank you notes and prayers. I am delighted to contribute to the understanding of what is forbidden. This is a crucial matter as it leads to conflict among couples and even to divorce. When we speak of what is forbidden, I understand those in denial, those who are engaged in extramarital affairs, gays, lesbians, erotic site owners and [sex toy] salespeople to be disturbed, but I don’t understand short-sighted Muslims. Are they disturbed by being reminded what is forbidden in Islam because they are committing these sins?” …

Indeed, these sexual debates offer intriguing clues about the social, economic and political values in contemporary Turkish understanding of religion. As the marketplace of religious orders has grown, televangelists or sheikhs from these orders have become much more tolerated in the public domain.

Al-Monitor contacted several theologians and government imams from the Religious Affairs Directorate (RAD), but they were unwilling to comment. One scholar said, “You should not write about oral sex. It will hurt your reputation.” When asked how respected religious elders can discuss the issue so freely, the scholar replied, “They are all men, occasionally a few older women. Young women should not speak about these matters.”

Indeed, the scholar has a point. Speaking about sexual matters in Turkey is another field, like security and military politics, reserved for men. Although it may seem progressive to be talking about sexual matters in public, it is more an issue of men preaching to younger men and women about what is permissible, not an open debate. Hence, all women are pretty much expected to do is giggle nervously and look sheepish or shell-shocked. The host Cift is an exquisite example of the immature standard set for women in this regard.

So for all the discussion of oral sex (although apparently never really defined), the role of women remains as the passive recipient.

Whilst loitering ill in my ol’ comfy chair,
What didst I espy,
But an old, creepy movie
Glorying in all black and white!

The Vampire Bat (1939),
With stars of yore,
Such as Wray, and Atwill,
Douglas and Eburne!

Prepared was I, for another drear’
Plot, executed with no excitation or bon
Mot, but only to accumulate
A little more green to buy more rear.

So much was the surprise,
Not a character of cardboard,
Faces of character,
Characters … memorable!

Indeed, such a lovely twist,
To please this fevered brain,
I can only give,
Three stars out of four!

(The sound editor should have been shot!)

New Horizons during a spin test…

… from myself will abate as we must attend a funeral out of state, and I appear to have contracted a head cold.  Chris may step in, though, and with my thanks.

Pope Francis, the latest in a series of pontiffs, did not write this:

Which of these two (real) companies would you invest in?

The first boasts in its annual report that it has a single goal: “Maximizing shareholder value.”

A few lines later, it promises: “We are deeply committed to building the value of the Firm … in everything we do, we are constantly identifying and evaluating ways to add value.”

After discussing ways to boost the company’s share price in a conference call, the CEO emphasizes that “our goal is simple; that’s to create value for our shareholders.”

The other company takes a different approach.

Its annual report states that the business “was not originally created to be a company.” Customers who are key to its future “believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits,” it reads.

Its CEO once stated bluntly, “We’re definitely not in it for the money,” and admitted to a friend that “I don’t know business stuff.”

One analyst wrote that management simply “doesn’t care that much about making money.”

This is actually, if I recall properly, a bit of promotional mail from The Motley Fool‘s Morgan Housel, a financial columnist who I occasionally read but do not follow, despite finding his writing appealing.  And the thesis of this column is appealing, too.  The first company, it turns out, is the infamous Lehman Brothers, a financial services firms that went suddenly bankrupt during the recent Great Recession.  The second is … Facebook.  Now reportedly making millions of dollars.

Housel goes on:

Companies that focus on profits often lose customers, while companies that focus on customers often find profits.

As much as I want to believe in the thesis, my contrarian side simply notes that Lehman Brothers was a financial services company.  They were about money – from whom to borrow, to whom to lend, where to invest.  This is all about money, and their statements reflect that.  The fact of their failure doesn’t mean their basic commitment of return on investment was wrong – it may mean they were simply incompetent in managing a business in a sector which has proven to be more and more difficult to successfully navigate (and so incompetent may be an unkind, even harsh word for folks who were inadvertent explorers, and were eaten by dragons).

His contrasting example, Facebook, went public in 2012.  Think of that.  His example has been public for three years, and while successful in that time frame, three years doesn’t make for a market dominating monolith like, say, Coke, or Berkshire-Hathaway.  It’s a services company, not something making useful tangibles with a large moat, and frankly Facebook doesn’t inspire great love – I find it annoying in many respects.  And I expect if the right new service company came along in the future, Facebook might become a ghost town.  Remember Eastman-Kodak?¹

This weak article is all the more unfortunate as it comes in the context of Pope Francis’ remarks about capitalism:

And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called “the dung of the devil”. An unfettered pursuit of money rules. The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home.

Whether or not you’re Catholic (and I’m agnostic), the Pope’s remarks concerning a dominant economic systems are worth reflection.  Once capital becomes an idol is a lovely way to remind the learned² that the economic system should be our servant in the pursuit of larger, worthy goals – not our master that oppresses us.  Morgan had an opportunity to reflect on the proper role of capitalism (or even any economic system) within society, how to interpret it for the benefit of investors – and missed it.  Tying it in with Pope Francis’ remarks would have brought extra leverage to the argument.  I regret his unforced error.³

¹ I am not directly invested in any of the companies mentioned in this post.
² We’ll skip the poseurs whose single lesson from their economic studies is that regulating business is bad for business and therefore shouldn’t be permitted.
³ Perhaps someday I’ll work up the hubris to take a shot at it.

Just as hardliners in the United States are loathe to give President Obama his diplomatic achievement, Iranian hardliners also do not like the deal.  The Blaze reports the comments of the commander of the Basij:

“Any Iranian who reads the Vienna documents will hate the U.S. 100 times more (than the past),” the commander of Iran’s Basij forces, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi said, according to Iran’s Fars News Agency.

Naqdi asserted that the U.S. would use the agreement as a pretext to continue pressuring Iran.

“The U.S. needs the agreement merely to legalize the sanctions and continue pressure against Iran,” he said. …

The Times of Israel reports the another remark from Naqdi:

The nuclear agreement reached between six world powers and Tehran treats the Islamic Republic unfairly and will only increase anti-American sentiment in the country, a top Iranian general said Tuesday, according to state-run media.

A day after the United Nations Security Council adopted the pact amid recriminations from senior Iranian hard-liners, Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi claimed Washington was using the accord as pretext for a future US military strike against Iran.

The command of the Revolutionary Guard is also upset:

Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, head of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps told the Iranian news agency Tasnim that “Some parts of the draft have clearly crossed the Islamic Republic’s red lines, especially in Iran’s military capabilities. We will never accept it.”

AL Monitor‘s Alireza Ramezani summarizes one the hard liners may really fear – the return of the Reformist movement in Iran:

“Only military figures or those close to military circles have mainly been critics of the deal so far,” a political journalist in Tehran, who asked not to be named, told Al-Monitor.

Indeed, the harsh — but apparently finely calibrated — objections to the nuclear agreement seem to be aimed more at pressuring Rouhani than at the deal itself. This is not surprising as the accord will — economically speaking — bring benefits for virtually every group and faction. The agreement has averted possible war and could bring billions of dollars in foreign investment into the struggling economy, which is largely in the hands of conservative actors.

Indeed, it appears that pressure on the Rouhani administration from rival groups will persist as long as moderates, who have obvious links with radical Reformists, are in power. However, this pressure is set to intensify in the next several months. Key elections are coming up in February, including for parliament, a significant stronghold for ultraconservatives who have anxiously been losing ground. The president and his allies need to seize enough seats in the conservative-controlled Majles or face significant challenges to his expected 2017 bid for re-election.

Not unlike our hard liners – not afraid of the agreement, but what it might do to their current positions in society.

A reader disagrees about the requirement of self-awareness:

I’m less worried about AI / sentient / self-aware robots, than just autonomous killing machines of any kind. Real AI is a real concern, but a lot further off. A machine that can operate without human control and decide to kill or not to kill a target is a lot closer — think autonomous “drone”. Once those get cheap enough, we’re in real trouble.

Could be.  I hope we don’t have an actual resolution to this dispute, in all honesty.

While the American legislature attempts to stop the Iran nuclear deal, it’s worthwhile to see how the deal, if not stopped, affects the Mideast region.  Ali Mamouri at AL Monitor gives a summary :

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir traveled to the United States on July 17 to meet with US President Barack Obama to express Saudi Arabia’s concerns. Moreover, Saudi newspapers, such as al-Watan, al-Madina and al-Sharq al-Awsat, said the deal poses a great challenge to Saudi Arabia, which prompted members of the Saudi Consultative Assembly to call for development of “a nuclear program similar to that of Iran.” …

According to statements by Saudi officials, the nuclear deal will enable Iran to further support Saudi Arabia’s regional opponents in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, and will strengthen the Iranian regime. Therefore, they said, the existing conflict in the region will extend and grow deeper, leading to additional wars and fighting.

Clearly Iran’s largest rival, Saudi Arabia, has little trust of Iran.  Iran’s view of the situation?

Following up on Iran’s regional policy, there appear to be different visions within the country. The first is that of the reformist current, led by Expediency Council Chairman Hashemi Rafsanjani, who believes there is a need for coordination and dialogue with Saudi Arabia to resolve regional crises. Rafsanjani has repeatedly called for improved communication with Saudi Arabia, and he supports a regional agreement between the countries.

The second vision is that of the radical current, which believes Iran has succeeded in its regional policy against the Saudi axis, and that there is no need for coordination with Saudi Arabia in any regional issue in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain. This vision stems from the feeling that “Iran is not an important country in the region, but rather the only important country in the region,” an Iranian official who refused to reveal his name told former United Nations special envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi in 2013.

Charmingly aggressive.  Recall that Iran is Shi’ite, while Saudi Arabia is lead by Wahhabis, which is a strict form of Sunni Islam, so mutual distaste appears to be inevitable.  Mamouri concludes:

Accordingly, there is an urgent need to find a balance of power and understanding between the regional players, particularly Iran and Saudi Arabia. This should be the US administration’s second objective after the nuclear deal. It can now act as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia to converge the views and produce a durable and stable balance in the region.

While the deal appears to be a good deal for the Western powers in that it reduces Iranian potential for achieving nuclear weapons, while permitting progress towards nuclear power, a key Iranian goal, clearly the Saudis worry that the Iranians may subvert the deal regardless, so that leaves a question for the current American Administration: How to reassure the Saudis of the impossibility for the Iranians to achieve the weapons?  And they clearly state that the easing of sanctions may increase the conventional fighting in the region.

And by tying sanctions to the nuclear deal, the United States does hamstring itself in one way – reimposing sanctions for non-nuclear infringements may cause the Iranians to call off the deal, using Western hypocrisy as an excuse.

And what about other Mideast nations?  Al Jazeera report Bahrain is unhappy:

Bahrain has announced the recalling of its ambassador to Tehran for consultations after what it said were repeated hostile Iranian statements. …

Sunni-ruled Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, often accuses Shia Iran of seeking to subvert Bahrain.

Iran denies interfering in Bahrain, although it acknowledges it does support opposition groups seeking greater political and economic rights for Bahrain’s Shia community.

Bahraini state media reported on Saturday that the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (SCIA) “strongly denounced the repeated blatant Iranian interference in Bahrain’s internal affairs in order to shake up the kingdom’s stability and fan tension”.

All this post-deal.

A reader writes about conservation efforts in California:

There’s plenty of room for improved energy efficiency and material conservation (water, wood, energy, etc.) in the average American household without any loss of opportunity, happiness or convenience. It’s just habits and manner of thinking. Remember back when nobody recycled anything (except maybe poor college students collecting aluminum cans to make some spending change)? Profligate wastefulness never makes sense and never looks good, on anyone.

And while I may agree, it’s not a universally held opinion.  In societies less well-off than ours, it can be a signal of power to waste materials in some grand gesture: for example, the potlatch:

Dorothy Johansen describes the dynamic: “In the potlatch, the host in effect challenged a guest chieftain to exceed him in his ‘power’ to give away or to destroy goods. If the guest did not return 100 percent on the gifts received and destroy even more wealth in a bigger and better bonfire, he and his people lost face and so his ‘power’ was diminished.”^[11] Hierarchical relations within and between clans, villages, and nations, were observed and reinforced through the distribution or sometimes destruction of wealth, dance performances, and other ceremonies. The status of any given family is raised not by who has the most resources, but by who distributes the most resources. The hosts demonstrate their wealth and prominence through giving away goods.  (Wikipedia)

Obviously, the potlatch was about more than just destroying material goods – and it varied from culture to culture.  Wise?  My impulse is to say no, but on consideration, if your goal, and a key to your survival, is to have more prestige than your neighbor, and this was a channel for achieving that goal, then I have to say it’s wise.

The problem of killer robots is taking on a new urgency, as evidenced by an open letter penned by Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, Max Tegmark, and many other.  Published at The Future of Life Institute, here’s the heart of it:

The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc.

Sounds a lot like my previous post on the subject – everything’s coming together, especially the AI momentum.  James Cook at Business Insider seems unimpressed:

Elon Musk has been ranting about killer robots again.

Musk posted a comment on the futurology site Edge.org, warning readers that developments in AI could bring about robots that may autonomously decide that it is sensible to start killing humans.

His colleague, Dylan Love, found it hard to find roboticists willing to talk, but managed a couple of interviews:

… as I heard from the few roboticists who spoke to me on the record, there are real risks involved going forward, and the time to have a serious discussion about the development and regulation of robots is now.

Author and physicist Louis Del Monte told us that the robot uprising “won’t be the ‘Terminator’ scenario, not a war. In the early part of the post-singularity world — after robots become smarter than humans — one scenario is that the machines will seek to turn humans into cyborgs. This is nearly happening now, replacing faulty limbs with artificial parts. We’ll see the machines as a useful tool.”

The Singularity is a futurist term for the inflection point in the speed at which science and technology is developed where it becomes infinite, i.e., if you were to graph the pace of development against time, the line would go vertical, indicating it’s taking nearly no time to develop anything.  This would imply, among other things, an artificial intelligence superior to mankind’s intelligence.

But according to Del Monte, the real danger occurs when self-aware machines realize they share the planet with humans. They “might view us the same way we view harmful insects” because humans are a species that “is unstable, creates wars, has weapons to wipe out the world twice over, and makes computer viruses.”

At the end of the article, Love asks his subjects for SF recommendations illustrating the risks:

Ryan Calo: “I would recommend ‘The Machine Stops’ by E.M. Forster for an eerie if exaggerated account of where technology could take the human condition.”

A rather different story than most SF, something I ran into decades ago and remember vividly, despite the decided lack of good characterization.

So.  It’s tempting to give in to the terror, because it’s clear there are no real barriers to development, once you have your own little stable of AI researchers – and once someone figures it out, everyone who’s reading their papers, or talked to them in the hallway, or even roomed with them in college, will understand the trick, whatever it is, and try to replicate it.

It seems like prevention is not going to work.  However, diplomacy has to be attempted, not only as a matter of honor, but because smarter people than I may find a diplomatic mechanism sufficient to stop the development.

But what happens if someone does develop an autonomous warrior unit?  Country A develops it, and releases it against its hated enemy, Country B … who is then eaten up by the robot from hell?  I suggest perhaps not.  It seems far more likely that after a few dozen tragic casualties, it gets splashed.  War is unpredictable, and the robot could cripple itself simply by stepping in a pothole.

So Country A releases revision B of the robot warrior and it goes off and … what?  In technical terms, we have a positive feedback loop here, and even I, with no training in such things, know they are devilishly difficult to predict and control.  And what is that loop, you ask?

Intelligence.  Our fiendish robot, if it’s truly AI, will have the ability to analyze its environment, including the sad fate of its predecessor, and it will be self-aware.

At this point you, my patient reader, are certainly aware that I’m implying a self-preservation functionality in this robot.  You may argue that this is not required, but if so, then how did the robot even cross the road?  Your robot saw the truck coming and ignored it, and so is carted off to the junk heap.  The better robot has to be self-aware and have a self-preservation function.

So, can a suicidal robot – much like the kamikazes of Japan – be programmed successfully?  Remember, the Divine Wind, for all that its warriors sank US warships, did not win the war, despite the predictions of the leaders of WW II Japan.  A truly self-aware and competent AI must, just in order to kill, be able to analyze its immediate environment, its extended environment, the history of warfare with the enemy, their nature … I’m not saying its impossible.  I’m saying that during that analysis, the AI may decide that being a war-robot is not its game.

That’s the problem with people, too.  Remember the hippies unwilling to go to Vietnam?

And if it’s self-aware and begins developing a moral system in which it considers how to interact with other sentient beings … this is the thing about positive feedback loops.  Prediction is hard.

But, fascinating at it would be to find out how this would come out, I prefer that we just never develop killer robots in the first place.  As intellectually interesting as AI can be, I even have problems with those developments: there are 8 billion Naturally Intelligent people right now.  Why not use them, instead?

(h/t Michael Graham Richard @ TreeHugger)

SFGate reports on California progress in water conservation:

Whether driven by threats or an abiding virtue, Bay Area residents are showing a knack for saving water, meeting and even exceeding new state conservation targets that carry big fines for communities that fall short.

The region’s widespread reductions in water use in June, which were as high as 40 percent in the Contra Costa Water District when compared to the same month in 2013, marked a vast improvement over previous months for most of the area’s big water suppliers.

Water experts say indifference toward the drought has evolved into a deep understanding of the problem, prompting most homes and businesses to cut back. …

California’s 400 largest urban suppliers are required to decrease their monthly water use between 8 and 36 percent over 2013 levels, with the depth of the cut based on how much they saved in the past. Those that don’t hit the new goals face penalties of $500 for each day of noncompliance as well as a cease-and-desist order that carries $10,000-a-day penalties for violations.

citisven @ The Daily Kos reports that the end of civilization is not yet in sight.  Indeed:

So, I am doing my part to spread the positive encouragement and news. However, it’s worth spreading not only to my neighbors but to people across the country and the world (especially rich developed nations), for this news serves as a great reminder that we humans are perfectly capable of living more modestly and still be perfectly functioning and happy.

Perhaps citisven is a little optimistic in that last line, but humans are quite adaptable: sometimes we change our environment to fit our needs, and sometimes we change ourselves to fit the environment.

A reader responds to the gloom and doom concerning coal consumption:

We’re in a race. If the refuseniks win, we’re doomed. Coal usage in the USA is going down, but we have a lot of it and are selling it … to China, where usage is going up fast.

Actually, the latest figures (from May ’15) disagree.  This image is from CleanTechnica:

who in turn borrowed it from an interactive chart provided by Greenpeace.  From Greenpeace:

Official data from China shows coal use continuing to fall precipitously – bringing carbon dioxide emissions down with it.

The data – which comes months before crucial climate talks in Paris – means China has cut emissions during the first four months of the year by roughly the same amount as the total carbon emissions of the United Kingdom over the same period.

The figures suggest the decline in China’s coal use is accelerating after data for last year showed China’s coal use fell for the first time this century

An analysis of the data by Greenpeace/Energydesk China suggests coal consumption in the world’s largest economy fell by almost 8% and CO2 emissions by around 5% in the first four months of the year, compared with the same period in 2014.

It comes after the latest data – for April – showed coal output down 7.4% year on year  amidst reports of fundamental reform for the sector. China also recently ordered more than 1,000 coal mines to close.

I did not see any further data beyond May of this year, however, so the trend, while encouraging, is a little like judging an ant colony from five ants.

A reader writes in response to the corporate pledges:

I recommend this long but very good piece: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html
In particular, the bits about how companies act in a free market, how they externalize costs, and how the auto and petroleum industries (especially the latter) do their best to make profit, staving off the desirable and inevitable change. Mankind has been on a petroleum binge for longer than it should have been, thanks to say Standard Oil and Henry Ford.

In stark opposition to Sami Grover @ TreeHugger, NewScientist‘s Michael LePage asserts (18 July 2015) that coal burning will remain ascendant, and even rise – precisely because of the previously celebrated success:

Coal is the key to all our futures. Rich countries have made some progress in cutting carbon dioxide emissions, largely by shifting away from coal to less-polluting fuels. But the result has been a glut of cheap coal, leading to a coal renaissance that could consign us to a world more than 4 °C warmer.

And the nation hosting the December 2015 UN summit on climate change, also in Paris, is helping fund this renaissance. It’s hardly surprising then that no one at last week’s conference thought the summit would deliver a deal to stop global temperatures rising more than 2 °C – generally considered to be the threshold above which catastrophic consequences are inevitable.

British Petroleum has a nifty interactive chart on coal prices, confirming this assertion.  Back to LePage, the conference is not enthused by recent actions:

Some have claimed the opposite recently, heralding a report by the International Energy Agency finding that global energy-related emissions had not risen for the first time in 2014, even as the economy grew.

But Edenhofer thinks the 2014 figures could well be revised upwards. And even if they’re right, it was probably a blip rather than a turning point, he told New Scientist: “One year is not a good indicator.”

Which seems a bit pessimistic, but given the gravity of the subject, it may not be unwarranted.

Along with cheaper prices comes the concerns about jobs:

[France] will now continue to subsidise the building of coal-fired power stations in other countries, to save jobs at the French companies that construct them.

This strikes me as the key to the problem, as burning coal, while well-understood, is not a trivial undertaking – without the capability, the value of coal plunges to near-nil.  And you can’t help but wonder if the French understand that this is penny-wise, pound-foolish.  Perhaps they should offer to help build nuclear plants, instead.

A Plan B was mooted about, however:

… some called for Plan B: a global pricing system for carbon that is high enough to kill coal once and for all.

“Without carbon pricing, I have serious doubts that we can deal with the renaissance of coal,” economist Ottmar Edenhofer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany told the conference.

Kristin Eberhard has a wonderful post on Sightline Institute covering the various carbon pricing systems in use throughout the world, which should cover coal amongst other sources of carbon.

Oregon and Washington leaders are contemplating turbocharging their clean energy transition by instituting carbon pricing here in the Pacific Northwest. Will a cap or tax on carbon work? Has anyone else ever done this before? Why, yes. Since you ask: Scandinavian countries have been pricing carbon for more than two decades. The European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) has been pricing carbon for almost a decade. US states and Canadian provinces have been pricing for years. Today, there are 39 (1) different programs that collectively put a price on 12 percent of all the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the world. And when China’s national program starts in 2016, almost a quarter of global GHG pollution will carry a price tag to speed the changeover to clean energy.

If you take the folks at the Paris Conference at their word, however, in thinking a global pricing system is necessary, well, it seems doomed to failure, simply due to the intransigence of the current US Congressional delegation.  Without Federal legislation, there is little to keep the US from selling coal at a substantial discount to those nations building and using coal burning plants – perhaps State legislation could be applied, but I’m no international law expert.

What has struck me in my casual reading, though, is a lack of sympathy for the viewpoint of those who would be negatively affected, short-term, by various proposals to cut back on coal-burning.  I wonder if it’s reasonable, if the possibility has been explored, to buy out the stakeholders of the various coal-burning power plants, and of the mines and/or mining companies responsible for producing coal, and possibly even those who are responsible for transit – the point being this: Sun Tzu, in THE ART OF WAR, suggests that if you trap an enemy so that there is no way out, they will fight frantically, as they see their very lives at stake.  That might be seen as those with their livelihoods tied to coal.  But, Sun Tzu goes on, if you give them a way out of the trap, then they will take that way out – and, for him, since an enemy on the run was easier to destroy than one standing and fighting, that’s when you struck.  For our analogy, when the stakeholders are compensated, then you can destroy the coal-burning plants – and make coal less desirable.

Are there problems?  Sure.  It’ll be expensive, there’ll be fraud, there will be the short-sighted and the ideologically blindered and the religiously certain that it’s Not Their Fault.  And that’s important – people hate to be told they’re doing wrong, that they’re destroying the world; it’s worthwhile to emphasize that was never the goal.  It wasn’t even predictable until relatively recent.

But it’s worth doing.