Why Aren’t We All Driving Electric Cars Yet? (changing the paradigm)
“If we break through to the other side, if the voting public can see that the long term benefits massively outweigh the short term pain, then a tipping point may be passed and with it a wave of support resulting in a more robust mandate for change.”
The Tesla Roadster
Changing the Paradigm
The manufacture and use of automobiles contributes a staggering 20-25% of global CO2 emissions. Such a sizable percentage would suggest a marked shift in the automobile industry away from current trends is imperative to any global or national strategy to cut emissions. What’s more it is highly likely that by seriously effecting changes in these powerful industries many other CO2 producing industries will fall into line too, encouraged by the positive economies and improvements evolving from carbon neutral transport systems. Positive change begets positive change and that is key to getting the ball rolling in this area.
The production of electric cars is all very well but it’s of no use if those cars are charged every night by electricity derived from fossil fuels. We need now more than ever to introduce the initial economic conditions and catalysts that will lead to a serious and irreversible paradigm shift. Whilst this revolution won’t happen over night, it will, if implemented vigorously and courageously, gather speed as the years unfold, creating as it goes new avenues and new opportunities for development, slowly bringing the public on board as it reaps the benefits. Although there will be pain on the way, the benefits will be reaped in this generation’s lifetime. In the words of the author James Martin abandonment of fossil fuels won’t mean going back to nature but will predicate the rise of ‘eco affluence’, a society that is richer and better off than their predecessors, surrounded by incredible technologies but in a society that is carbon neutral.
The Peugeot Leonin
Planning for the Future
There seems to be two main avenues for addressing the current predicament – through financial incentives and sanctions (taxing heavy road users, regular flyers, subsidising carbon neutral industries, penalising carbon heavy ones, etc), and through the building of less automobile-centric cities and transport infrastructures. Addressing automobile and aviation greenhouse gas emissions needs short, medium and long term plans, all of which must be developed in detail:
- Short term plans would focus on getting car usage down by using the tax system to penalise heavy road users whilst heavily incentivising and investing in public transport / cycle routes / walking. These kinds of changes can be implemented almost immediately. All that is needed is political will. They will be unpopular at first and to some may seem unfair but community support will follow given time for the medium and long term plans to play out.
- Medium term planning takes place over a decade or two and involve massive long term investment in alternative carbon neutral solutions and the accompanying infrastructures, culminating in more electric cars coming off the production line at affordable prices (amongst other things). There is still much R&D to be done in this field and technical problems to conquer (such as the problem with making effective batteries and tailoring the national grid to deal with the spikes in energy usage from owners charging them). This can partly be done through the tax system but also needs bold and radical adaptation of our cities and transport infrastructures. Industry support is crucial at this stage and the paradigm shift must really be under way for this to take place effectively.
- Long term plans should involve the redesigning and re engineering of entire cities and transport systems, based on an evolving blueprint for a carbon neutral country. This calls for the nurturing of bold and brilliant visionaries. By this point we should be seeing a complete cultural shift away from petrol cars towards a new generation of desirable electric vehicles at every end of the price spectrum. More rail, less roads, recharge points for electric cars and a national grid geared up to produce electricity for a generation of electric vehicles without burning CO2 will accompany this trend.
A Holistic Approach
At present the UK’s residual fuel mix is made up from 35.7% coal; 48.9% natural gas; 5.2% nuclear; 6.5% renewables and 3.7% other fuels. Of this coal is by far the biggest polluter producing 910 g/kWh, with natural gas at 400g/kWh and others in at 600 k/Wh. Nucelar and renewables of course produce zero. Whether we like it or not the former of these has to be featured in any short to medium term plan to drastically reduce carbon emissions. It is important to stress that it won’t necessarily be a permanent solution, as the development of infinitely abundant and clean energy sources such as nuclear fusion may well come to supersede everything else. But this is, for now, a specific arguement and we need to look at the bigger picture, we need a holistic approach.
As already mentioned the heart of the problem is in changing the dominant paradigm by making tough decisions. In the automobile industry many skilled jobs may become redundant but in the case of the automobile industry combustion engines will be replaced by new types of technology and therefore new skillsets will be required. There needs to therefore be a heavy investment in retraining and new training to keep the electorate onside. The dominance of accepted orthodoxies, a misinformed public and myopic politics are the greatest challenges we face in implementing change, but I refer again to James Martin’s premise of ‘eco affluence’; we needn’t be poorer off for this transition, indeed quite the opposite. The problem is in the hardships necessitated by any fundamental upheaval in an economy and the underlying society it supports.
Car recharge point
Deconstructing Economic Orthodoxies and Dismantling Fossil Fuel Hegemonies
The state of the global economy and national deficit imply a barrier to change but they actually offer an opportunity. Fiscal conservatism isn’t the answer, although markets should and do play a role. If Britain can strike out alone in heavily investing in science and R&D, taxing carbon production heavily in industry to avoid unnecessary burdens placed on the taxpayer then it is likely we will be emulated. Competition is a driver of international markets. If the perception is that we are etching out a place as market leaders is what will become a trillion dollar industry, this will stimulate competition abroad. Long termism must trump short term obsessions about the defecit and the markets. We need to separate the economic problems from the imperative of long term investment. We must gear our economies not around deficit reduction but a restructuring and reorganisation of principles. A green industry needs to be at the heart of our economic planning. We need to break free of the bloated financial sector that has made us vulnerable and is the cause of so much public dissent.
Heavy investment in the electric car industry and all the necessary infrastructure to roll it out on a large scale will undoubtedly face stiff opposition from the motoring industry as well as the oil industry. These corporate hegemonies hold incredible political as well as financial power but they don’t directly control government policy (yet). But at their hearts all corporations are guided by the singular principle of making money for their shareholders and not some archaic religiosity towards an oil based transport industry. If they think there is money to be made in an electric car industry they will increase investment and production. If we break through to the other side, if the voting public can see that the long term benefits massively outweigh the short term pain, then the tipping point may be passed and with it a wave of support resulting in a more robust mandate for change. As benefits begin to emerge so this support will swell. New tech will result, creating new industries and exciting new opportunities for wealth creation producing economic feedbacks and ushering in the new paradigm.
Replacing the combustion engine with an electric battery doesn't necessarily mean sacrificing the performance of cultural desirability of the car.
Emerging Technologies and the Dangers of Biofuel Dependency
Already there are emerging technologies which seek to bridge the gap between the actual deployment of electric cars and the long term problem of adapting electricity grids to deal with the massive spikes in electricity use when people get home around 6pm to charge their cars. The technology giant Intel is already working with SAP and ESB on producing a smart tablet that will link into your calendar and charge your car according to your suspected journey time the next day. What’s more is that it will link to the grid and know when is the best time to charge your battery. The technology is out there and with huge developments in the efficiency of batteries we can expect to have the tools not only to replace the combustion engines with its electric equivalent but to actually produce a vehicle of comparable performance that is cheaper to run and less prone to breakdown.
There is a danger that we can neglect the electric car and go down the path of adopting biofuels like ethanol. Whilst cutting carbon dioxide emissions putting all our eggs in the ethanol / methanol biofuel basket has huge long term risks. Huge swathes of land are cut down to grow the corn, causing more deforestation and negatively impacting on food stocks in a time of globally burgeoning populations and worldwide economic stagnation. Whilst the development of genetically engineered crops will help to ease this fuel / food crop competition for space, the rising frequency and scale of droughts may well counter it out. Electric cars require additional electricity from the grid but we at least have the option of where we source this electricity. With biofuels we do not. The risks are too great. We must look at holistic approaches and not short term fixes.
The Electric Car Revolution
Short term compromises will be needed to bridge the difficult transition to clean energies which will come. If we can reduce CO2 by adopting a new generation of nuclear thorium reactors combined with more wind / solar / hydro power generation then we can seriously look at cutting fossil fuels out of the picture entirely, paving the way for a truly smart grid powered exclusively by abundant and carbon neutral energy sources. The electric car is only one part of this grand picture but its large scale deployment will be a powerful driver not only of economic models of change but of cultural / societal shifts in attitude. The paradigm shift needs its symbolism, its iconography of change. The electric car may just be it.
Eureka Excerpt (Times Science monthly supplement) – Thursday 6th Oct 2011
I’m not a Times reader but their Eureka supplement is excellent. Very cogent and convincing editorial in yesterdays edition. Mark Henderson is spot on. Science funding and our economic future are inextricably intertwined. Unfortunately in these times of defect fetishism and quantitative easing the view is decidedly myopic. We need to ring fence the science budget, maybe even increase it in real terms, or risk an irreversible brain drain and forever becoming a nation of financiers and hedge fund managers.
The Scale of the Universe
If you ever feel small or insignificant then click on this link and zoom in and out of the entire universe. Try for just a moment to get your head around just how tiny we really are… or how truly infinitesimal the particles, atoms and quarks that make up ‘us’ are. You will ultimately fail. These kinds of scale are way beyond our perception. But they never fail to ignite in me a sense of awe and wonder.
Reviving The Thorium Vision (green nuclear?)
“Nuclear power and in particular nuclear power produced from thorium needs as much green PR and marketing as wind and solar now.”
My recent blog post on the nuclear question seems to have sparked the interest in a couple of my friends, some of whom are for and some against. I have recently been reading a lot around the idea of using Thorium as a fuel in nuclear reactors, as Professor Al-Khalili briefly touched upon in his documentary. First proposed and designed by the late Alvin Weinberg, the idea for Thorium reactors have been around since the 50′s but were abandoned when it became strategically more desirable to build reactors fuelled by uranium-238, which produces the by product plutonium-239, the primary fissile material used in nuclear weapons. The expediencies of the Cold War won the argument then but they are completely irrelevant in today’s post cold war environment. The new expediency is climate change and in this capacity thorium can and should be allowed to bridge the gap between carbon free energy and the often negative public perception of nuclear power. Below is a quote from the Guardian:
“The idea is to create a new generation of nuclear reactors based on the element thorium, as opposed to the uranium used to produce nuclear power today. Thorium, its advocates claim, is beneficial not only because it’s far more abundant and widely distributed in the Earth’s crust than uranium; in addition, liquid-fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) could theoretically be much smaller, much cheaper and much safer than conventional nuclear reactors. The waste they produce would remain dangerous for a far shorter period and, crucially, couldn’t be used to create nuclear weapons. As a bonus, these fourth-generation nuclear plants could even burn up the dangerous plutonium stored in existing nuclear waste stockpiles, using it as a fuel. The Weinberg team is already talking to Sellafield about this idea.”
Having briefly trudged through some of the literature and the nascent website of the Weinberg Foundation, which was formally inaugurated by parliament on 8th Sept 2011, I can see there is a lot to consider and a lot more reading to be done. The project’s green credentials do seem on a good footing though, notably after Friends of the Earth Policy and Campaigns Director, Craig Bennett, wished the Weinberg foundation the best of luck.
There seem to be a whole host of potential sources for carbon free energy sources available to us, ranging from the theoretical to the currently operational. Renewables such as wind and solar and tidal have obvious green appeal and are already in action. But without huge and unprecedented investment and subsidies they will fail to meet demand and shift fossil fuels from their dominant position in the market. Arguably they never will be able to meet the demands of a growing global population. Whilst theoretical, undeveloped or currently uneconomical technologies (such as nuclear fusion or artificial photosynthesis) could prove decisive in producing abundant sources of cheap clean energy to satisfy global demand, they require huge investments in R&D and a lot of patience on behalf of the taxpayers and businesses funding them. Typically this is an unattractive prospect for hard up governments looking for ever more tangible guarantees on their investments.
Enter the liquid fluroide thorium reactor. A different kind of nuclear fuel and one with a whole rack of advantages over its uranium cousins which rely on pressurised light water reactors that are more expensive and more dangerous to run. I will simply link to the Thorium MSR website which explains - albeit onesidedly the pros (and not the cons).
What is needed most of all though is a distinct paradigm shift in our attitude to nuclear (even though recent polls conducted after Fukishima suggest that nuclear remains popular in this country worldwide public support remain on the decline with Germany one of several European nations looking to abandon Nuclear altogether). Nuclear power and in particular nuclear power produced from thorium needs as much green PR and marketing as wind and solar now. Radioactive waste aside, these are carbon free fuels and with the threat of runaway climate change moving away from dirty fuels must surely remain the imperative, even we need to move to an interim source. With time of the essence and a new generation of efficient thorium reactors desperately needed, we surely have to hedge our bets. Intransigence is not an option.
Big Think Youtube series
These Big Think series of clips with big thinkers are well worth a listen to, with minds and characters as brilliant and bold as Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry.
This is a soundbite from Ray Kurzweil, one of the minds behind the concept of the Singularity (see my previous post and scroll to post humanism for more details). This may sound like sci fi to many of you but we must keep repeating Arthur C Clarke’s mantra which states that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’
Really this is just taking Moore’s law to it’s natural conclusion. There’s no great leap in believability or plausibility here. But what happens when we reach that inevitable situation when we cannot shrink any more transistors onto microprocessors… well the world of molecular and quantum computers beckons. Just listen to physicist clever cloggs Michio Kaku. The Singularity beckons…
The Nuclear Question
“It seems to me that if people understood exactly what went wrong at Fukishima and the potential benefits of nuclear power, then we could finally have a more objective and sensible debate on the issue. ”
Above is the Horizon documentary presented by Prof. Jim Al-Khalili (a nuclear physicist / TV presenter who wasn’t in a rubbish 90′s band and doesn’t have a silly haircut). It is split into four parts but I highly recommend you watch it. Unfortuntaly the BBC in their infinite wisdom have now taken the series down off the iPlayer.
The documentary sees the prof travel to Fukishima to see for himself the devastation left in the wake of Japan’s Tsunami as he visits the 25km exclusion zone around the devastated nuclear reactors. We are given amazing insight into this mysterious ghost town by one of the Japanese clean up volunteers travelling into the zone. What is perhaps most interesting apart from the sciencey bit about how nuclear power and controlled chain reactions actually work and produce actual electricity (very much like a massive kettle apparently – who’d have thought it) is the section explaining the actual design of the Fukishima power station. The plant itself is over 40 years old and it seems is now outdated when compared to most modern or updated nuclear power stations around the world. The problem lay in the build up of steam due to the cooling systems becoming overwhelmed by flood water and an eventual explosion which blew the lid off the reactor and let loose radioactive particles. These build ups of excess steam are siphoned off into something called a condensation chamber but it seems Fukishima’s condensation chamber was too small and so couldn’t prevent the explosion. Modern reactors now have much larger condensation chambers.
Prof Al-Khalili then travels to Chernobyl, site of the worst nuclear accident in history. The ghost town he finds there is even more chilling, and to one former resident of nearby Pripyat, overwhelming to return to. Here he talks to a Russian oncologist and we start to uncover a truth about nuclear power that is incredibly revealing and misrepresented. The Chernobyl nuclear accident, which took place in a very old reactor, is thought to have killed hundreds, if not thousands of people through their exposure to radioactive particles resulting, presumably in terminal cancers and tumours. But the reality is somewhat different. Of the 47 workers who died as a result of acute radiation syndrome after the meltdown the statistics are highly controversial. The excesses in Thyroid cancers amongst the population (mainly children due to the rapid cell division in the Thyroid’s of the young) are indisputable but of the two and a half thousand cases in the wide area of study in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, that have been radio induced cancers only fifteen of these proved fatal. That’s 15 confirmed deaths in a population of over 6 million.
What’s more there is a good chance that most of these cases could have been prevented by iodine tablets which the body takes up instead of the radioactive iodine. Unlike the precautions implemented after Fukishima in 2011, iodine tablets were not immediately made available in the then Soviet Union in 1986. Indeed, the report discussed in this film has featured in many reputable scientific journals including nature as well as being taken up by the W.H.O. This isn’t a former soviet bloc white wash. This is real and diligent science.
Of course the long term effects of radiation and the increases in cancers in the wider environment are almost impossible to measure and clarify with any degree of accuracy. But if we’re going to put these numbers into context then we only need look at the numbers of deaths resulting from the extraction and burning of coal, oil and gas (including the recent tragic death of 4 welsh miners in the Swansea valley).
There have been no confirmed deaths from Fukishima and yet we react as if it is the end of the line for nuclear power. Was there any serious movement to abandon drilling for oil in offshore rigs after the Deepwater Horizon disaster? The anti nuclear movement is reflective enough of public opinion on these matters now that is seems to be cajoling governments into rethinking their energy policies, as it continues to scaremonger and play on our collective dread of radiation (something which the prof explains occurs all the time within our bodies and in the world all around us). It seems to me that if people understood exactly what went wrong at Fukishima and the potential benefits of nuclear power, then we could finally have a more objective and sensible debate about on the issue.
It’s a debate we need to have soon because there is no doubt now in any sane thinking person’s mind that we need to break this addiction to fossil fuels. Nuclear is one option amongst many but it has proved itself to be a reliable and non intermittent source of power. Maybe we should look at all the facts before we condemn it on a wave of whipped up fear and opposition.
My Top 10 Apocalypses (and who’s to blame)
10 – Gradual Population Decline
This so called ‘soft’ or ‘voluntary extinction’ is less cataclysmic armageddon and more embarrassing fiasco. The notion that at current Western demographic trends global population growth will actually start to drop off reaching zero by 3000AD is a slightly difficult concept to get your head round, given all the press and evidence stating the opposite. The maths adds up sure but it’s totally reliant on continuing and unabated globalisation, that is the proliferation of industrialisation, suburbanisation, education and social mobilisation so that the rest of the world start to behave more like western populations having fewer offspring, presumably choosing to focus more on their careers, becoming middle class and getting addicted to Starbucks coffee and their new smart phone. Current projections predict that if the global rate of reproduction were to fall to that of Germany’s overnight we wouldn’t make it beyond 2400AD. Of course this completely ignores the fact that if the whole world lived like western consumers, without abandoning fossil fuels and converting to abundant green energy sources we’d be heating the atmosphere at an even more catastrophic rate than we are now. This would mean it’d actually be climate change that got us in the end, not population decline, as explained in our next scenario. Still, I quite like the irony. Who thought the apocalypse could be so lame.
Who’s to blame: Well clearly everyone’s too busy playing Angrybirds or texting each other on their iPhones to even notice it’s even happening let alone point the finger and blame someone else. So everyone really.
9 – Runaway Climate Change
The environmentalists raison d’etre. Anthropogenic climate change, or the dumping of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere causing global climate to become inexorably hotter as well as a whole heap of other terrible shit, seems the most likely scenario on our list of potential apocalypses. But like our previous entry, this is less ‘aaaaah we’re all gonna die’ and more ‘aaaaah why haven’t we all died yet’. Like forgetting to procreate this scenario would involve a slow drawn out descent into a Mad Max style world of deserts and scavenging tribes before our eventual extinction. One possibility is that we could actually de-evolve back to a more primitive hunter gatherer life form more similar to our early stone age ancestors than modern humans, living in pockets in the far northern fringes of the planet away from the inhospitably hot temperatures of the rest of the planet. Unlike the population decline scenario (which, the more I think of it, is just bloody ridiculous) the onset of runaway climate change is going to involve lots of fighting with our fellow humans over Earth’s precious resources and an actual lack of Starbucks and iPhones. The most precious resource won’t be oil however but water, a commodity some very worried clever clogs have already dubbed ‘blue gold.’ My advice is to always listen to clever clogs. Except when they’re trying to sell you something. Localised water wars could well bring about the catalyst for a new global conflict with all the military technology and destruction that entails, wiping humans from the planet long before the onset of any Mad Max style situation. In many ways then, this scenario could be the precursor for our next apocalypse.
Who’s to blame: This is a huge list, including politicians and industry chiefs across the globe but I’m the prize surely has to go to the Americans for trying the hardest to deny it was ever even happening and continuing to pledge their undying love of oil and coal [company profits]. Although China could have stopped whining on about how it’s their turn to industrialise now. That kind of attitude just wasn’t helping anyone.
8 – World War III
Perhaps the all time classic scenario and genuine concern for the Cold War generation, World War III trumps our last two slightly drawn out extinctions in a sudden hail of gunfire and mushroom clouds. Not that a nuclear confrontation is inevitable with the onset of a third world wide war. Having at its heart the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the postwar proliferation of nuclear weaponry by nation states came to be seen by strategists as more of an insurance policy than any practical or viable means of waging war. A kind of ‘you wipe my country from the face of the earth and I’ll wipe your country from the face of the earth’ kind of approach. Luckily for us then the Soviets and the West seemed to have realised this and never pushed the button. That’s not to say we haven’t had any near misses. Nor that they wouldn’t have given a pre-emptive strike by the other. The Cuban Missile Crisis is the obvious example but there have been others. Biological or chemical warfare is also a distinct possibility. This type of warfare has already been used by dictators on their own populations as well as on advancing armies and can have extremely localised or entirely global ramifications, depending on the nature of the weapon and who’s using it. Ultimately though, the WWIII scenario can be seen as the end result of a more gradual apocalypticy looking decline, possibly as the world becomes covered in deserts due to runaway climate change, and nations fight each other over dwindling resources. Alternatively a global war could result from our next scenario. Stalwart of the science fiction genre, please give a warm welcome to… the alien invasion.
Who’s to blame: Blatantly it’ll be the Americans. Again, sorry guys, but you do seem to have the propensity for destroying things on a very large scale.
7 – Alien Invasion
Amazing. This could be one of my favourites. Firstly because it kind of puts religion and the whole ‘we’re really special because God made us’ idea on a really shaky footing (if only for the small amount of time it takes for us to be annihilated in a hail of laser beams). But secondly, because there is an outside chance that some of us could be rounded up and transported back to the invading alien species home planet as slave labour. Now although I’m sure this would be horrendous for those involved it’d be pretty cool to get a ride on an alien spaceship and actually get out and see the universe. Perhaps then, one day in the far flung future, some progressive thinking alien politician will campaign for our emancipation and our human descendants will be set free to go and live in ghettos and slums in the alien metropolises, eventually finding their own voice and sense of community and uniting to rise up and etch out a place in the alien society. So I feel there is definitely a potential silver lining to this apocalyptic scenario. Then again, this could all be a bit optimistic. More likely they’ll just slaughter all of us and turn our planet into a tacky holiday resort.
Another bonus would be the expression on the faces of the Generals. Presumably any civilisation that has the technology to travel to our world from another solar system also has the technological potential to wipe us out without even really having to recharge the batteries afterwards. Oh please let them have laser guns!
Who’s to blame: Well the belligerent aliens, obviously. Although, as a species, if we’d never gotten out of the trees and started transmitting radio signals into space they would probably never have found us. So for the first time I think science has to take a portion of the blame here. I don’t think it’ll be the last time either as our next apocalyptic spectacle demonstrates.
6 – Uncontrollable Proliferation of Nanotechnology (Grey Goo Hypothesis)
Okay so we finally get to a scenario which we can wholly blame on science and our own insatiable instinct to play god and control and colonise every physical sphere we encounter on our journey as human beings. Including that of the very small. Yes, this is nano technology, and whilst it’s benefits for medicine are truly remarkable, it’s potential destructiveness is truly terrifying. So terrifying infact that this is the first apocalyptic scenario that not only threatens life on the planet’s surface but the planet itself. It is then a true champion in our list, not bothering to stop at the earth’s crust in its quest to annihilate everything.
So let’s just go through the facts briefly shall we. You’re gonna love this. So, scientists have been playing around with the idea of nano tech for some time. Amongst its many applications, it includes the development of microscopic robots, or nanobots, that can manipulate the very molecules and atoms around them. Nanobots could be released into the human body to repair damaged tissue or fight off bacterial diseases, even weed out cancerous cells. These little critters could even alter the atomic structure of individual molecules, extracting hydrogen and oxygen from water or turning coal into diamond. This isn’t science fiction, it’s practical application in medicine could be as little as 10 years away.
The trouble is that it’s going to be very tricky to build nanobots and we’re going to need a lot of them (as in millions and millions) to make them effective. The simple solution to this problem, it seems, is to make some of them specialised in building new nanobots themselves. Nanobots could be made to manipulate the atoms and molecules of their microscopic realms and build versions of themselves, saving us the bother. But there is one potential drawback to this approach and it’s quite an important one. If just one of these nanobots were accidentally or purposefully discarded and got out into the outside environment it would continue to convert normal matter into more nanobots. And these nanobot would themselves begin assimilating more matter, turning it into yet more nanobots. And so on and so on. The theory holds that within 72 hours all life on the planet and indeed the entire planet itself would actually have been converted into nanobots, leaving a strange grey goo floating in space where our planet once was. Cool!
Now this is a pretty quick way for us all to die but there is something out there that could destroy all life in the blink of an eye and to understand that we have to travel deep beyond our own solar system.
Who’s to blame: The goddamn scientists again!!!!
5 – Gamma Ray Bursts
In 1950 the Italian American Physicist Enrico Fermi supposed why, given the vast size and age of the universe and the immeasurable number of galaxies and stars we observe it to have, we haven’t yet found evidence of intelligent life. He contended that if there were advanced space faring civilisations out there then we would have by now found evidence of their spacecraft and technology throughout our own galaxy. Indeed if we hold to the theory that the universe should regularly produce intelligent life then interstellar space should be resounding with radio broadcasts and transmissions from other species. The Drake equation set about trying to scientifically calculate the possibility of rocky earth like planets existing in the so called ‘goldilocks zones’ around their parent stars, and whether these planets are harbouring the building blocks of life and the chances of this life getting off the ground and eventually evolving into intelligence, language, civilisation, etc. The late Carl Sagan saw the possibilities in the Drake equation for a universe that is teeming with life.
But whatever your view on the universe teeming with life, it does all seem quite quiet from down here on earth. Space appears devoid of any kind of complex life. Dead. Desolate. To all extent and purposes it seems from our vantage point on the on the inner edge of the Orion–Cygnus Arm of the Milky Way, that we are alone. But what has this to do with apocalypses, I hear you ask. Well I’ll tell you.
One theory for our interstellar solitude is the existence of so called gamma ray bursts. These bursts of lethal gamma radiation, observable from Earth, are the most violent and luminous events that we know to take place in the universe. They occur when large stars die, exploding in a supernova or hypernova and shedding starstuff throughout the universe as they collapse to form a neutron star, quark star or even black hole. It has been proposed that these gamma ray bursts act like galactic ‘sterilisers’ with hypernova (a really really big supernova) throwing out particularly long bursts of radiation into the universe. These energy waves would take many millions of years to lose their energy and would surely wipe out biological life on any planets they encountered on their journey into the cosmos. But not to worry. This is a long term threat and the universe is a large place. No honestly, it really is very very big and even the nearest star is really very very far away. However, there are things out there that could destroy us all and that aren’t so far away. Infact smaller versions of them are hitting our atmosphere every single day.
Who’s to blame: Quite a deep question actually. You could blame God if you’re that way inclined but then you could blame god for almost anything. I’d just say shit happens personally.
4 – Major Impact Event
This is a scary one, because it really actually could happen. Infact scrap that, it has happened! It is happening all the time. Meteor showers (or what Disney lovers call shooting stars) are particles burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere, usually when our orbit passes through the long tail of a comet which is strewn with particles of dust and ice often no larger than a grain of sand. But larger things have hit our atmosphere and do every day. Some of them are large enough to get through this protective layer of gasses that surround us and hit the surface at incredible speeds. And just occasionally, one comes along that is large enough to really cause the things living on the surface some serious problems. Don’t believe me? Just ask the dinosaurs… oh wait, you can’t. They’re extinct having all got wiped out suddenly. I rest my case.
The thing about comets, meteorites and asteroids hitting our planet is that rather ironically they may be the reason we are even here in the first place. Some scientists believe that the large amounts of water that has ended up on our planet was brought here in the form of icy comets hitting the surface during a period known as the Great Bombardment, a geological eon on Earth so hellish it is referred to by geology clever clogs as the Hadean. As well as depositing water, there is a theory that these extra terrestrial objects could have deposited the building blocks of life throughout the planet, perhaps even bringing life itself to our world; a hypothesis known as exogenesis.
But the hand that made us can just as easily destroy us. The geological record contains several mass extinctions (and five major extinctions, the most famous being the Cretaceous saw dinosaurs disappear from the fossil record almost overnight) and there is significant evidence to suggest that some of these were caused by impact events. There is absolutely no reasons why these events should not, and will not, happen again. Human arrogance, anthropocentricism and a deep inability to understand deep time leaves us with the rather concerning delusion that we’ve been here a long time. We haven’t. And eventually we will get hit by something big. And it will kill us. A lot of us anyway. It’s good to know we’ve prepared for it though… oh no wait, sorry we haven’t. Infact we’re all in the middle of cutting funding to the scientific projects that watch our skies for these dark silent global killers. So at least now we won’t have time to piss ourselves in fear and run around screaming a lot before it gets here. Perhaps that’s for the best.
Who’s to blame: Again, shit happens and it’s a big old solar system but with a lot of stuff flying about it from the look of it.
3 – Super Volcano
Supervolcanoes, unlike your regular everyday vanilla volcano, are bloody massive. Defined by spewing out more than 1000 cubic kilometres of ejecta (ash and dust) their eruptions are bigger than anything witnessed in our short history as a species on board mother earth. Like impact events the prospect of a supervolcanic eruption is a frightening possibility not just because it is already taking place on a smaller scale as I sit here and type this but because we have geological evidence that suggests these kind of events have already taken place in the distant past, and what’s more, that that they have caused mass extinctions. A debate rages amongst geological / palaeontological clever clogs as to whether some of the planet’s major extinction events (of which there are 5: the Ordovician, the Devonian, the Permian, the Triassic and the Cretaceous) were the result of massive impact events or runaway global climate change brought on by supervolcanic eruptions throwing up hundreds and hundreds of cubic kilometres of ejecta (ash and dust), therefore blocking out the sun and triggering a ‘small ice age’. What sets supervolcanoes apart from major impact events form in the context of our apocalyptic countdown however is the fact that we have proposed methods of defending ourselves against incoming asteroids and comets (either kinetic or diversionary in nature) even if we choose not to invest in early warning systems. There are six known supervolcanoes on Earth and should one decide to erupt there really is nothing we can conceivably do about it (bar go and live on Mars).
The term supervolcano was actually first coined by the BBC’s amazing Horizon programme back in 2000 but our next scenario has been dramatised and discussed by films, books, documentaries, essays, theses, scholars and experts the world over, no doubt more than all our other apocalypses put together. What is it? Religion silly!
Who’s to blame: It’s just the way of things I guess. Like impact events, there is a strange irony at play. On the one hand tectonics are why we’re here but on the other they give rise to volcanology which may destroy us. Who said god didn’t have a sense of humour. Well clearly this next lot.
2 – End of Days (Eschatology)
Now it is my contention that religion is a very convenient way of getting people to (a) do what you want them to do, less they go to Hell, and, (b) not worry themselves silly about the prospect of dying, unless of course they fail to comply with (a). With this in mind I think the scientific amongst us should take our seventh apocalyptic scenario with a good pinch of salt, perhaps even a pillar of it. I thought I’d throw it in though because as far as actual apocalypses go God’s judgement really does take the biscuit in terms of sheer scale. You can’t beat a bit of supernatural fury and judgement you see. Eschatology is the study of these final events in history as described or espoused by various faith systems around the world. The Oxford Dictionary describes it as ‘concerned with “the four last things: death, judgement, heaven and hell.”‘ All major faith systems have notions of the apocalypse, or more accurately, the transition from one reality to another, built into their meta narrative of humanity. These can be divided into two groups, linear paths and cyclical paths. A linear path to the end days means history begins, carries on a bit, carries on a bit more, then reaches a conclusion whereby god is present and judges everyone and genuinely comes across as pretty important and omnipotent. Atheists and agnostics feel really stupid and religious people begin arguing as to exactly whose god that is in the sky. This is the narrative path followed by the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam). The second narrative path is cyclical and is the framework of many Eastern religions including Buddhism and Hinduism, both of which believe in reincarnation and hold that the we are living in a particular age and that eventually that age will end and another will begin, ad infinitum. Funnily enough as galactic allegories go these cyclical belief systems are far more in keeping with the behaviour of the universe, of which all matter, including that which comprises us, essentially originates from the centres of dying stars.
Who’s to blame: Well if there is a God(s) and he/she/they deem it necessary to show off and start judging everyone or a giant Panda called Frank who built the universe from his toe nail clippings deems it his master plan then who are we to point the finger as mere mortals. It’s all complete nonsense anyway so I’ll just blame theists the world over.
1 – The Singularity (Post Humanism)
So, at last we now come to our final apocalypse. I have saved this scenario for last for two reasons. First of all it’s actually a matter of philosophical and scientific debate whether our evolution (artificially accelerated or otherwise) into another form of life actually constitutes our extinction and therefore ranks on this list as an apocalypse at all. Secondly, some of the potentialities surrounding the premise of post humanism aren’t actually that negative at all and therefore end our, up until now, fairly bleak looking list on a comparatively exciting and mind boggling note. I don’t want to get accused of negativity here. Even apocalypses can have good points.
Let’s talk first about the singularity. The singularity is a kind of technological point of no return where human advancement in artificial intelligence advances so exponentially that we cannot predict its pace or development. This is due to the positive feedback loop put in motion once intelligent machines start designing and building even more intelligent machines than they and so on and so forth. The breakdown in our ability to predict technological trends and outcomes into the future with any degree of accuracy breaks down completely after this point, becoming analogous to a singularity (something both really really tiny and really really massive). A singularity exists at the heart of every black hole or at the moment of creation just before the big bang, and within which the laws of physics break down utterly, incapable of predicting conditions or outcomes. This can also be analogised as a kind of intellectual event horizon.
How far we are from this rapid period of technological advancement and what our relation to technology will eventually be is the stuff of much debate. The predictions tend to fall into two ways of thinking as far as I can tell. The first is that we are consumed, supplanted or simply superseded by superior artificially intelligent life (I suppose this could be referred to as the ‘Matrix scenario’ which falls into the previously mentioned apocalyptic category of ‘aaaaah we’re all gonna die’). The second premise is that we in some way merge with technology and are forever altered from our present purely biological form by it (this would constitute a ‘post human scenario’). In the eyes of the singularitarianists, this symbiosis is to transcend into something altogether better than the fleshy bodies and limited minds of our ancestors.
This scenario is perhaps then, like our first, a self imposed extinction, but unlike our first scenario, replaces what it erases with something altogether different. What something looks like and when it will happen is of course unknowable due to the very nature of the singularity, but we have already begun to augment our bodies and brains with computerised implants. Technology is advancing at an exponential rate. The internet is already connecting millions and millions of us in increasingly inventive and unprecedented ways. These are exponential times, in every sense. We now carry the net around with us on our smart phones. How long before these smart phones start to become part of us? Maybe we are already well on our way to the singularity. Amazing!
Who’s to blame: Depending on your outlook this could also read, who’s to congratulate. Whoever is responsible I don’t think it’s just the remit of science here. Technology is something that has shaped our modern civilisation and something we all take for granted. We are all partly to blame for this trend towards post humanism whether we realise it or not.
The Psychopath in the Boardroom
Wednesday’s episode of Horizon on BBC2 reveals a shocking truth concerning the nature of corporate culture and the types of individuals it nurtures.
BBC2′s Horizon documentary on Wednesday was an eye opener to say the least. Entitled ‘are you good or evil’ it sets about explaining recent developments in neuroscience and how scientists are beginning to recognise the kind of brain patterns and genes that characterise a psychopathic personality. The kinds of advances we are witnessing in these fields never fail to amaze me. They are allowing us to peer deeper into the human psyche than we ever have before and what we are finding is often quite disturbing and unsettling. It’s a fascinating and highly philosophical field which is helping us get to grips with what it actually is to be human and why we are the way we are.
The programme featured Prof Jim Fallon, who’s was given a number of brain scans by a colleague and asked to sort them into distinctive groups. He had no prior knowledge concerning the recipients of these brain scans but found a distinct difference in some of them and so grouped these seperately. It turned out that every one of the brain scans in this distinctly different group belonged to a convicted murderer or psychopath. Further studies into genes reveals how the MAOA gene (also referred to as the ‘warrior gene’) is another important precursor in an individual propensity to psychopathy. It seemed that scientific research was beginning to reveal a distinct neural and genetic template for a psychopath. But this was only half the story. It is the combination of these two factors along with the social trigger of an abusive or troubled childhood that sees to cause psychoapthy to fully develop.
This is all very fascinating, but what really made me think was the announcement of a simple statistic whose implications seemed to stretch far beyond the remit of the programme. Far beyond the remit of science infact. The issues thrown up by Horizon are at once ethical, social and political in their implications. Perhaps even economic. It seems that psychopathic personalities are much more common than we would perhaps realise and that these personalities can operate within society quite normally. Indeed, in some scenarios they can positively thrive. It turns out that psychopathic personalities have been found to exist in far greater concentrations in the boardrooms of big businesses and corporations. Infact there are four times more psychopaths these groups of people than there are in a normal cross section of society.
Now lets just take that statistic in shall we. Four times as many psychopaths in the gleaming towers and citadels of London’s square mile than walk the streets far below. Four times greater a concentration of unempathetic, manipulative, charming and potentially viscous people betting billions of pounds of savers money on risky financial investments, playing the stockmarkets, earning the big bucks until… well until the whole house of cards came crashing down in 2008. It seems there are times when the results of rigorous scientific research reveals what people quite often observe anecdotally within a given system or society. This is one of those occasions.
Lets look at wikipedias definition of a psychopath.
“The prototypical psychopath has deficits or deviance in several areas: interpersonal relationships, emotion, and behavior.[3] Psychopaths gain satisfaction through antisocial behavior, and do not experience shame, guilt, or remorse for their actions.[22][23][24] Psychopaths lack a sense of guilt or remorse for any harm they may have caused others, instead rationalizing the behavior, blaming someone else, or denying it outright.[25][26] Psychopaths also lack empathy towards others in general, resulting in tactlessness, insensitivity, and contemptuousness. Psychopaths can have a superficial charm about them, enabled by a willingness to say anything to anyone without concern for accuracy or truth. Shallow affect also describes the psychopath’s tendency for genuine emotion to be short-lived, glib and egocentric, with an overall cold demeanor. They tend to be impulsive and irresponsible, often failing to keep a job or defaulting on debts.[26]“
We can now accurately and detachedly observe that some of the most fundamental institutions of our nation’s financial wealth and the pillars of our economy, have much higher concentrations of psychopaths making decisions at the top levels than in normal cross sections of society. It is no wonder then, that this tendency fostered such a consequence free environment; an environment that became so engrained into corporate culture that it became systemic throughout the entire free market economies of the world. It has always been self evident that very few men at the top of these organisations saw the dangers lurking around the corner. But maybe many did and they just didn’t really care about the consequences. Greed has always been prescribed as the driving force of this collective corporate myopia, but could we add psychopathy as a factor as well?
This kind of clinical description not only seems to describe individuals but systems and practices in general. In many ways it offers up explanations for a lot of the post banking crisis behaviour we have seen from banks and financial institutions and the individuals that run them. These institutions, many of which in the UK are now majority tax payer owned, seem to have absolved themselves of all blame, perhaps occasionally feigning guilt when public relations requires them to do so. They are antisocial, in that they have no concern for the damage they have caused and their egocentricity is surely self evident.
I don’t know about you, but if the consequences of curbing obscene bankers bonuses means a move towards a less finance sector dependent economy in the long term, and less psychopathic bankers at the helm of the British economy in the short term, then I’ll help chip in for their plane tickets myself.
The Lunar Surface Revealed (the truth is out there)
In the age of information ubiquity it could almost be seen as counterintuitive that ludicrous and unfounded conspiracy theories can gain the kind of traction they do, often becoming enshrined in the popular imagination as a result.
Such is the scale of the web’s userbase that one could be forgiven for assuming rationality to prevail within its serpentine highways and forums, a working exemplification of the wisdom of crowds. In this manner the internet should self police at every level, its majority of rational minded users weedling out the conspiratists and fantasists, confining them to the padded cells and loony bins of the webs social spaces, the fringes of online society. This is what Tim Bernes Lee envisages when he analogises the internet as a ‘human meta brain’, a self regulating collection of independent thoughts and notions that tend to coalesce around rationality and sanity, freedom and democracy; because for most of the connected world, these sensibilities prevail. But he also significantly admits to its potential as a conduit of extremism, filtering out moderate views and giving preeminence to more emotional ones.
Today NASA released some remarkable images which, one hopes, will put pay to one such ludicrous conspiracy theory; that the moon landings were faked. These images were taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which has been orbiting our solitary moon since 2009. Having recently lowered its altitude from the lunar surface from 50km to 25km, it has been able to take some remarkably clear images of the surface, complete with parked Lunar Roving Vehicle, its tracks and even the footprints of the astronauts of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 missions to the moon, as well as other equipment left on the surface.
These are certainly unprecedented images but if we were to leave our rational minds behind for just one moment and really try to get into the head of the committed conspiracy theorist, with their paranoid delusions, victimised worldview and blinkered belief system, then we can easily circumvent this evidence. These images are also faked they might cry. Just like the moon landings were.
It’s perhaps at this point where I feel it’s best to stop engaging with these people. But maybe that is exactly the reason why these conspiracy theories get such an easy time on the internet. The moderates like you and I simply cannot be bothered to debate with them because they have long ago abandoned any kind of rational discourse. It is an exercise in futility, just like trying to convince a Creationist of the overwhelming evidence for evolution. Their belief systems trump any evidence one might lay before them.
So should we try to take on the emotional headcases and fundamentalists with their wild conspiracy theories and beliefs that propagate the webs serpentine super highways and forums. There is no right and wrong answer to this question. There is perhaps a duty all of us should carry as users of these new social spaces. But this requires a degree of discretion, a keen eye to differentiate between the lunatic and the legitimate subjects. Our energies are best served tackling the real issues, debating the real controversies, not wasted trying to disprove the small minority of conspiracists that take up such a disproportionate amount of space on the internet with their views.
For most of us, the NASA images are a wonderful birds eye view of one of humanity’s greatest achievements. It is a testament to the unchanging surface of the moon that will preserve the 1960′s and 1970′s technology that brought men like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the lunar surface and helped return them safely to the earth. For some though this will only harden their conspiratorial stances and reinforce their delusions. Attempts to convince these people, and those who share similarly immovable worldviews, is futile at best and soul destroying at worst. Don’t waste your time. I think Buzz says it best.
