Sunday Cutdown (XXII)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
1) Where have all the flowers gone?
COOL GREEN SCIENCE: Migration in Motion: Visualizing Species Movements Due to Climate Change
Not-so-long time passing.
For those still on the fence (or Wall), nothing beats an illuminating video.
Blow it up for details.
My only question is, What’s up with Ecuador?
Fascinating.
2) China’s lessons learned on Israel-v-Iran
THE DIPLOMAT: Iran’s Mass Strike on Israel Highlights Why Taiwan’s Air Defenses Can’t Hold up
YAHOO: China to rethink Taiwan seizure after Iran’s failed attack on Israel
A bit back, Israel basically shoots down everything Iran threw at them in terms of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones (grand total in the low hundreds).
So … Taiwan should be even more scared?
The Diplomat says so:
The Iranian operation highlights the difficulties that air defense efforts face, particularly when relying on costly Western equipment to counter large volumes of low-cost drones and missiles.
WTF?
Didn’t Israel just do that incredibly well with our gear and allied help?
So what’s the story?
The vulnerability is described as such:
In the Taiwan Strait in particular, the Republic of China Armed Forces (ROCAF) have a number of significant commonalities in their defensive posture to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), most notably in their heavy reliance on very large quantities of ground-based air defense systems densely concentrated on their small territories to counter an adversary’s massive drone and missile arsenals.
Okay, still doesn’t sound bad per se, given Israel’s recent performance. Of course, Iran wasn’t really trying to do any damage. So I’m still waiting on the logic here.
One of the most significant aspects of the operation was the tremendous discrepancy in the cost of launching and the cost of defending against them. While even the highest estimates for the cost of the Iranian strike remain at under $100 million, U.S. and Israeli interception efforts against it cost the two countries close to $1 billion and $1.08-1.35 billionrespectively.
Ah, the cost thing.
But here’s the counter: Israel, with US help, can and will pay that premium over the long haul. Same is true with Taiwan, where there really is no long haul, because Beijing either does or doesn’t do its thing as a one-shot-only deal.
So, no, I don’t agree with this call to armaments. In fact, with the US backing Taiwan, I could argue that China is the country facing this cost problem. America’s moving at speed with its Replicator Initiative to crank cheap drones by the number to compensate for China’s conventional military overmatch.
So, the more China spends on that, the more the US sells to regional allies on that, while ramping up its drone-manufacturing capacity.
I’m not seeing the lose-lose here. I’m seeing the system balance itself rather nicely.
Yahoo’s argument strikes me as more sensible:
Rupert Hammond-Chambers, the president of the US-Taiwan business council, said: “They [PLA] will be picking apart what transpired, not just in the way in which the Iranians attacked but also how we responded – the Israelis and the coalition that supported them.
“The kill rate for the drones and the missiles was extremely high, almost perfect. The walk-away for the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] will be that the Americans and their allies have the technology to significantly blunt an attack.”
A barrage of drone and missile strikes would be a critical part of any conventional attack on the island of 23.5 million.
Yahoo’s big caveat: how seamlessly do Taiwan and its regional allies — to include the US — work together like Israel was helped in the Gulf.
More to the point.
But the incentives for boosting that interoperability are there, provided by China itself.
Again, I see balancing at work here.
3) Too much of a good thing?
WAPO: Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem.
The definition of the — I might call it — good problem:
As electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power.
Too MUCH solar power, that’s the problem.
But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there’s not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are “curtailed” — essentially, thrown away.
As one cited expert puts it:
“These are not insurmountable challenges, but they are challenges that a lot of grid operators have never had to deal with.”
Pretty much my definition of a better problem: manageable but surprising in its newness.
The upside-down world of electricity load created by all those solar panels is eye-opening:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that pretty much the exact opposite of net load as we have long known in (high during the day, troughing at night)?
I see old dogs being forced to learn new tricks.
As this beats the alternative, this is good trouble.
4) Horizontal proliferation … of the best kind
NEWSWEEK: NATO Ally 'Ready' to Station Nuclear Weapons on Its Territory
This map, per the anti-nuclear activists, is supposed to scare us as US citizens.
Same map, per my perspective, is designed to scare Putin and the Russians.
So, Poland, feeling a bit nervous as Ukraine is part gobbled-up and part turned into a Rubble World by Russia, signals its openness to hosting US nuclear missiles.
I like it.
Every step Russia takes should be matched with one — more vigorous — of our own.
Meanwhile, the biggest threat the West faces isn’t Putin and his nuclear saber-rattling, but the MAGA hard-core isolationists (Vance, Greene, etc.).
There are two types of nuclear proliferation:
Vertical — as in, an arms build-up among current nuclear powers (disturbing but mostly meaningless in any strategic sense, as Mutually Assured Destruction [MAD] is unaltered), and
Horizontal — as in, new players becoming nuclear (like Iran); trickier because of learning curve.
In the latter case, the most mild form of horizontal proliferation is the US sharing nuclear weapons with an ally (like we do with Turkey). They’re still our nukes under our/NATO control (no learning curve), but it’s quite a big deal for the recipient country (the nuclear umbrella seems a lot more real).
I would say Poland deserves the assurance and Russia has earned the nuclear FU.
5) Just tell me how much it’s going to cost
AP: New study calculates climate change’s economic bite will hit about $38 trillion a year by 2049
Insult upon injury:
Climate change will reduce future global income by about 19% in the next 25 years compared to a fictional world that’s not warming, with the poorest areas and those least responsible for heating the atmosphere taking the biggest monetary hit, a new study said.
This alone should motivate all businesses to think about and act on both mitigation and adaptation.
Globally speaking, the North needs a growing South to balance our long-term slow-growth model — not to mention provide us with younger bodies as we age and depopulate (hmm, sounds very Michael Crichton-y, yes?).
The longer we blow off or minimize the adaptation angle, the more pain we are buying down the road across a very vulnerable Global South.
Middle Earth will burn:
The world’s poorest countries will suffer 61% bigger income loss than the richest ones, the study calculated.
That will create a northward exodus on a scale never before seen in human history.
Or we offer membership in larger North-South unions that socialize that risk, sparing us the intense migratory pressures and keeping resilient populations — as much as possible — in place.
It all comes down to integrate them sooner or shoot them later.
And the killing has already begun.
6) The underwater Military Singularity
THE NATIONAL INTEREST: Northrop Grumman's Manta Ray Could Change Undersea Warfare Forever
The summary:
The Manta Ray, a new uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) developed by Northrop Grumman under DARPA's guidance, represents a significant innovation in deep-sea technology. Designed for prolonged autonomous operations without human logistic support, Manta Ray aims to perform complex undersea missions, including scientific research and military tasks.
But the fine print is interesting as well:
This UUV is poised to enhance maritime security, particularly in anti-submarine warfare, by leveraging advanced propulsion and stealth technologies.
Subs are good for two things:
Preserving your second-strike nuclear capability (because the “boomers” are so hard to find and target), and
Anti-submarine warfare.
Which means subs are mostly good for killing other subs. If somebody else has them, it’s to be able to kill your subs. Conversely, your subs are mostly about killing their subs.
Nobody in the submarine community likes that logic, but it’s true.
Kind of a self-licking ice cream cone, force structure-wise: we have them because they have them because we have them because …
Once UUVs advance to the point where they’re the best asset out there for killing subs, then the entire rationale for manned boats disappears — sans the sacred boomers with their missiles (Run silent, run deep).
Let the drones kill the drones — on land, in the aid, at sea, and under the surface.
Bring the boys back home?
Hell, never send them in the first place.
7) Put down that steak knife … and the avocado!
PUBLIC NEWS SERVICE: Study: 90% of CO River irrigation water goes to cattle
ABC NEWS: Angry farmers in a once-lush Mexican state target avocado orchards that suck up too much water
Agriculture is THE user of potable water worldwide, clock in at 70%; households at a mere one-tenth. So, when it comes to rationing an increasingly dear asset, ag is going to be targeted, even as North America (seen above) has basically curtailed its usage growth — trailing Europe’s impressive ability to actually reduce it.
So, I run across this article about the maxed-out Colorado River and its stunning stat about how 90 percent of the water siphoned off for irrigation goes to fields growing food for cattle that end up as human-consumed meat.
How much water to make one pound of beef?
It takes approximately 1,850 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. This includes the water required for irrigating crops fed to cattle, providing drinking water for the animals, and cleaning facilities
Clearly, we’re not going to be able to sustain that going forward. Another two billion joining the global middle class by mid-century … it’s going to require some innovations and diet shifts.
Lab-grown meat, various fake meats created from other, less water intensive crops … eating less red-meat in general.
It all has to happen.
But it’s not just meat that we’re juggling. As the second story shows, the battle between water-hog crops and leaner-use crops is going global.
8) Apple follows the demographic dividend across Asia
YAHOO: Apple looks to Southeast Asia, India as hedge against China difficulties
China has hit the demographic wall: when that dividend starts morphing into a silver tsunami and the upstream pipeline of new labor is being choked off by declining fertility impossible to reverse now that you’re modernized and urbanized and industrialized and — God forbid — you’re chock-full of educated women!
So, the great globalization party known as “the hunt for cheap labor” moves on … to Southeast Asia and, beyond that, to rising India — both with bigger dividends than China once owned.
And that’s what Apple does: it follows the demographic dividend.
No great mystery here, folks. No global “chaos.” Entirely predictable.
9) Drain the swamp! No, really!
WAPO: The nation’s capital, built on water, struggles to keep from drowning
Washington the Swamp was drained long ago, but underground waterways remain, and they’re beginning to make DC a very easily flooded town as the ground — like along most of the Eastern Seaboard — is sinking while ocean levels are rising. It’s the combined weight of buildings and the pumping out of ground water that drives this sinking process, and it’s unfolding around the planet. China, for one, has it bad.
Below is a photo of workers practicing their levee assembly downtown in DC. They perform this drill annually and have it down to two hours.
Where’s the little Dutch boy when you need him?
Makes it all a bit more real for Congress, I would imagine.
10) LATAM missing out on near-shoring wave?
AOL: New forecasts: Latin America’s economy will worsen in 2024. But there’s more bad news
American firms are rejiggering global supply chains to rely less on China, and yet, that’s not resulting in more US foreign direct investment in Latin America.
Thus, the IMF and World Bank, who’ve both been sounding this alarm (Another lost decade for LATAM and Caribbean!) are increasingly worried that history is repeating itself.
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) had roughly all the same positive dynamics and assets going on back in the 1990s that China did, but, as I point out in America’s New Map:
Capturing the full demographic dividend requires investment in human capital. Over the period of China’s economic rise, Latin America enjoyed the same demographic opportunity, only to squander it through political corruption, minimal investment in education and health, and limited reproductive rights for women. While China’s GDP increased sevenfold over those decades, Latin America merely doubled its output.
Imagine where the US economy would be if LATAM had increased its GDP seven fold since the end of the Cold War. How much better might our relationship with LAC be?
Well, now the structure of the global economy favors that logic: Asia has risen; it no longer presents the same wage differential so concentrated in China; and Asia now consumes most of what it manufactures.
Asia has also achieved higher trade integration than we in North America have — and don’t even get me started on LAC’s low trade integration (in the teens).
Everything points to the logic of near-shoring in our hemisphere and yet it’s not really happening.
From the article:
No region in the world would be better positioned to take advantage of this trend than Latin America. But U.S. multinationals are mostly going to other parts of the emerging world, such as India and other Asian countries, the World Bank report says. That bodes badly for the region, the bank adds …
Both international institutions say that Latin America will be the slowest growing region in the emerging world this year and next …
So why is “near-shoring” such a big deal, you may ask? Because it’s a huge shift in world trade patterns, and because it’s already happening.
Multinational firms are moving many of their plants out of China …
In addition, Chinese wages are already higher than those of many other Asian and Latin American countries, which gives U.S. companies an additional incentive to move their factories to other parts of the emerging world.
But, amazingly, despite the urge of multinationals to leave China, the rise of Chinese wages, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janel Yellen’s assertion that “near-shoring” has “tremendous potential benefits” for Latin America, foreign direct investment in Latin America has been falling considerably since 2010, the World Bank report says …
“overall, the near-shoring trend is bypassing Latin America,” the World Bank report says.
“Strikingly, Mexico, despite its proximity to the United States, experienced much milder increases” in foreign investments, it adds. Translation: Mexico, which already produces many of the manufacturing goods like car parts and electronic products that are made in China, should be the world’s biggest winner of the near-shoring trend, but its populist government has been asleep at the wheel.
Somehow, even with all these populists with their mercantilist mindsets crowding our political leaderships across this hemisphere, none of them have gotten the memo about what I call in my book an “Americas-First” approach to economic nationalism.
Too bad, because the moment is here … and the moment is being wasted with talk of “walls.”
We are screwing our own economic future.
That’s what happens when you choose color over country.
11) Monoculturalism … the real enemy of the people!
NPR: What are 'orphan crops'? And why is there a new campaign to get them adopted?
I’ve spoken about this in the past — how 90 percent of planted acreage is the US is now devoted to just three crops (corn, wheat, soybeans).
There is obvious logic here: We in North America feed the world and have, in combination with Latin America, an unparalleled capacity to generate crops beyond our needs.
That structural imbalance incentivizes the Western Hemisphere to crank those top crops it is best suited to grow — monoculture at its best (produce!) and worst (all those eggs in just three little baskets).
Efficient but potentially very brittle.
The article cited here grabbed my attention because of the word “orphan.”
I make the argument in America’s New Map about climate change creating geopolitical orphans (failed states, climate migrants), so, the idea that orphan crops are a logical hedge against the vulnerabilities of monoculture … too good to pass up.
There are no easy answers here, just more wicked problems to solve as climate change becomes our planet’s crucible experience.
12) The Anthropocene misunderestimated
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE: What Myths About the Anthropocene Get Wrong
I love lists, so this was also too hard to pass up.
First, one of those mind-numbing graphics that nonetheless paint a consistent picture whose caption reads EVERYTHING CHANGED AROUND 1950!
To which I add, THAT’S WHEN AMERICA TOOK RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GLOBAL SYSTEM AND STARTED EXPORTING ITS INTERNAL RULESET THAT IS NOW WIDELY DESCRIBED AS GLOBALIZATION.
Funny how that all lines up, right?
Now, the list with my snide commentary:
1. The Anthropocene fails to represent all human impacts.
Perfection is the enemy of progress — here, in sheer understanding.
2. The Anthropocene is too short to be a geological epoch—just one human lifetime.
This is all about avoiding responsibility: What me? I did this! Nah!
3. The Anthropocene is just a blip in Earth history.
Another just-little-ole-me cop-out and a bold call for inaction!
4. Anthropocene strata are “minimal” or “negligible.”
Geologists need to have their evidence LITERALLY carved in stone. Seriously, who made these people the kings of all self-realization on climate change?
5. The geological record is too complex and gradational to draw one single boundary for the Anthropocene.
File that one under the previous header. This is just being anal: I give up! I can’t pinpoint the exact moment? I mean, was it a Tuesday or not?
6. Other animals have affected the environment and caused geological change, so there’s nothing special about the Anthropocene.
Now you’re just being silly. Humans move ten times more rock and sediment each year than Mother Nature does. Can you name any species that are out-lifting us right now? Are we really going to discuss cow farts?
7. The Anthropocene blames all humans equally for the global environmental crises.
Ah … no it doesn’t. It’s pretty clear that the advanced Northern economies are far more responsible for this than the Global South. Nobody in the know is pushing this argument anymore.
8. The Anthropocene signals defeat in our efforts to mitigate environmental change.
Nonsense. It’s the starting pistol for both mitigation AND adaptation. Stop being such a surrender monkey!
9. Naming the Anthropocene after humans is hubristic.
Another please-don’t-blame-me cop-out, often paired with God gave us this planet to abuse!
10. The Anthropocene is just a publicity stunt.
It’s a self-awareness stunt, like a bunch of family and friends confronting you about your self-destructive drug habit. So, yeah, a stunt for the stunted but the real deal for those of us who want to leave a habitable planet to our kids.
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