De acordo com o governo estadual, o esgoto, após tratado, será lançado à Represa Guarapiranga e ao Rio Cotia

São Paulo passará a usar água de reúso (esgoto tratado) no abastecimento da população, anunciou o governador Geraldo Alckmin. A medida também será adotada por Campinas, cidade localizada a 100 quilômetros da capital. Os municípios paulistas passam pela maior crise de abastecimento de água já enfrentada.

De acordo com o governo estadual, o esgoto, após tratado, será lançado à Represa Guarapiranga e ao Rio Cotia. Misturada ao manancial, essa água é novamente tratada e transformada em água potável. A previsão é que as obras, que incluem duas estações de produção de água de reúso com capacidade de gerar três mil litros por segundo, sejam entregues em dezembro de 2015. Os empreendimentos estão em andamento desde julho de 2013, com investimentos de R$ 76,5 milhões.

Outra medida adotada pelo governo paulista é o aumento da retirada de água no Guarapiranga. O fornecimento neste mês será de mil litros por segundo, quantidade que atende a 300 mil habitantes. Serão construídos 29 reservatórios para ampliar em 10% a produção de água. A meta é que todos fiquem prontos até o fim de 2015. O investimento alcançará R$ 169 milhões.

No município de Campinas, a Sociedade de Abastecimento de Água e Esgoto (Sanasa) anunciou, no final de outubro, que vai modificar a Estação de Tratamento de Esgoto Anhumas para produzir água de reúso. Essa água é lançada no Rio Atibaia com 99% de pureza, assegura o prefeito Jonas Donizette.

Um sistema adutor, executado em parceria com o Aeroporto Internacional de Viracopos, que já adota a tecnologia, vai também levar água da Estação Produtora de Água de Reúso (Epar) para o Rio Capivari. No total, a ampliação no volume de água, que deve estar pronta em dois anos, chega a 290 litros por segundo no Rio Capivari e 600 litros por segundo no Rio Atibaia.

O especialista em Recursos Hídricos da Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Antônio Carlos Zuffo, avalia que o abastecimento com o esgoto tratado é uma boa solução. “Vivemos numa região que não produz água suficiente para o abastecimento e vamos ter que fazer o reúso. Só que esse reúso tem que passar pelo tratamento, jogar num rio ou numa lagoa para aumentar o tratamento natural. Depois capta novamente a água e passa pela estação de tratamento. Então, passa por três tipos de tratamentos.”

Zuffo esclarece que a água de esgoto tratada lançada aos rios chega a ter mais qualidade que a água encontrada nos mananciais. Segundo ele, muitas cidades do mundo já utilizam essa água, como é caso da Califórnia, nos Estados Unidos. Lá, o efluente é injetado no solo, para que passe pelo filtro natural e retorne em nascentes para ser captado.

“O mito nessa história é que efluente de esgoto, a gente não pode consumir. A estação de tratamento de esgoto não trata 100%, não torna potável, mas lança no curso de água já com uma qualidade melhor que alguns lançamentos diretos”, disse. De acordo o especialista, a água presente nos rios, muitas vezes, tem qualidade inferior por conter esgoto diluído, jogado de forma irregular.

(Fernanda Cruz / Agência Brasil)

http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/geral/noticia/2014-11/em-meio-crise-hidrica-sao-paulo-usara-esgoto-tratado-no-abastecimento

Saiba Mais

Programa irá financiar cinco projetos na área de desastres naturais (Capes)

07/11/2014UncategorizedCAPES, ciência, Desastre, Financiamento acadêmicorenzotaddei

5060, 6 de novembro de 2014

Programa irá financiar cinco projetos na área de desastres naturais

A divulgação aconteceu nesta quarta-feira (05/11)

A Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes) divulga nesta quarta-feira, 5, o resultado final da seleção do Programa de Apoio ao Ensino e à Pesquisa Científica e Tecnológica em Desastres Naturais (Pró-Alertas).Foram aprovados cinco projetos.

O pró-Alertas tem como objetivo estimular e apoiar a realização de projetos conjuntos de pesquisa no país para a formação de recursos humanos em nível de pós-graduação stricto sensu acadêmico, por meio do desenvolvimento de pesquisa científica e tecnológica interdisciplinares na área de Desastres Naturais.

A iniciativa enquadra-se nas diretrizes da Capes de indução temporária de áreas estratégicas da política brasileira de ciência, tecnologia e inovação. A iniciativa conta com apoio do Ministério de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (MCTI) e pretende contribuir para a consolidação do Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alertas de Desastres Naturais (CEMADEN).

Benefícios
Os projetos aprovados receberão recursos para bolsas de iniciação científica, doutorado e pós-doutorado, além de passagens aéreas para missões de pesquisa no Brasil ou no exterior e diárias para participação em eventos acadêmicos em temas relacionados ao projeto no exterior.

Acesse o resultado.

(CCS/Capes)

http://www.capes.gov.br/sala-de-imprensa/noticias/7213-programa-ira-financiar-cinco-projetos-interdisciplinares-na-area-de-desastres-naturais

Direct brain interface between humans (Science Daily)

07/11/2014UncategorizedCognição, Mediação tecnológica, neurociências, Neurofisiologia, Pós-humanorenzotaddei

Date: November 5, 2014

Source: University of Washington

Summary: Researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team’s initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one person’s brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal.

In this photo, UW students Darby Losey, left, and Jose Ceballos are positioned in two different buildings on campus as they would be during a brain-to-brain interface demonstration. The sender, left, thinks about firing a cannon at various points throughout a computer game. That signal is sent over the Web directly to the brain of the receiver, right, whose hand hits a touchpad to fire the cannon.Mary Levin, U of Wash. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Washington

Sometimes, words just complicate things. What if our brains could communicate directly with each other, bypassing the need for language?

University of Washington researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team’s initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one person’s brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal.

At the time of the first experiment in August 2013, the UW team was the first to demonstrate two human brains communicating in this way. The researchers then tested their brain-to-brain interface in a more comprehensive study, published Nov. 5 in the journal PLOS ONE.

“The new study brings our brain-to-brain interfacing paradigm from an initial demonstration to something that is closer to a deliverable technology,” said co-author Andrea Stocco, a research assistant professor of psychology and a researcher at UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. “Now we have replicated our methods and know that they can work reliably with walk-in participants.”

Collaborator Rajesh Rao, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering, is the lead author on this work.

The research team combined two kinds of noninvasive instruments and fine-tuned software to connect two human brains in real time. The process is fairly straightforward. One participant is hooked to an electroencephalography machine that reads brain activity and sends electrical pulses via the Web to the second participant, who is wearing a swim cap with a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil placed near the part of the brain that controls hand movements.

Using this setup, one person can send a command to move the hand of the other by simply thinking about that hand movement.

The UW study involved three pairs of participants. Each pair included a sender and a receiver with different roles and constraints. They sat in separate buildings on campus about a half mile apart and were unable to interact with each other in any way — except for the link between their brains.

Each sender was in front of a computer game in which he or she had to defend a city by firing a cannon and intercepting rockets launched by a pirate ship. But because the senders could not physically interact with the game, the only way they could defend the city was by thinking about moving their hand to fire the cannon.

Across campus, each receiver sat wearing headphones in a dark room — with no ability to see the computer game — with the right hand positioned over the only touchpad that could actually fire the cannon. If the brain-to-brain interface was successful, the receiver’s hand would twitch, pressing the touchpad and firing the cannon that was displayed on the sender’s computer screen across campus.

Researchers found that accuracy varied among the pairs, ranging from 25 to 83 percent. Misses mostly were due to a sender failing to accurately execute the thought to send the “fire” command. The researchers also were able to quantify the exact amount of information that was transferred between the two brains.

Another research team from the company Starlab in Barcelona, Spain, recently published results in the same journal showing direct communication between two human brains, but that study only tested one sender brain instead of different pairs of study participants and was conducted offline instead of in real time over the Web.

Now, with a new $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, the UW research team is taking the work a step further in an attempt to decode and transmit more complex brain processes.

With the new funding, the research team will expand the types of information that can be transferred from brain to brain, including more complex visual and psychological phenomena such as concepts, thoughts and rules.

They’re also exploring how to influence brain waves that correspond with alertness or sleepiness. Eventually, for example, the brain of a sleepy airplane pilot dozing off at the controls could stimulate the copilot’s brain to become more alert.

The project could also eventually lead to “brain tutoring,” in which knowledge is transferred directly from the brain of a teacher to a student.

“Imagine someone who’s a brilliant scientist but not a brilliant teacher. Complex knowledge is hard to explain — we’re limited by language,” said co-author Chantel Prat, a faculty member at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and a UW assistant professor of psychology.

Other UW co-authors are Joseph Wu of computer science and engineering; Devapratim Sarma and Tiffany Youngquist of bioengineering; and Matthew Bryan, formerly of the UW.

The research published in PLOS ONE was initially funded by the U.S. Army Research Office and the UW, with additional support from the Keck Foundation.

Journal Reference:

Rajesh P. N. Rao, Andrea Stocco, Matthew Bryan, Devapratim Sarma, Tiffany M. Youngquist, Joseph Wu, Chantel S. Prat. A Direct Brain-to-Brain Interface in Humans. PLoS ONE, 2014; 9 (11): e111332 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0111332

Humans, baboons share cumulative culture ability (Science Daily)

07/11/2014UncategorizedAnimais, Animais de laboratório, Cultura, Inteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Macacosrenzotaddei

Date: November 5, 2014

Source: Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)

Summary: The ability to build up knowledge over generations, called cumulative culture, has given humankind language and technology. While it was thought to be limited to humans until now, researchers have recently found that baboons are also capable of cumulative culture.

The ability to build up knowledge over generations, called cumulative culture, has given mankind language and technology. While it was thought to be limited to humans until now, researchers from the Laboratoire de psychologie cognitive (CNRS/AMU), working in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Edinburgh (UK), have recently found that baboons are also capable of cumulative culture. Their findings are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on 5 November 2014.

Humankind is capable of great accomplishments, such as sending probes into space and eradicating diseases; these achievements have been made possible because humans learn from their elders and enrich this knowledge over generations. It was previously thought that this cumulative aspect of culture — whereby small changes build up, are transmitted, used and enriched by others — was limited to humans, but it has now been observed in another primate, the baboon.

While it is clear that monkeys like chimpanzees learn many things from their peers, each individual seems to start learning from scratch. In contrast, humans use techniques that evolve and improve from one generation to the next, and also differ from one population to another. The origin of cumulative culture in humans has therefore remained a mystery to scientists, who are trying to identify the necessary conditions for this cultural accumulation.

Nicolas Claidière and Joël Fagot, of the Laboratoire de psychologie cognitive, conducted the present study at the CNRS Primatology Center in Rousset, southeastern France. Baboons live in groups there and have free access to an area with touch screens where they can play a “memory game” specifically designed for the study. The screen briefly displays a grid of 16 squares, four of which are red and the others white. This image is then replaced by a similar grid, but composed of only white squares, and the baboons must touch the four squares that were previously red. Phase one of the experiment started with a task-learning period in which the position of the four red squares was randomized. Phase two comprised a kind of visual form of “Chinese whispers” wherein information was transmitted from one individual to another. In this second phase, a baboon’s response (the squares touched on the screen) was used to generate the next grid pattern that the following baboon had to memorize and reproduce, and so on for 12 “generations.”

The researchers, in collaboration with Simon Kirby and Kenny Smith from the University of Edinburgh, noted that baboons performed better in the phase involving a transmission chain (compared with random testing, which continued throughout the period of the experiment): success rate (1) increased from 80% to over 95%. Due to errors by the baboons, the patterns evolved between the beginning and the end of each chain. Yet to the surprise of researchers, the random computer-generated patterns were gradually replaced by “tetrominos” (Tetris®-like shapes composed of four adjacent squares), even though these forms represent only 6.2% of possible configurations! An even more surprising result was that the baboons’ performance on these rare shapes was poor during random testing, but increased throughout the transmission chain, during which the tetrominos accumulated. Moreover, when the experiment was replicated several times, the starting patterns did not lead to the same set of tetrominos. This study shows that, like humans, baboons have the ability to transmit and accumulate changes over “cultural generations” and that these incremental changes, which may differ depending on the chain, become structured and more efficient.

Researchers have ensured that all the necessary conditions were present to observe a type of cumulative cultural evolution in non-human primates, with its three characteristic properties (progressive increase in performance, emergence of systematic structures, and lineage specificity). These results show that cumulative culture does not require specifically human capacities, such as language. So why have no examples of this type of cultural evolution been clearly identified in the wild? Perhaps because the utilitarian dimension of non-human primate culture (e.g., the development of tools) hinders such evolution.

(1) The task was considered successful if at least 3 out of 4 squares were correctly memorized.

Journal Reference:

N. Claidière, K. Smith, S. Kirby, J. Fagot. Cultural evolution of systematically structured behaviour in a non-human primate. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, November 2014 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2014.1541

Biggest Brazil Metro Area Desperate for Water (AP)

07/11/2014Uncategorizedágua, Desastre, São Paulo, Secarenzotaddei

ITU, Brazil — Nov 7, 2014, 10:23 AM ET

By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON Associated Press

APTOPIX Brazil Running Out of Water

In this Oct. 29, 2014 photo, men walk on the receding banks of the Guarapiranga dam which is responsible for providing water to the Sao Paulo metropolitan area in Brazil. The sign reads in Portuguese “Don’t dive into the water.” Sao Paulo is suffering the worst drought to hit southeastern Brazil in more than eight decades, and more than 10 million people across Sao Paulo state have been forced to cut water use over the past six months. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

The Associated Press

It’s been nearly a month since Diomar Pereira has had running water at his home in Itu, a commuter city outside Sao Paulo that is at the epicenter of the worst drought to hit southeastern Brazil in more than eight decades.

Like others in this city whose indigenous name means “big waterfall,” Pereira must scramble to find water for drinking, bathing and cooking. On a recent day when temperatures hit 90 degrees (32 Celsius), he drove to a community kiosk where people with empty soda bottles and jugs lined up to use a water spigot. Pereira filled several 13-gallon containers, which he loaded into his Volkswagen bug.

“I have a job and five children to raise and am always in a rush to find water so we can bathe,” said Pereira, a truck driver who makes the trip to get water every couple of days. “It’s very little water for a lot of people.”

Brazil is approaching the December start of its summer rainy season with its water supply nearly bare. More than 10 million people across Sao Paulo state, Brazil’s most populous and the nation’s economic engine, have been forced to cut water use over the past six months. A reservoir used by Itu has fallen to 2 percent of capacity and, because its system relies on rain and groundwater rather than rivers, the city is suffering more than others.

In Itu, desperation is taking hold. Police escort water trucks to keep them from being hijacked by armed men. Residents demanding restoration of tap water have staged violent protests.

Restaurants and bars are using disposable cups to avoid washing dishes, and agribusinesses are transporting soybeans and other crops by road rather than by boat in areas where rivers have dried up.

“We are entering unknown territory,” said Renato Tagnin, an expert in water resources at the environmental group Coletivo Curupira. “If this continues, we will run out of water. We have no more mechanisms and no water stored in the closet.”

The Sao Paulo metropolitan area ended its last rainy season in February with just a third of the usual rain total — only 9 inches (23 centimeters) over three months. Showers in October totaled just 1 inch (25 millimeters), one-fifth of normal.

Only consistent, steady summer rains will bring immediate relief, experts say.

But they also place blame on the government, which they say needs to upgrade a state water distribution network that loses more than 30 percent of its resources to leaks. Advocates also call for treatment plants to produce more potable water, along with better environmental protections for headwaters and rivers flowing into reservoirs.

Tagnin and others say the government ignored calls to begin rationing water months ago because it didn’t want to take such a step before the October elections and risk losing votes. The government, however, maintains there will be no need for rationing. It says its measures to conserve water are working, such as offering discounted water bills for those who limit usage and reducing water pressure during off-peak hours.

But activists and consumer groups complain the government has done too little too late and failed to keep consumers informed.

The state’s largest utility, which supplies water to more than 16 million people in Sao Paulo’s metropolitan area, for months avoided acknowledging the looming shortage. Only recently did the Sabesp utility release maps showing which neighborhoods were at risk of water cuts, and was careful to avoid using the hot-button term “rationing.”

In Itu, where the taps have been dry for weeks, residents dream of rationing — At least that would mean some water for their homes.

“I forgot what water looks like coming out of the faucet,” said Rosa Lara Leite, a woman carrying a few gallons of water in each hand at one of the city’s crowded drinking fountains.

Authorities forced the city of 160,000 to cut its daily water consumption from 16 million gallons (62 million liters) to 2 million gallons (8 million liters). Dozens of water trucks are deployed to bring in water from far off towns. Huge 5,000-gallon tanks have been set up around the city.

“We understand that people’s basic need is water. They need it,” said Marco Antonio Augusto, spokesman for a government task force created to manage Itu’s water supply. “We are bringing water from every possible place.”

Baker Franciele Bonfim is storing whatever water she can get her hands on in every possible place. She and a neighbor recently paid $200 to buy water from a private water truck, storing it in two big tanks and about 20 plastic buckets that once held margarine for her cakes.

“It’s an added expense but at least I am good for 15 days,” Bonfim said, as she used a thick hose to pour water into each bucket. “It has taken me a long time to use all this margarine. But water runs out fast.”

The IPCC is stern on climate change – but it still underestimates the situation (The Guardian)

07/11/2014UncategorizedCapitalismo, Incerteza, IPCC, Mudanças climáticas, Petróleo, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

UN body’s warning on carbon emissions is hard to ignore, but breaking the power of the fossil fuel industry won’t be easy

Bill McKibben

The Guardian, Sunday 2 November 2014 10.59 GMT

Bangkok's skyline blanketed in a haze Bangkok’s skyline blanketed in a haze. The IPCC report says climate change has increased the risk of severe heatwaves and other extreme weather. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters

At this point, the scientists who run the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change must feel like it’s time to trade their satellites, their carefully calibrated thermometers and spectrometers, their finely tuned computer models – all of them for a thesaurus. Surely, somewhere, there must be words that will prompt the world’s leaders to act.

This week, with the release of their new synthesis report, they are trying the words “severe, widespread, and irreversible” to describe the effects of climate change – which for scientists, conservative by nature, falls just short of announcing that climate change will produce a zombie apocalypse plus random beheadings plus Ebola. It’s hard to imagine how they will up the language in time for the next big global confab in Paris.

But even with all that, this new document – actually a synthesis of three big working group reports released over the last year – almost certainly underestimates the actual severity of the situation. As the Washington Post pointed out this week, past reports have always tried to err on the side of understatement; it’s a particular problem with sea level rise, since the current IPCC document does not even include the finding in May that the great Antarctic ice sheets have begun to melt. (The studies were published after the IPCC’s cutoff date.)

But when you get right down to it, who cares? The scientists have done their job; no sentient person, including Republican Senate candidates, can any longer believe in their heart of hearts that there’s not a problem here. The scientific method has triumphed: over a quarter of a century, researchers have reached astonishing consensus on a basic problem in chemistry and physics.

And the engineers have done just as well. The price of a solar panel has dropped by more than 90% over the last 25 years, and continues to plummet. In the few places they have actually been deployed at scale, the results are astonishing: there were days this summer when Germany generated 75% of its power from the wind and the sun.

That, of course, is not because Germany is so richly endowed with sunlight (it’s a rare person who books a North Sea beach holiday). It’s because the Germans have produced a remarkable quantity of political will, and put it to good use.

As opposed to the rest of the world, where the fossil fuel industry has produced an enormous amount of fear in the political class, and kept things from changing. Their vast piles of money have so far weighed more in the political balance than the vast piles of data accumulated by the scientists. In fact, the IPCC can calculate the size of the gap with great exactness. To get on the right track, they estimate, the world would have to cut fossil fuel investments annually between now and 2029, and use the money instead to push the pace of renewables.

That is a hard task, but not an impossible one. Indeed, the people’s movement symbolised by September’s mammoth climate march in New York, has begun to make an impact in dollars and cents. A new report this week shows that by delaying the Keystone pipeline in North America protesters have prevented at least $17bn (£10.6bn) in new investments in the tar sands of Canada – investments that would have produced carbon equivalent to 735 coal-fired power plants. That’s pretty good work.

Our political leaders could do much more, of course. If they put a serious price on carbon, we would move quickly out of the fossil fuel age and into the renewable future. But that won’t happen until we break the power of the fossil fuel industry. That’s why it’s very good news that divestment campaigners have been winning victories on one continent after another, as universities from Stanford to Sydney to Glasgow start selling their fossil fuel stocks in protest – hey, even the Rockefeller Brothers fund, heir to the greatest oil fortune ever, have joined in the fight.

Breaking the power of the fossil fuel industry won’t be easy, especially since it has to happen fast. It has to happen, in fact, before the carbon we’ve unleashed into the atmosphere breaks the planet. I’m not certain we’ll win this fight – but, thanks to the IPCC, no one will ever be able to say they weren’t warned.

Mudança climática (Folha de S.Paulo)

07/11/2014UncategorizedBurocracia, Culpa, Economia, Justiça, Mudanças climáticas, Psicologia, Tomada de decisãorenzotaddei

7/11/2014

Eduardo Giannetti

Em “Reasons and Persons”, uma das mais inovadoras obras de filosofia analítica dos últimos 30 anos, o filósofo Derek Parfit propõe um intrigante “experimento mental”. A situação descrita é hipotética, mas ajuda a explicitar um ponto nevrálgico do maior desafio humano: limitar o aquecimento global a 2°C acima do nível pré-industrial até o final do século 21.

Imagine uma pessoa afivelada a uma cama com eletrodos colados em suas têmporas. Ao se girar um botão situado em outro local a corrente nos eletrodos aumenta em grau infinitesimal, de modo que o paciente não chegue a sentir. Um Big Mac gratuito é então ofertado a quem girar o botão. Ocorre, contudo, que quando milhares de pessoas fazem isso –sem que cada uma saiba dos outros– a descarga de energia produzida é suficiente para eletrocutar a vítima.

Quem é responsável pelo que? Algo tenebroso foi perpetrado, mas a quem atribuir a culpa? O efeito isolado de cada giro do botão é por definição imperceptível –são todos “torturadores inofensivos”. Mas o resultado conjunto dessa miríade de ações é ofensivo ao extremo. Até que ponto a somatória de ínfimas partículas de culpa se acumula numa gigantesca dívida moral coletiva?

A mudança climática em curso equivale a uma espécie de eletrocussão da biosfera. Quem a deseja? Até onde sei, ninguém. Trata-se da alquimia perversa de inumeráveis atos humanos, cada um deles isoladamente ínfimo, mas que não resulta de nenhuma intenção humana. E quem assume –ou deveria assumir– a culpa por ela? A maioria e ninguém, ainda que alguns sejam mais culpados que outros.

Os 7 bilhões de habitantes do planeta pertencem a três grupos: cerca de 1 bilhão respondem por 50% das emissões totais de gases-estufa, ao passo que os 3 bilhões seguintes por 45%. Os 3 bilhões na base da pirâmide de energia (metade sem acesso a eletricidade) respondem por apenas 5%. Por seu modo de vida e vulnerabilidade, este grupo –o único inocente– será o mais tragicamente afetado pelo “giro de botão” dos demais.

Descarbonizar é preciso. Segundo o recém-publicado relatório do painel do clima da ONU, limitar o aquecimento a 2°C exigirá cortar as emissões antropogênicas de 40% a 70% em relação a 2010 até 2050 e zerá-las até o final do século. Como chegar lá?

A complexidade do desafio é esmagadora. Contar com a gradual conscientização dos “torturadores inocentes” parece irrealista. Pagar para ver e apostar na tecnologia como tábua de salvação seria temerário ao extremo. O protagonista da ação, creio eu, deveria ser a estrutura de incentivos: precificar o carbono e colocar a força do sistema de preços para trabalhar no âmbito da descarbonização.

EDUARDO GIANNETTI escreve às sextas-feiras nesta coluna.

ONU escolhe um brasileiro para ser o ‘fiscal’ da água (O Estado de S. Paulo)

07/11/2014UncategorizedAlckmin, água, Desastre, ONU, São Paulo, Secarenzotaddei

JC 5061, 7 de novembro de 2014

Leo Heller vai substituir a portuguesa Catarina de Albuquerque, criticada por Dilma e Alckmin

O novo relator das Nações Unidas para o Direito à Água e ao Saneamento é o brasileiro Leo Heller. A partir de 2015, ele vai substituir a portuguesa Catarina Albuquerque, que, após dois mandatos, envolveu-se em uma série de crises diplomáticas com Estados brasileiros e com o governo Dilma Rousseff por causa de críticas à gestão de recursos hídricos. Heller foi escolhido pela ONU para atuar como o “fiscal” que vai exigir dos países a garantia da oferta de água e saneamento às suas populações.

O conteúdo na íntegra está disponível em: http://brasil.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,onu-escolhe-um-brasileiro-para-ser-o-fiscal-da-agua,1588998

(Jamil Chade /O Estado de S. Paulo)

Projeto da biodiversidade vai à comissão geral com polêmicas em aberto (Agência Câmara)

07/11/2014UncategorizedAgricultura, Agricultura familiar, Agronegócio, Biodiversidade, Capitalismo, Conhecimentos tradicionais, Ecologia, Mercadorenzotaddei

JC 5061, 7 de novembro de 2014

Agronegócio não aceita fiscalização pelo Ibama. Agricultura familiar quer receber pelo cultivo de sementes crioulas. Cientistas criticam regras sobre royalties

A comissão geral que vai discutir na próxima terça-feira as novas regras para exploração do patrimônio genético da biodiversidade brasileira (PL 7735/14) terá o desafio de buscar uma solução para vários impasses que ainda persistem na negociação do texto. Deputados ambientalistas, ligados ao agronegócio e à pesquisa científica continuarão em rodadas de negociação até a terça-feira na busca do projeto mais consensual.

Parte das polêmicas são demandas dos deputados ligados ao agronegócio, que conseguiram incluir as pesquisas da agropecuária no texto substitutivo. A proposta enviada pelo governo excluía a agricultura, que continuaria sendo regulamentada pela Medida Provisória 2.186-16/01. Agora, o texto em discussão já inclui a pesquisa com produção de sementes e melhoramento de raças e revoga de vez a MP de 2001.

O governo já realizou várias reuniões entre parlamentares e técnicos do governo. Até o momento, foram apresentadas três versões diferentes de relatórios.

Fiscalização
O deputado Alceu Moreira (PMDB-RS), que está à frente das negociações, defende que o Ministério da Agricultura seja o responsável pela fiscalização das pesquisas para produção de novas sementes e novas raças. Já o governo quer repassar essa atribuição ao Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (Ibama). Esse item deverá ser decidido no voto.

“Não vamos permitir que o Ibama, que tem um distanciamento longo da cadeia produtiva, seja o responsável pela fiscalização das pesquisas com agricultura, pecuária e florestas. Terá de ser o Ministério da Agricultura”, afirmou o deputado.

Royalties
O agronegócio também conseguiu incluir no texto tratamento diferenciado para pesquisas com sementes e raças. O pagamento de repartição de benefícios – uma espécie de cobrança deroyalties – só será aplicado para espécies nativas brasileiras. Ficam de fora da cobrança pesquisa com espécies de outros países que são o foco do agronegócio: soja, cana-de açúcar, café.

E quando houver cobrança de royalties, isso incidirá apenas sobre o material reprodutivo – sementes, talos, animais reprodutores ou sêmen – excluindo a cobrança sobre o produto final. “Não pode ter cobrança na origem, que é a semente, e depois outra cobrança no produto final. Se vai ter no produto final, não pode ter na pesquisa”, disse Alceu.

A limitação do pagamento de royalties na agricultura desagradou integrantes da agricultura familiar, que cobram acesso e remuneração pelo cultivo de sementes crioulas, aquelas em que não há alteração genética.

Conselho paritário
Outra demanda do agronegócio é uma composição paritária do Conselho de Gestão do Patrimônio Genético (Cgen) entre representantes do governo federal, da indústria, da academia e da sociedade civil. A intenção é dar mais voz ao agronegócio nesse conselho, que hoje tem apenas representantes do Ministério da Agricultura e da Embrapa.

Cientistas
Já a comunidade científica, segundo a deputada Luciana Santos (PCdoB-PE), que também tem conduzido as negociações, critica o percentual baixo de royalties que será cobrado do fabricante de produto final oriundo de pesquisa com biodiversidade.

O texto prevê o pagamento de 1% da receita líquida anual com o produto, mas esse valor poderá ser reduzido até 0,1%. Também prevê isenção para microempresas, empresas de pequeno porte e microempreendedores individuais.

Os cientistas discordam, ainda, do fato de o projeto escolher apenas a última etapa da cadeia para a cobrança da repartição de benefícios. “Eles acham que é injusto e precisa ser considerado a repartição de benefícios de etapas do processo porque, às vezes, ao final não se comercializa apenas um produto acabado, mas um intermediário”, disse.

Ambientalistas
Os ambientalistas também não decidiram se apoiarão ou não o texto. A decisão será tomada na semana que vem, mas o líder do partido, deputado Sarney Filho (MA), saiu da reunião da última terça-feira (4) insatisfeito com o texto apresentado.

O líder do governo, deputado Henrique Fontana (PT-RS), disse que a intenção é chegar a um texto de consenso após a comissão geral e colocar o tema em votação na quarta-feira (12). Luciana Santos admitiu que, por mais que os deputados tentem chegar a um acordo, vários dispositivos só serão decididos no voto.

Íntegra da proposta:

PL-7735/2014

(Agência Câmara)

http://www2.camara.leg.br/camaranoticias/noticias/POLITICA/477144-PROJETO-DA-BIODIVERSIDADE-VAI-A-COMISSAO-GERAL-COM-VARIAS-POLEMICAS-EM-ABERTO.html

Cockroach cyborgs use microphones to detect, trace sounds (Science Daily)

07/11/2014UncategorizedAnimais, Baratas, Ciborgue, Comunicação, Desastre, Mediação tecnológica, Pós-humanorenzotaddei

Date: November 6, 2014

Source: North Carolina State University

Summary: Researchers have developed technology that allows cyborg cockroaches, or biobots, to pick up sounds with small microphones and seek out the source of the sound. The technology is designed to help emergency personnel find and rescue survivors in the aftermath of a disaster.

North Carolina State University researchers have developed technology that allows cyborg cockroaches, or biobots, to pick up sounds with small microphones and seek out the source of the sound. The technology is designed to help emergency personnel find and rescue survivors in the aftermath of a disaster. Credit: Eric Whitmire.

The researchers have also developed technology that can be used as an “invisible fence” to keep the biobots in the disaster area.

“In a collapsed building, sound is the best way to find survivors,” says Dr. Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and senior author of two papers on the work.

The biobots are equipped with electronic backpacks that control the cockroach’s movements. Bozkurt’s research team has created two types of customized backpacks using microphones. One type of biobot has a single microphone that can capture relatively high-resolution sound from any direction to be wirelessly transmitted to first responders.

The second type of biobot is equipped with an array of three directional microphones to detect the direction of the sound. The research team has also developed algorithms that analyze the sound from the microphone array to localize the source of the sound and steer the biobot in that direction. The system worked well during laboratory testing. Video of a laboratory test of the microphone array system is available athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJXEPcv-FMw.

“The goal is to use the biobots with high-resolution microphones to differentiate between sounds that matter — like people calling for help — from sounds that don’t matter — like a leaking pipe,” Bozkurt says. “Once we’ve identified sounds that matter, we can use the biobots equipped with microphone arrays to zero in on where those sounds are coming from.”

A research team led by Dr. Edgar Lobaton has previously shown that biobots can be used to map a disaster area. Funded by National Science Foundation CyberPhysical Systems Program, the long-term goal is for Bozkurt and Lobaton to merge their research efforts to both map disaster areas and pinpoint survivors. The researchers are already working with collaborator Dr. Mihail Sichitiu to develop the next generation of biobot networking and localization technology.

Bozkurt’s team also recently demonstrated technology that creates an invisible fence for keeping biobots in a defined area. This is significant because it can be used to keep biobots at a disaster site, and to keep the biobots within range of each other so that they can be used as a reliable mobile wireless network. This technology could also be used to steer biobots to light sources, so that the miniaturized solar panels on biobot backpacks can be recharged. Video of the invisible fence technology in practice can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGAKd7_fAM.

A paper on the microphone sensor research, “Acoustic Sensors for Biobotic Search and Rescue,” was presented Nov. 5 at the IEEE Sensors 2014 conference in Valencia, Spain. Lead author of the paper is Eric Whitmire, a former undergraduate at NC State. The paper was co-authored by Tahmid Latif, a Ph.D. student at NC State, and Bozkurt.

The paper on the invisible fence for biobots, “Towards Fenceless Boundaries for Solar Powered Insect Biobots,” was presented Aug. 28 at the 36th Annual International IEEE EMBS Conference in Chicago, Illinois. Latif was the lead author. Co-authors include Tristan Novak, a graduate student at NC State, Whitmire and Bozkurt.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number 1239243.

The Creepy New Wave of the Internet (NY Review of Books)

07/11/2014UncategorizedComputação, Internet, Ontologias, Redes, Redes sociaisrenzotaddei

Sue Halpern

NOVEMBER 20, 2014 ISSUE

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism
by Jeremy Rifkin
Palgrave Macmillan, 356 pp., $28.00

Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire, and the Internet of Things
by David Rose
Scribner, 304 pp., $28.00

Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy
by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, with a foreword by Marc Benioff
Patrick Brewster, 225 pp., $14.45 (paper)

More Awesome Than Money: Four Boys and Their Heroic Quest to Save Your Privacy from Facebook
by Jim Dwyer
Viking, 374 pp., $27.95

A detail of Penelope Umbrico’s Sunset Portraits from 11,827,282 Flickr Sunsets on 1/7/13, 2013. For the project, Umbrico searched the website Flickr for scenes of sunsets in which the sun, not the subject, predominated. The installation, consisting of two thousand 4 x 6 C-prints, explores the idea that ‘the individual assertion of “being here” is ultimately read as a lack of individuality when faced with so many assertions that are more or less all the same.’ A collection of her work, Penelope Umbrico (photographs), was published in 2011 by Aperture.

Every day a piece of computer code is sent to me by e-mail from a website to which I subscribe called IFTTT. Those letters stand for the phrase “if this then that,” and the code is in the form of a “recipe” that has the power to animate it. Recently, for instance, I chose to enable an IFTTT recipe that read, “if the temperature in my house falls below 45 degrees Fahrenheit, then send me a text message.” It’s a simple command that heralds a significant change in how we will be living our lives when much of the material world is connected—like my thermostat—to the Internet.

It is already possible to buy Internet-enabled light bulbs that turn on when your car signals your home that you are a certain distance away and coffeemakers that sync to the alarm on your phone, as well as WiFi washer-dryers that know you are away and periodically fluff your clothes until you return, and Internet-connected slow cookers, vacuums, and refrigerators. “Check the morning weather, browse the web for recipes, explore your social networks or leave notes for your family—all from the refrigerator door,” reads the ad for one.

Welcome to the beginning of what is being touted as the Internet’s next wave by technologists, investment bankers, research organizations, and the companies that stand to rake in some of an estimated $14.4 trillion by 2022—what they call the Internet of Things (IoT). Cisco Systems, which is one of those companies, and whose CEO came up with that multitrillion-dollar figure, takes it a step further and calls this wave “the Internet of Everything,” which is both aspirational and telling. The writer and social thinker Jeremy Rifkin, whose consulting firm is working with businesses and governments to hurry this new wave along, describes it like this:

The Internet of Things will connect every thing with everyone in an integrated global network. People, machines, natural resources, production lines, logistics networks, consumption habits, recycling flows, and virtually every other aspect of economic and social life will be linked via sensors and software to the IoT platform, continually feeding Big Data to every node—businesses, homes, vehicles—moment to moment, in real time. Big Data, in turn, will be processed with advanced analytics, transformed into predictive algorithms, and programmed into automated systems to improve thermodynamic efficiencies, dramatically increase productivity, and reduce the marginal cost of producing and delivering a full range of goods and services to near zero across the entire economy.

In Rifkin’s estimation, all this connectivity will bring on the “Third Industrial Revolution,” poised as he believes it is to not merely redefine our relationship to machines and their relationship to one another, but to overtake and overthrow capitalism once the efficiencies of the Internet of Things undermine the market system, dropping the cost of producing goods to, basically, nothing. His recent book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism, is a paean to this coming epoch.

It is also deeply wishful, as many prospective arguments are, even when they start from fact. And the fact is, the Internet of Things is happening, and happening quickly. Rifkin notes that in 2007 there were ten million sensors of all kinds connected to the Internet, a number he says will increase to 100 trillion by 2030. A lot of these are small radio-frequency identification (RFID) microchips attached to goods as they crisscross the globe, but there are also sensors on vending machines, delivery trucks, cattle and other farm animals, cell phones, cars, weather-monitoring equipment, NFL football helmets, jet engines, and running shoes, among other things, generating data meant to streamline, inform, and increase productivity, often by bypassing human intervention. Additionally, the number of autonomous Internet-connected devices such as cell phones—devices that communicate directly with one another—now doubles every five years, growing from 12.5 billion in 2010 to an estimated 25 billion next year and 50 billion by 2020.

For years, a cohort of technologists, most notably Ray Kurzweil, the writer, inventor, and director of engineering at Google, have been predicting the day when computer intelligence surpasses human intelligence and merges with it in what they call the Singularity. We are not there yet, but a kind of singularity is already upon us as we swallow pills embedded with microscopic computer chips, activated by stomach acids, that will be able to report compliance with our doctor’s orders (or not) directly to our electronic medical records. Then there is the singularity that occurs when we outfit our bodies with “wearable technology” that sends data about our physical activity, heart rate, respiration, and sleep patterns to a database in the cloud as well as to our mobile phones and computers (and to Facebook and our insurance company and our employer).

Cisco Systems, for instance, which is already deep into wearable technology, is working on a platform called “the Connected Athlete” that “turns the athlete’s body into a distributed system of sensors and network intelligence…[so] the athlete becomes more than just a competitor—he or she becomes a Wireless Body Area Network, or WBAN.” Wearable technology, which generated $800 million in 2013, is expected to make nearly twice that this year. These are numbers that not only represent sales, but the public’s acceptance of, and habituation to, becoming one of the things connected to and through the Internet.

One reason that it has been easy to miss the emergence of the Internet of Things, and therefore miss its significance, is that much of what is presented to the public as its avatars seems superfluous and beside the point. An alarm clock that emits the scent of bacon, a glow ball that signals if it is too windy to go out sailing, and an “egg minder” that tells you how many eggs are in your refrigerator no matter where you are in the (Internet-connected) world, revolutionary as they may be, hardly seem the stuff of revolutions; because they are novelties, they obscure what is novel about them.

And then there is the creepiness factor. In the weeks before the general release of Google Glass, Google’s $1,500 see-through eyeglass computer that lets the wearer record what she is seeing and hearing, the press reported a number of incidents in which early adopters were physically accosted by people offended by the product’s intrusiveness. Enough is enough, the Glass opponents were saying.

Why a small cohort of people encountering Google Glass for the first time found it disturbing is the same reason that David Rose, an instructor at MIT and the founder of a company that embeds Internet connectivity into everyday devices like umbrellas and medicine vials, celebrates it and waxes nearly poetic on the potential of “heads up displays.” As he writes in Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire, and the Internet of Things, such devices have the potential to radically transform human encounters. Rose imagines a party where

Wearing your fashionable [heads up] display, you will instruct the device to display the people’s names and key biographical info above their heads. In the business meeting, you will call up information about previous meetings and agenda items. The HUD display will call up useful websites, tap into social networks, and dig into massive info sources…. You will fact-check your friends and colleagues…. You will also engage in real-time messaging, including videoconferencing with friends or colleagues who will participate, coach, consult, or lurk.
Whether this scenario excites or repels you, it represents the vision of more than one of the players moving us in the direction of pervasive connectivity. Rose’s company, Ambient Devices, has been at the forefront of what he calls “enchanting” objects—that is, connecting them to the Internet to make them “extraordinary.” This is a task that Glenn Lurie, the CEO of ATT Mobility, believes is “spot on.” Among these enchanted objects are the Google Latitude Doorbell that “lets you know where your family members are and when they are approaching home,” an umbrella that turns blue when it is about to rain so you might be inspired to take it with you, and a jacket that gives you a hug every time someone likes your Facebook post.

Rose envisions “an enchanted wall in your kitchen that could display, through lines of colored light, the trends and patterns of your loved ones’ moods,” because it will offer “a better understanding of [the] hidden thoughts and emotions that are relevant to us….” If his account of a mood wall seems unduly fanciful (and nutty), it should be noted that this summer, British Airways gave passengers flying from New York to London blankets embedded with neurosensors to track how they were feeling. Apparently this was more scientific than simply asking them. According to one report:

When the fiber optics woven into the blanket turned red, flight attendants knew that the passengers were feeling stressed and anxious. Blue blankets were a sign that the passenger was feeling calm and relaxed.
Thus the airline learned that passengers were happiest when eating and drinking, and most relaxed when sleeping.

While, arguably, this “finding” is as trivial as an umbrella that turns blue when it’s going to rain, there is nothing trivial about collecting personal data, as innocuous as that data may seem. It takes very little imagination to foresee how the kitchen mood wall could lead to advertisements for antidepressants that follow you around the Web, or trigger an alert to your employer, or show up on your Facebook page because, according to Robert Scoble and Shel Israel in Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy, Facebook “wants to build a system that anticipates your needs.”

It takes even less imagination to foresee how information about your comings and goings obtained from the Google Latitude Doorbell could be used in a court of law. Cars are now outfitted with scores of sensors, including ones in the seats that determine how many passengers are in them, as well as with an “event data recorder” (EDR), which is the automobile equivalent of an airplane’s black box. As Scoble and Israel report in Age of Context, “the general legal consensus is that police will be able to subpoena car logs the same way they now subpoena phone records.”

Meanwhile, cars themselves are becoming computers on wheels, with operating system updates coming wirelessly over the air, and with increasing capacity to “understand” their owners. As Scoble and Israel tell it:

They not only adjust seat positions and mirrors automatically, but soon they’ll also know your preferences in music, service stations, dining spots and hotels…. They know when you are headed home, and soon they’ll be able to remind you to stop at the market to get a dessert for dinner.
Recent revelations from the journalist Glenn Greenwald put the number of Americans under government surveillance at a colossal 1.2 million people. Once the Internet of Things is in place, that number might easily expand to include everyone else, because a system that can remind you to stop at the market for dessert is a system that knows who you are and where you are and what you’ve been doing and with whom you’ve been doing it. And this is information we give out freely, or unwittingly, and largely without question or complaint, trading it for convenience, or what passes for convenience.

halpern_2-112014.jpg
Michael Cogliantry
The journalist A.J. Jacobs wearing data-collecting sensors to keep track of his health and fitness; from Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt’s The Human Face of Big Data, published in 2012 by Against All Odds
In other words, as human behavior is tracked and merchandized on a massive scale, the Internet of Things creates the perfect conditions to bolster and expand the surveillance state. In the world of the Internet of Things, your car, your heating system, your refrigerator, your fitness apps, your credit card, your television set, your window shades, your scale, your medications, your camera, your heart rate monitor, your electric toothbrush, and your washing machine—to say nothing of your phone—generate a continuous stream of data that resides largely out of reach of the individual but not of those willing to pay for it or in other ways commandeer it.

That is the point: the Internet of Things is about the “dataization” of our bodies, ourselves, and our environment. As a post on the tech website Gigaom put it, “The Internet of Things isn’t about things. It’s about cheap data.” Lots and lots of it. “The more you tell the world about yourself, the more the world can give you what you want,” says Sam Lessin, the head of Facebook’s Identity Product Group. It’s a sentiment shared by Scoble and Israel, who write:

The more the technology knows about you, the more benefits you will receive. That can leave you with the chilling sensation that big data is watching you. In the vast majority of cases, we believe the coming benefits are worth that trade-off.
So, too, does Jeremy Rifkin, who dismisses our legal, social, and cultural affinity for privacy as, essentially, a bourgeois affectation—a remnant of the enclosure laws that spawned capitalism:

Connecting everyone and everything in a neural network brings the human race out of the age of privacy, a defining characteristic of modernity, and into the era of transparency. While privacy has long been considered a fundamental right, it has never been an inherent right. Indeed, for all of human history, until the modern era, life was lived more or less publicly….
In virtually every society that we know of before the modern era, people bathed together in public, often urinated and defecated in public, ate at communal tables, frequently engaged in sexual intimacy in public, and slept huddled together en masse. It wasn’t until the early capitalist era that people began to retreat behind locked doors.
As anyone who has spent any time on Facebook knows, transparency is a fiction—literally. Social media is about presenting a curated self; it is opacity masquerading as transparency. In a sense, then, it is about preserving privacy. So when Rifkin claims that for young people, “privacy has lost much of its appeal,” he is either confusing sharing (as in sharing pictures of a vacation in Spain) with openness, or he is acknowledging that young people, especially, have become inured to the trade-offs they are making to use services like Facebook. (But they are not completely inured to it, as demonstrated by both Jim Dwyer’s painstaking book More Awesome Than Money, about the failed race to build a noncommercial social media site called Diaspora in 2010, as well as the overwhelming response—as many as 31,000 requests an hour for invitations—to the recent announcement that there soon will be a Facebook alternative, Ello, that does not collect or sell users’ data.)

These trade-offs will only increase as the quotidian becomes digitized, leaving fewer and fewer opportunities to opt out. It’s one thing to edit the self that is broadcast on Facebook and Twitter, but the Internet of Things, which knows our viewing habits, grooming rituals, medical histories, and more, allows no such interventions—unless it is our behaviors and curiosities and idiosyncracies themselves that end up on the cutting room floor.

Even so, no matter what we do, the ubiquity of the Internet of Things is putting us squarely in the path of hackers, who will have almost unlimited portals into our digital lives. When, last winter, cybercriminals broke into more than 100,000 Internet-enabled appliances including refrigerators and sent out 750,000 spam e-mails to their users, they demonstrated just how vulnerable Internet-connected machines are.

Not long after that, Forbes reported that security researchers had come up with a $20 tool that was able to remotely control a car’s steering, brakes, acceleration, locks, and lights. It was an experiment that, again, showed how simple it is to manipulate and sabotage the smartest of machines, even though—but really because—a car is now, in the words of a Ford executive, a “cognitive device.”

More recently, a study of ten popular IoT devices by the computer company Hewlett-Packard uncovered a total of 250 security flaws among them. As Jerry Michalski, a former tech industry analyst and founder of the REX think tank, observed in a recent Pew study: “Most of the devices exposed on the internet will be vulnerable. They will also be prone to unintended consequences: they will do things nobody designed for beforehand, most of which will be undesirable.”

Breaking into a home system so that the refrigerator will send out spam that will flood your e-mail and hacking a car to trigger a crash are, of course, terrible and real possibilities, yet as bad as they may be, they are limited in scope. As IoT technology is adopted in manufacturing, logistics, and energy generation and distribution, the vulnerabilities do not have to scale up for the stakes to soar. In a New York Times article last year, Matthew Wald wrote:

If an adversary lands a knockout blow [to the energy grid]…it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of Sept. 11.
In that same article, Wald noted that though government officials, law enforcement personnel, National Guard members, and utility workers had been brought together to go through a worst-case scenario practice drill, they often seemed to be speaking different languages, which did not bode well for an effective response to what is recognized as a near inevitability. (Last year the Department of Homeland Security responded to 256 cyberattacks, half of them directed at the electrical grid. This was double the number for 2012.)

This Babel problem dogs the whole Internet of Things venture. After the “things” are connected to the Internet, they need to communicate with one another: your smart TV to your smart light bulbs to your smart door locks to your smart socks (yes, they exist). And if there is no lingua franca—which there isn’t so far—then when that television breaks or becomes obsolete (because soon enough there will be an even smarter one), your choices will be limited by what language is connecting all your stuff. Though there are industry groups trying to unify the platform, in September Apple offered a glimpse of how the Internet of Things actually might play out, when it introduced the company’s new smart watch, mobile payment system, health apps, and other, seemingly random, additions to its product line. As Mat Honan virtually shouted in Wired:

Apple is building a world in which there is a computer in your every interaction, waking and sleeping. A computer in your pocket. A computer on your body. A computer paying for all your purchases. A computer opening your hotel room door. A computer monitoring your movements as you walk though the mall. A computer watching you sleep. A computer controlling the devices in your home. A computer that tells you where you parked. A computer taking your pulse, telling you how many steps you took, how high you climbed and how many calories you burned—and sharing it all with your friends…. THIS IS THE NEW APPLE ECOSYSTEM. APPLE HAS TURNED OUR WORLD INTO ONE BIG UBIQUITOUS COMPUTER.
The ecosystem may be lush, but it will be, by design, limited. Call it the Internet of Proprietary Things.

For many of us, it is difficult to imagine smart watches and WiFi-enabled light bulbs leading to a new world order, whether that new world order is a surveillance state that knows more about us than we do about ourselves or the techno-utopia envisioned by Jeremy Rifkin, where people can make much of what they need on 3-D printers powered by solar panels and unleashed human creativity. Because home automation is likely to be expensive—it will take a lot of eggs before the egg minder pays for itself—it is unlikely that those watches and light bulbs will be the primary driver of the Internet of Things, though they will be its showcase.

Rather, the Internet’s third wave will be propelled by businesses that are able to rationalize their operations by replacing people with machines, using sensors to simplify distribution patterns and reduce inventories, deploying algorithms that eliminate human error, and so on. Those business savings are crucial to Rifkin’s vision of the Third Industrial Revolution, not simply because they have the potential to bring down the price of consumer goods, but because, for the first time, a central tenet of capitalism—that increased productivity requires increased human labor—will no longer hold. And once productivity is unmoored from labor, he argues, capitalism will not be able to support itself, either ideologically or practically.

What will rise in place of capitalism is what Rifkin calls the “collaborative commons,” where goods and property are shared, and the distinction between those who own the means of production and those who are beholden to those who own the means of production disappears. “The old paradigm of owners and workers, and of sellers and consumers, is beginning to break down,” he writes.

Consumers are becoming their own producers, eliminating the distinction. Prosumers will increasingly be able to produce, consume, and share their own goods…. The automation of work is already beginning to free up human labor to migrate to the evolving social economy…. The Internet of Things frees human beings from the market economy to pursue nonmaterial shared interests on the Collaborative Commons.
Rifkin’s vision that people will occupy themselves with more fulfilling activities like making music and self-publishing novels once they are freed from work, while machines do the heavy lifting, is offered at a moment when a new kind of structural unemployment born of robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence takes hold globally, and traditional ways of making a living disappear. Rifkin’s claims may be comforting, but they are illusory and misleading. (We’ve also heard this before, in 1845, when Marx wrote in The German Ideology that under communism people would be “free to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticize after dinner.”)

As an example, Rifkin points to Etsy, the online marketplace where thousands of “prosumers” sell their crafts, as a model for what he dubs the new creative economy. “Currently 900,000 small producers of goods advertise at no cost on the Etsy website,” he writes.

Nearly 60 million consumers per month from around the world browse the website, often interacting personally with suppliers…. This form of laterally scaled marketing puts the small enterprise on a level playing field with the big boys, allowing them to reach a worldwide user market at a fraction of the cost.
All that may be accurate and yet largely irrelevant if the goal is for those 900,000 small producers to make an actual living. As Amanda Hess wrote last year in Slate:

Etsy says its crafters are “thinking and acting like entrepreneurs,” but they’re not thinking or acting like very effective ones. Seventy-four percent of Etsy sellers consider their shop a “business,” including 65 percent of sellers who made less than $100 last year.
While it is true that a do-it-yourself subculture is thriving, and sharing cars, tools, houses, and other property is becoming more common, it is also true that much of this activity is happening under duress as steady employment disappears. As an article in The New York Times this past summer made clear, employment in the sharing economy, also known as the gig economy, where people piece together an income by driving for Uber and delivering groceries for Instacart, leaves them little time for hunting and fishing, unless it’s hunting for work and fishing under a shared couch for loose change.

So here comes the Internet’s Third Wave. In its wake jobs will disappear, work will morph, and a lot of money will be made by the companies, consultants, and investment banks that saw it coming. Privacy will disappear, too, and our intimate spaces will become advertising platforms—last December Google sent a letter to the SEC explaining how it might run ads on home appliances—and we may be too busy trying to get our toaster to communicate with our bathroom scale to notice. Technology, which allows us to augment and extend our native capabilities, tends to evolve haphazardly, and the future that is imagined for it—good or bad—is almost always historical, which is to say, naive.

Denying problems when we don’t like the political solutions (Duke University)

07/11/2014UncategorizedCognição, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionismo, Política, Psicologiarenzotaddei

6-Nov-2014

Steve Hartsoe

Duke study sheds light on why conservatives, liberals disagree so vehemently

DURHAM, N.C. — There may be a scientific answer for why conservatives and liberals disagree so vehemently over the existence of issues like climate change and specific types of crime.

A new study from Duke University finds that people will evaluate scientific evidence based on whether they view its policy implications as politically desirable. If they don’t, then they tend to deny the problem even exists.

“Logically, the proposed solution to a problem, such as an increase in government regulation or an extension of the free market, should not influence one’s belief in the problem. However, we find it does,” said co-author Troy Campbell, a Ph.D. candidate at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. “The cure can be more immediately threatening than the problem.”

The study, “Solution Aversion: On the Relation Between Ideology and Motivated Disbelief,” appears in the November issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (viewable athttp://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/107/5/809/).

The researchers conducted three experiments (with samples ranging from 120 to 188 participants) on three different issues — climate change, air pollution that harms lungs, and crime.

“The goal was to test, in a scientifically controlled manner, the question: Does the desirability of a solution affect beliefs in the existence of the associated problem? In other words, does what we call ‘solution aversion’ exist?” Campbell said.

“We found the answer is yes. And we found it occurs in response to some of the most common solutions for popularly discussed problems.”

For climate change, the researchers conducted an experiment to examine why more Republicans than Democrats seem to deny its existence, despite strong scientific evidence that supports it.

One explanation, they found, may have more to do with conservatives’ general opposition to the most popular solution — increasing government regulation — than with any difference in fear of the climate change problem itself, as some have proposed.

Participants in the experiment, including both self-identified Republicans and Democrats, read a statement asserting that global temperatures will rise 3.2 degrees in the 21st century. They were then asked to evaluate a proposed policy solution to address the warming.

When the policy solution emphasized a tax on carbon emissions or some other form of government regulation, which is generally opposed by Republican ideology, only 22 percent of Republicans said they believed the temperatures would rise at least as much as indicated by the scientific statement they read.

But when the proposed policy solution emphasized the free market, such as with innovative green technology, 55 percent of Republicans agreed with the scientific statement.

For Democrats, the same experiment recorded no difference in their belief, regardless of the proposed solution to climate change.

“Recognizing this effect is helpful because it allows researchers to predict not just what problems people will deny, but who will likely deny each problem,” said co-author Aaron Kay, an associate professor at Fuqua. “The more threatening a solution is to a person, the more likely that person is to deny the problem.”

The researchers found liberal-leaning individuals exhibited a similar aversion to solutions they viewed as politically undesirable in an experiment involving violent home break-ins. When the proposed solution called for looser versus tighter gun-control laws, those with more liberal gun-control ideologies were more likely to downplay the frequency of violent home break-ins.

“We should not just view some people or group as anti-science, anti-fact or hyper-scared of any problems,” Kay said. “Instead, we should understand that certain problems have particular solutions that threaten some people and groups more than others. When we realize this, we understand those who deny the problem more and we improve our ability to better communicate with them.”

Campbell added that solution aversion can help explain why political divides become so divisive and intractable.

“We argue that the political divide over many issues is just that, it’s political,” Campbell said. “These divides are not explained by just one party being more anti-science, but the fact that in general people deny facts that threaten their ideologies, left, right or center.”

The researchers noted there are additional factors that can influence how people see the policy implications of science. Additional research using larger samples and more specific methods would provide an even clearer picture, they said.

###

The study was funded by The Fuqua School of Business.

CITATION: Troy Campbell, Aaron Kay, Duke University (2014). “Solution Aversion: On the Relation Between Ideology and Motivated Disbelief.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(5), 809-824.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037963

G20: Australia resists international call supporting climate change fund (The Guardian)

07/11/2014UncategorizedAustrália, Conservadorismo, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionismorenzotaddei

Exclusive: Europe and the US argue strongly that leaders should back the need for contributions to the Green Climate Fund, which helps poorer countries prepare for climate change

theguardian.com, Friday 7 November 2014 00.51 GMT

tony abbott Australia’s original position was that the G20 meeting should focus solely on economic issues. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Australia is resisting a last-ditch push by the US, France and other European countries for G20 leaders at next week’s meeting in Brisbane to back contributions to the Green Climate Fund.

The prime minister has previously rejected the fund as a “Bob Brown bank on an international scale” – referring to the former leader of the Australian Greens.

The Green Climate Fund aims to help poorer countries cut their emissions and prepare for the impact of climate change, and is seen as critical to securing developing-nation support for a successful deal on reducing emissions at the United Nations meeting in Paris next year.

The US and European Union nations are also lobbying for G20 leaders to promise that post-2020 greenhouse emission reduction targets will be unveiled early, to improve the chances of a deal in Paris, but Australia is also understood to be resisting this.

As reported by Guardian Australia, Australia has reluctantly conceded the final G20 communique should include climate change as a single paragraph, acknowledging that it should be addressed by UN processes. Australia’s original position was that the meeting should focus solely on “economic issues”.

The text that has so far made it through the G20’s closed-door, consensus-driven process is very general, and reads as follows:

“We support strong and effective action to address climate change, consistent with sustainable economic growth and certainty for business and investment. We reaffirm our resolve to adopt a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that is applicable to all parties at the 21st Conference of the Parties in Paris in 2015.”

Australia had previously insisted the G20 should discuss climate-related issues only as part of its deliberations on energy efficiency, but the energy efficiency action plan to be agreed at the meeting, revealed by Guardian Australia, does not require G20 leaders to commit to any actual action.

Instead it asks them to “consider” making promises next year to reduce the energy used by smartphones and computers and to develop tougher standards for car emissions.

But as the negotiations on the G20 communique reach their final stages, European nations and the US continue to argue strongly that leaders should back the need for contributions to the Green Climate Fund.

More than $2.8bn has been pledged to the fund so far – including $1bn by France and almost $1bn by Germany. More pledges are expected at a special conference in Berlin on 20 November. The UK has said it will make a “strong” contribution at that meeting.

It is understood the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which leads Australia’s negotiating position, is considering whether Australia should make a pledge.

Asked about the fund before last year’s UN meeting, the prime minister said “we’re not going to be making any contributions to that”. It was reported that at one of its first cabinet meetings the Abbott government decided it would make no contributions to a fund that was described as “socialism masquerading as environmentalism”.

The government also pointedly dissented from support for the fund in a communique from last November’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting – a stance backed by Canada.

Abbott told the Australian newspaper at the time; “One thing the current government will never do is say one thing at home and a different thing abroad. We are committed to dismantling the Bob Brown bank [the Clean Energy Finance Corporation] at home so it would be impossible for us to support a Bob Brown bank on an international scale.”

* * *

Playing whack-a-mole with Australian adviser’s climate change myths (The Guardian)

Maurice Newman, business adviser to Australia’s prime minister, pops up with a litany of climate change myths and misrepresentations

Maurice Newman, the climate science denying business adviser to Australia’s prime minister Tony Abbott. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/Reuters

Reading opinion columns from Australian prime minister Tony Abbott’s top business adviser Maurice Newman reminds me of those fairground whack-a-mole games.

You smash those cartoonish mammals over their fibreglass heads with a big rubber hammer as they emerge from little round holes, yet these little subterranean mammals never know they’re beat and just come up with the same grin somewhere else.

In this climate denialist version of whack-a-mole, the mammal is replaced with Newman’s upper torso clutching the latest truthy climate factoid he has plucked indiscriminately from the intertubes.

Just like at the fairground, when you whack-a-Maurice, he just keeps popping up with another myth.

The latest version of whack-a-Maurice comes in his new opinion column in The Australian newspaper, headlined “Inconvenient truths ignored by the climate propaganda machine”.

In the article, Newman attacks renewable energy, the IPCC, Australian Greens leader Christine Milne and climate science in general while telling us that coal is cheap and reliable and that we should put our self-interest in selling that coal above all else.

Newman misrepresents the latest IPCC study, misquotes experts, pushes debunked studies, claims the Scottish Government commissioned a report that it likely never actually commissioned and rounds off by putting his faith in an internet poll that was gamed by climate sceptics.

So join me for a game of Whack-a-Maurice®.

Whack time

In the article, Newman starts with three statements about energy prices and how renewable energy projects apparently “destroy jobs” and have been terribly bad news for places that have embraced progressive policies to encourage renewable energy.

Newman writes:

Clearly [Greens Leader Christine] Milne is unaware of the cost to California, Europe and Britain of their ultra green embrace.

The Golden State’s energy prices are 40 per cent above the US national average, plunging its manufacturing and agricultural regions into depression, with one in five living in poverty.

OK. While it’s true that Californians do have comparatively expensive electricity costs, they actually have among the lowest average electricity bills across the whole of the United States.

This appears due to a combination of the state’s mild climate and its aggressive energy efficiency scheme.

California does have a renewable energy target – recently expanded to push the state to get 33 per cent of its power from renewables by 2020.

The Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in the US has studied the impact of renewable target schemes (known there as Renewable Portfolio Standards) in place across the US.

The 2007 Berkeley study (carried out before California upped its target) found these RPS schemes added an average of about 38c per month (about one quarter the cost of one take away coffee) to electricity bills. California’s scheme was among those having the lowest impact on bills.

In 2012, Californian’s had an electricity bill of about $87 per month.

Apparently, in Newman’s razor sharp climate policy mind, it is imposts like a 38c per month rise in electricity prices that is “plunging” the state’s agriculture industry into depression, rather than, say, one of California’s worst droughts in living memory.

El whack

So now to Spain. Newman writes:

Researchers at Spain’s King Juan Carlos University have found renewable energy programs destroyed 2.2 jobs for every green one created.

Newman is referring to a report titled: “Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources” that was published in 2009 and written by Gabriel Calzada Alvarez.

Alvarez is an associate professor at King Juan Carlos University, but Newman doesn’t mention that the study was actually co-commissioned by the “libertarian” think tank The Instituto Juan de Maria that Alvarez founded.

Alvarez has also presented at a Heartland Institute climate conference for “sceptics” and his institute has been a sponsor of one of those conferences.

Who were the other commissioning group?

This was the Institute for Energy Research, a US-based thinktank with strong links to the US Koch brothers, whose foundations have given about $175,000 to the think tank and funnelled millions into anti-climate action projects at similar think tanks. The IER recently claimed Alvarez’s study as its own.

But was the study any good?

The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratorytook a studied look at it and, to put it mildly, tore the thing to bits. Here’s some of the choice parts of their critique

The analysis by the authors from King Juan Carlos University represents a significant divergence from traditional methodologies used to estimate employment impacts from renewable energy. In fact, the methodology does not reflect an employment impact analysis. Accordingly, the primary conclusion made by the authors – policy support of renewable energy results in net jobs losses – is not supported by their work …

Additionally, this analysis has oversimplifications and assumptions that lead to questions regarding its quantitative results. Finally, the authors fail to justify their implication that because of the jobs comparison, subsidies for renewables are not worthwhile. This ignores an array of benefits besides employment creation that flow from government investment in renewable energy technologies.

The Alvarez study came in for similar harsh criticism in Spain, as noted here on a blog from the US Natural Resources Defense Council.

Scots whack

And so now to whack-a-Maurice in Scotland. Newman writes:

A study by Verso Economics commissioned by the Scottish government concluded that for every job in the wind industry, 3.7 jobs were lost elsewhere.

Verso Economics? Commissioned by the Scottish government? Sounds impressive.

Indeed, when the report was published in March 2011, it was given extensive coverage in Scotland. And what did the Scottish government make of the study? A BBC report tells us the government’s view.

This report is misleading.

Does it seem odd that the Scottish government should condemn it’s own report?

Perhaps one reason is that there appears to be no evidence that the Scottish government actually commissioned the report that Maurice Newman says it commissioned (I have asked the author, an economist called Richard Marsh, for clarification, but the report itself makes no mention of a commission from the Government and, when Marsh gave evidence to a Scottish parliamentary committee the following year in relation to the report, he didn’t mention a government commission then either).

Verso Economics appears to have been a very small firm with only two employees, Marsh being one of them. This doesn’t necessarily make the arguments wrong, but it is curious that Newman would choose to use the name of a tiny consultancy once based in Kirkaldy that no loner exists (Marsh is now at another firm).

Where’s the next mole?

Whacking scientists

Newman has a crack at former Australian chief scientist Penny Sackett who, according to Newman, had said in 2009 we had only five years to avoid “dangerous global warming”.

Plainly if you read Sackett’s words from 2009, she was talking about a time frame to start radically reducing emissions to prevent “dangerous global warming” down the track and not, as Newman implies, a time by which we should all be frying in our own juices.

Equally, Newman brings up the bête noire of all Australian climate science denialists, Tim Flannery. Newman writes:

When climate commissioner Tim Flannery said that “even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems”, it was sobering, but soon we were donating to flood victims and -suspected he’d dreamt it up to scare us.

Again, Newman ignores the fact that Flannery was not talking about the present, but referring to a time decades into the future if emissions remained on their current path.

Whack. Next mole?

Whacking the IPCC

Newman claims that “temperatures have gone nowhere for 18 years” while ignoring that in those 18 years the world has experienced the hottest decade on record. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, 13 of the 14 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2000.

If Newman thinks warming has stopped, why is it that between 2002 and 2011, the two main ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland were melting at a rate of about 362 billion tonnes of ice a year – an almost six-fold increase in the rate for the previous decade?

Newman keeps popping up like our proverbial mole with a litany of myths.

He says the recent IPCC Synthesis Report “fails to mention” that the extent of Antarctic sea ice is the highest since records began.

The reason it fails to mention this, is that the record was broken well after the underlying reports were finished.

But yet, the Synthesis Report does mention the increase in Antarctic sea ice extent (read my post What’s going on with global warming and Antarctica’s growing sea ice? for more on this).

Next.

Bleak whacking

Newman writes:

In painting the bleakest picture they can, IPCC authors have projected CO2 levels reaching 1000 parts per million in 2100, largely through coal combustion…

Newman wants us to think that the IPCC authors are a bunch of doom merchants, and so ignores the fact that the IPCC report makes a range of projections for the future concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

As well as the admittedly “bleak” scenario of CO2 levels reaching 1000 parts per million in the atmosphere by the end of this century (delivering something like 4C of global warming), the report also projects CO2 levels at 720ppm, 580ppm, 530ppm and 480ppm.

Newman would have struggled to have missed this, given they all appear on the same chart.

We could go on an on whacking Maurice Newman’s climate denialist moles, and his column has several others, but at some point we have to stop.

Sciencey internet polls

But not before we dwell on Newman’s closing argument that 91 per cent of people think the IPCC is wrong that we’re heading for 4C of global warming.

I think you’ll agree that Newman’s source for this is beyond reproach. It’s one of those really sciencey internet polls carried out by the ABC.

So sciencey was the survey, that climate science denialist groups from Australia to the US were telling supporters to visit the poll.

This is when we have to remind ourselves that Maurice Newman is the chairman of prime minister Tony Abbott’s Business Advisory Council, handpicked by Abbott himself.

As Maurice Newman himself concluded, “Enough said”.

The new GOP Senate is already gearing up to cause climate mayhem (Grist)

07/11/2014UncategorizedEstados Unidos, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionismo, Política, Republicanosrenzotaddei

By Ben Adler

5 Nov 2014 7:30 AM

On Tuesday night, Republicans won big: They picked up governorships in blue states like Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois, and they held House seats in competitive districts with embarrassing incumbents like Michael Grimm of New York, who physically threatened a reporter and is under indictment for tax evasion.

But their biggest win by far was taking control of the U.S. Senate. As of this writing, Republicans had already secured 52 Senate seats, thanks to knocking off Democratic incumbents or replacing retiring Democrats in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Another GOP pick up is probable in Alaska, and Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy is likely to win the runoff in Louisiana against Sen. Mary Landrieu in December.

This is not good news for the climate. The party that controls the majority and the committee chairmanships controls the agenda. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will now be the majority leader. McConnell deflects questions about whether he accepts climate science by saying he isn’t a scientist and citing climate-denying conservative pundit George Will. But he is clear about where he stands on fossil fuels, especially coal: He loves them. Attacking President Obama for not sharing his passion for burning carbon was central to McConnell’s reelection campaign this year. If you thought Landrieu, chair of the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee, was too pro–fossil fuel, just wait until Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska takes the gavel. Leading climate denier James Inhofe of Oklahoma will be taking over the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and fellow denier Ted Cruz (R-Texas) will be chairing the Committee on Science and Technology.

The Republicans have two top energy-related demands: stop EPA from regulating CO2 and approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

The EPA is required under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs) as pollutants. So the agency proposed regulations of CO2 emissions from power plants. This is the centerpiece of what Republicans inaccurately call Obama’s “War on Coal.”

In the House, Republicans have voted to strip the EPA of its authority to regulate GHGs. That measure died in the Senate because of Democratic opposition. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was the only Senate Republican to vote against it, and even she had voted once previously to revoke the EPA’s GHG regulatory authority. Obama has staked his second-term legacy on reducing GHG emissions, in large part through the EPA power plant regulations. Those regulations are also essentialto setting the U.S. on a path to meet its promised emissions reductions under the Copenhagen Accord of 2009. Obama will not let congressional Republicans make him look like a feckless liar to our allies, whose cooperation we need to get a more ambitious climate agreement in the 2015 round of negotiations in Paris. So Obama will make a stand on EPA authority if he must. And before it even comes to that, Senate Democrats will likely throttle any EPA authority repeal with a filibuster.

Keystone is more vulnerable. Many Democrats from fossil fuel-dependent states have called for its approval. As former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said on CNN Tuesday night, “This Republican House and Republican Senate will pass the Keystone XL pipeline.” Speaking on Fox News the same night, GOP Dark Overlord Karl Rove said that Republicans would look to pass legislation that could get Democratic votes and cited Keystone XL as an example.

Republicans won’t just pass Keystone approval on its own for Obama to veto. They will continue their strategy of attaching it to unrelated bills, from anodyne energy-efficiency measures to the budget. No one really knows what Obama thinks about Keystone, but it is widely assumed that he was happy to let it go through until activists rose up in protest. Obama would probably like to mollify his base after the midterms by rejecting Keystone, but there’s no guarantee he won’t be willing to trade it away with newly empowered Republicans.

Anticipating exactly this line of dispiriting thinking, 350.org, which has led the national fight against Keystone, issued a statement Tuesday night defensively titled, “Keystone XL No Done Deal.” “We know the Republicans are going to make Keystone a priority, but this isn’t their call,” said May Boeve, executive director of 350.org. “President Obama has the power to reject the Keystone pipeline outright, and do right by his own legacy. We’re gearing up to hold his feet to the fire — and we’re confident that when everything’s said and done, Keystone XL will not be built.”

Republicans know they may need to force Obama’s hand on Keystone precisely because of the pressure he will get from his base to reject it. And they will try to do just that. With control of both houses of Congress, Republicans can pass any bill they want unless Senate Democrats threaten a filibuster. That doesn’t mean Republicans can enact any law they want. Obama can veto their bills, and now his little-used veto pen will be put to work. But Obama can’t simply prevent the GOP from doing anything at all. Some legislation has to get passed just to keep the government running, such as approving a budget and raising the debt ceiling. Ever since Republicans won control of the House in 2010, they have been exploiting those requirements to try to force Obama to sign off on their agenda. Now, with control of the Senate, Republicans will be in a stronger position to demand that Obama give in to or compromise on some of their demands. If he doesn’t, they can cause a government shutdown, or trigger a global financial collapse by breaching the debt ceiling and defaulting on the U.S. national debt.

I know what you’re thinking: “But shutting down the government or defaulting on our debt would be terrible for America!” Don’t be so naive as to mistake congressional Republicans for rational human beings or patriotic Americans. They are so beholden to their base that taking the U.S. economy hostage has become a standard GOP negotiating tactic. Since swing voters frown on such shenanigans, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) has said he would like to end the hostile budget fights and get down to governing. But the Republican leadership always wants that, and in the past they’ve always given in to their rowdy backbenchers.

If they can’t get their way through normal legislative means, Republicans might simply try to disable the government by blocking all of President Obama’s nominees until he gives in to a major demand like Keystone approval. They were already doing that by filibustering even moderate, well-qualified nominees until Democrats eliminated the filibuster for executive branch appointees. Now, with a Senate majority, Republicans can block any nominee.

To see what else Senate Republicans have in store for the environment, just look at what their House colleagues have tried to do. Earlier this year, House Republicans passed a series of bills to kneecap federal agencies like the EPA. The details are boring and complicated, but the bottom line is that they would institute a number of requirements to burden or constrict the regulatory process. A typical example is their proposal to require agencies to calculate all the indirect costs of every regulation and always choose the least costly option, regardless of its adverse impact on, say, human health. Another example: In September, they passed a bill that would stop the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers from protecting America’s small streams and wetlands.

Republicans will also try to prevent environmental regulation by refusing to pay for it. In a typical measure, the House GOP’s EPA budget passed in June would have cut funding for the agency by 9 percent. House Republicans have previously votedto defund the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which compiles reportson climate science, and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the body that hosts international climate negotiations. Now the Senate may join them. Just through controlling the House, Republicans have already forced through milder cuts to the EPA budget and blocked environmental regulations. With control of the Senate, Obama will have to cede even more ground.

In fairness to the GOP, elections have consequences and Obama should have to compromise with them. That Republicans lack any actual popular majority — they won because of the rural bias of the Senate and gerrymandering of House districts — is irrelevant. When Republicans claim they have a popular mandate, they are lying, and should be called out for it. But when they say, “We won and we’re going to use our power to enact our agenda,” it’s all in the game.

And so you can expect to see a lot of little bits of bad news for the climate and the broader environment in the budget negotiation process. EPA funding will be cut, presumably by somewhere between the roughly stable funding Obama will likely request and the drastic cuts the House GOP will pass. Programs that especially irk Republicans, like those that promote renewable energy and anything pertaining to smart growth, will fare especially poorly. There will also be spending cuts in other departments with environmental implications, like mass transit and transit-oriented affordable-housing development.

In terms of Senate election results, the worst of it is over. The map of states with Senate seats up in 2016 is a lot more favorable to Democrats, and they will stand a good chance of regaining the majority. But in terms of environmental policy, the worst is yet to come.

* * *

Climate change denier Jim Inhofe in line for Senate’s top environmental job (The Guardian)

Obama faces a fight to protect his climate change agenda after midterm results suggest Senate’s top environmental post will fall to Republican stalwart of climate denial

theguardian.com, Thursday 6 November 2014 16.24 GMT

Climate skeptic nad Republican Senator Jim Inhofe Republican Senator Jim Inhofe is expected to get the Senate top environmental job. Photograph: Tom Williams/Getty Images

The Senate’s top environmental job is set to fall to Jim Inhofe, one of the biggest names in US climate denial, but campaigners say Barack Obama will fight to protect his global warming agenda.

Oklahoma Republican Inhofe has been denying the science behind climate change for 20 years – long before it became a cause for the conservative tea party wing. Following midterm elections which saw the Republicans take control of the senate, he is now expected to become the chairman of the senate environment and public works committee.

However, advocates believe Obama will work to protect his signature power plant rules from Republican attacks, and to live up to his earlier commitments to a global deal on fight climate change.

“We think he sees this as a critically important part of his second term legacy and there is no reason why he should not continue to go forward on this… both domestically and around the world,” Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, told a press briefing.

The campaigners were less clear, however, how far Obama would be willing to fight to block the Keystone XL pipeline project.

Obama will get a chance to show he is still committed to fighting climate change during a trip to Beijing next week, where the US and Chinese are expected to announce new energy co-operation.

Extracting a pledge from China to cut emissions is hugely important now for Obama, who faces growing pressure from Republicans to demonstrate that other countries beyond the US – especially the high-emissions, rising economies – are acting on climate change.

“It is a domestic political imperative for the president to gain emissions reductions from China and other major emitters as much as it is an international policy goal,” said Paul Bledsoe, a climate change official in the Clinton White House.

“The president is under increasing pressure to gain emissions reductions from China and other major emitters in order to justify US domestic mitigation policy. That is going to be the spin Republicans put on it – that we are wasting our time with domestic emissions reductions because they will be swamped by developing countries’ pollution.”

Obama is going to feel that pressure the most from Congress. With his opponents now in control of both houses, the top slot on the Senate’s environment and public works committee passes from a climate defender, the California Democrat, Barbara Boxer, to Inhofe.

He published a book in 2012 calling global warming a hoax, and has compared the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Gestapo.

A spokeswoman for Inhofe said his first concern was passing the defence budget, and that he would make no comment on his leadership roles until next week.

But if, as expected, Inhofe becomes the new committee chair next January, he will probably try to dismantle the EPA rules cutting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants – the centrepiece of Obama’s environmental agenda.

Industry lobbyists and campaigners said Inhofe lacked the votes to throw out the power plant rules entirely.

Obama would also veto any such move, said Scott Segal, an energy and coal lobbyist with Bracewell & Giuliani.

“I’m not sure we have the votes to advance those across the finish line particularly if they are vetoed,” Segal told a conference call with reporters. Instead, he said he expected “tailored changes”, which could weaken the rules.

Bledsoe did expect, however, that Obama will sign off on the controversial Keystone XL project early next year.

Republicans have said approving the pipeline, built to pump tar sands crude to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, would be an early order of business.

Obama in his post-election press conference gave no indication what he would decide. But Bledsoe said: “I actually believe the president is likely to approve the piepline and in the process deny Republicans a politically potent issue.”

From his perch in the Senate, Inhofe is expected to launch multiple investigations into the EPA – including Republican charges that the agency leaned heavily on a campaign group in drafting the proposed new rules.

But as committee chair, Inhofe is unlikely to indulge in quite the same level of theatrics on climate denial, said RL Miller, a California lawyer and founder of the grassroots organising group, Climate Hawks Vote.

“I expect we are going to see less headline-grabbing efforts on the EPA and more of simply throttling their budget,” Miller said. “If he touches climate denial at all he is going to be ridiculed in public and in the media. If he is smart, he is going to be very quiet publicly, and it will be death by a thousand cuts in the kind of budget battles that people like Jon Stewart don’t pay attention to.”

Despite their upbeat postures, Tuesday’s results were a big setback for campaign groups which had invested an unprecedented amount in trying to elect pro-climate candidates to Congress.

The former hedge fund billionaire, Tom Steyer, spent nearly $75m on advertising and organising in only seven races, making him the biggest known single spender in these elections. Only three of his candidates won.

“There is no way to dance around the issue that in too many races we lost good allies,” Michael Brune, the director of the Sierra Club, told a briefing. “We see those people being replaced by people that are against our values.”

But the environmental leaders blamed the poor showing on low turnout in an off election year – and continued to insist that climate change was becoming a top-tier issue.

They insisted their effort had put climate change on the electoral map – a big shift from 2012 when virtually no candidates would even utter the words climate change.

This time around, Republican candidates were forced to back away from outright climate denial, the campaigners said.

They noted Cory Gardner, the newly elected Republican Senator from Colorado, had appeared in campaign ads with wind turbines, after earlier disparaging climate science. “Climate denial is an endangered species,” Brune said.

Crash and burn: debating accelerationism (3:AM Magazine)

07/11/2014UncategorizedAceleracionismo, Capitalismo, Filosofia, Teoria socialrenzotaddei

Alexander Galloway in conversation with Benjamin Noys.

Cover image of Malign Velocities, courtesy of Dean Kenning

Accelerationism emerged as the latest theoretical trend with the publication of Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams’ #Accelerate Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics in 2013. The book was quickly translated into at least seventeen languages, including German, French, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish and Korean. In 2014 came the publication of #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, edited by Robin Mackay and Arman Avanessian, and during this period a series of public events, seminars and discussions on accelerationism took place, including in Paris, New York, Berlin and London. This appropriately accelerated discussion has often taken place in relation to the art world, including a special issue of the journal e-flux, and has been characterized by heated polemic.

This interview brings together one of the leading critics of accelerationism, Benjamin Noys, who coined the concept as an object of criticism and has just published his critique Malign Velocities (Zero, 2014), with Alexander R. Galloway, an author and programmer working on media theory and contemporary French philosophy. In the discussion they explore the battles over the definition of accelerationism, the role of the negative, questions of abstraction, and the appeal and perils of fantasies of acceleration. The interview was conducted by email and in person between 23 October 2014 and 3 November 2014.

AG: You have a new book titled Malign Velocities: Accelerationism & Capitalism. This is an occasion to celebrate, in any event. And I wonder, even in the spirit of recapitulation, if you might simply define “accelerationism” for us and explain why you decided to return to this concept from your previous book, only now as an “enemy”?

BN: One of the difficult issues in discussing “accelerationism” is that so much of the debate has turned on what exactly that term means. I would say in light of the most recent articulations a simple one-line definition might be: “Accelerationism is the engagement and reworking of forces of abstraction and reason to punch through the limits of an inertial and stagnant capitalism.” Whereas previously much of what I called “accelerationism”, especially in the early 1970s work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jean Baudrillard, involved a qualified playing with the “accelerated” forces of capitalist production, the current forms stress the need to find new forces that can act against a capitalism that no longer seems to deliver on the “promise” of acceleration. The key figure here is Nick Land, once an academic at the University of Warwick and now a journalist in China. Land’s work in the 1990s provided the most extreme statement of an endorsement of capitalism, or tendencies in capitalism, as mechanisms of acceleration and disintegration. In many ways contemporary accelerationism defines itself against Land, although he still exerts a certain fascination. His recent interest in neo-reactionary thoughtmakes this fascination problematic, to put it mildly.

In terms of my new book I should say I have always been highly skeptical about “accelerationist” strategies, of whatever variety. It was the fact that what I had coined as a term of criticism – although I later found the word occurs in Roger Zelazny’s 1967 novelLord of Light, which I had read – was now being celebrated that was one of the drivers for the new book. The return of interest in strategies of acceleration at a time of capitalist crisis is not surprising, especially when that crisis is taking a long-drawn out and often highly uneven form. In the face of calls for austerity, which almost always fall on the victims of the crisis, signaled in the popularity of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” meme in the UK, a counter-reaction is obvious. While I share the hostility to demands for sacrifice and austerity I think that accelerationist strategies too often feedback into a desire for a return to a, supposedly, productive capitalism. This is what I have called “capitalist Ostalgie.” If “Ostalgie” was nostalgia for the lived experience of “actually-existing socialism”, capitalist Ostalgie is a nostalgia for the images of capitalist dynamism, especially that of the new technologies during the 1990s.

AG: Today’s intellectual current seems to be forking in two distinct directions. The dominant fork is, as you suggest, a kind of technophilic, network affirmationism. But there is an alternative path evident in some of your writings, a path that leads through the negative. Curiously, that erstwhile paragon of progressive theory, Gilles Deleuze, appears now as something of a villain. I recall you use the term “Deleuzian Thatcherism” at a certain point. Can you describe your interest in the negative? Why are you calling for a return to the negative? And what might it offer for the future?

BN: I used “Deleuzian Thatcherism” in the ’90s to describe Nick Land’s work and what I saw as the convergence between his work and certain hyper-Thatcherite currents, which someone referred to at the time as “Thatcherism in its Maoist Phase”. I think, now, a more accurate but inelegant characterization would have been “Lyotardian Thatcherism”, as Land seems to take a lot more from Lyotard’s 1974 book Libidinal Economy, with its argument that there is only one libidinal economy and that this is capitalist. While it’s true that the work of Deleuze, and especially that of Deleuze and Guattari, has never been to my taste, when I wrote on him for my book The Persistence of the Negative I found more appreciation for his work. There is, if we like, a “negative Deleuze”. Also, I think the debate about accelerationism has sharpened positions and I’ve had interesting and supportive responses to my critique from those who are sympathetic both to Deleuze and to Guattari.

In terms of the negative my interest really emerged out of noticing how easily it was being dismissed and how much of contemporary thought defined itself as affirmative or positive, which is what I called, borrowing from Badiou, “Affirmationism”. Obviously we could include accelerationism, with its positive attitude to technology, reason and abstraction, within this broad category. At the same time, despite misunderstandings, this turn to the negative was not simply a matter of miserabilism or “negativity”, in the common use of the word, on my part. I’m not sure whether I qualify as a “happy person”, but my aim wasn’t to celebrate the virtues of depression. Instead, negativity interests me as a way to define a practice of contestation and rupture, and not least to disrupt all the calls to embrace the positive, to embrace “things as they are”, as William Godwin put it. So, a return to the negative is a return to rethinking the negative, not as a “pure” state, but as intertwined with affirmative moments and as a means of thinking change. It is actually the case that “affirmative” thinking is often accompanied by a celebration of hyperbolic and extreme negativity, by a stress on suffering and misery, but only as moment subordinate to a sudden transformation.

Accelerationism stakes a lot on its ability to imagine the future, especially with the acid test of accepting the future need for space travel (with moon gulags, in the joke, for dissidents). Within the provocation and technological utopianism I think there is something to the accelerationists’ stress on not imagining a future communist society as merely ameliorating capitalist barbarism with what Marx called a “barracks communism”. What concerns me, which is another reason I turn to negativity, is not the difficulty in imagining the future, but the difficulty imagining how we might get there. For this reason I have stressed negativity as a form of struggle that operates within a horizon of past struggles, which must be affirmed, in the attempt to decommodify the world, as well as to break with other forms of state power and other forms of oppression and violence.

AG: Along those lines, what is the connection, if any, between negation and nihilism, a philosophical tendency that has rebounded in recent years? I’m thinking of the “wider field” of speculative realism stretching from Ray Brassier to Eugene Thacker. We seem to be in the middle of a kind of Existentialist Revival.

BN: What’s interesting in the recent articulations of nihilism is that they tend to evacuate or even annihilate the subject, unlike classical existentialism. While I have some interest in nihilist thinking, dating back to readings of Re/Search as a teenager and then through my work on Bataille, I think this hyperbolic nihilism often ends up circling back to affirmation – in this case the affirmation of a universe which has no need of subjects. In my terms, thinking of negation, I would like to distinguish negativity from any hyperbolic negativity or nihilism, by stressing that negativity is a practice that engages with points of contradiction and violence. My view of negation is a deflationary one, trying to shift out of the desire to contemplate or even wallow in some collapse of all values, to consider the tensions of negation.

In terms of accelerationism nihilism carries different values. It was obviously crucial to Nick Land, who deployed a nihilism developed from Bataille and Schopenhauer to annihilate the ego. In this vision, we embrace what Nietzsche called “European nihilism”, embodied in the nihilist drive of capital to reduce everything to value, as the means to overcome humanism and to become fully disenchanted. Contemporary accelerationism sometimes tries to weaponize nihilism as almost a therapeutic device, while other currents stress the need to reinvent norms out of an “inhumanism” that can recreate and take the human beyond itself. I’m skeptical of the invocation of a “hard-edged” nihilism, which seems to me to abandon a lot of crucial questions by invoking a “levelling” of values that is, at best, highly uneven. It may even be, ironically, that a radical nihilism is consolatory – giving us a weird sense of security by reaffirming our pointlessness. In this there is a risk of the return of the subject as the one who is able to proclaim the nihilist “bad news” and so remain somehow superior or immune – a kind of cult of non-personality.

AG: One of the classic debates in leftist theory is that of orthodoxy. Lukács famously asked: What is orthodox Marxism? And his unorthodox answer ironically helped solidify a new kind of cultural Marxist orthodoxy in the decades since. Reza Negarestani has labeled this a form of “kitsch” Marxism, suggesting the need for a renewed critique of orthodoxy. How best can we square the necessarily dialectical movement of history with certain foundational categories like justice, democracy, or the people?

BN: I would almost certainly fail any test of Marxist orthodoxy, or even unorthodoxy. This is not because I regard myself as original or dissident, but due to my lack of thorough knowledge of Marx and Marxism and my own formation, which owes something to anarchism, a lot to the Situationists, and more than a little to my maternal grandfather’s straightforward socialism and his stories of his life as a union representative while working on the railways in London (I perhaps also owe something to my paternal grandfather’s ad hoc practice of the “refusal of work”). The result is that my “Marxism” is probably more suspicious of a belief in the productive forces than some of the classical forms and more geared to a suspicion of the category of labor.

In terms of Reza’s characterization there is a truth to the claim that certain forms of postwar Marxism tended to an extreme pessimism, as every undergraduate who does cultural studies usually learns. I have more sympathy for this trend – I think Adorno’s Minima Moralia is a brilliant book. But, of course, a characterization of capitalism as completely dominant, a characterization of all life and culture as completely determined by capital, leaves little to do (and I think very few actually said this). On the other hand, the accelerationists’ critique seems to me to bend the stick too far in the other direction, implying too much acceptance of contemporary technological and cultural forms that does not really consider how they are shaped by capitalism. Presenting capitalism as a parasite (I always think of Futurama’s brain slugs) implies that we simply shrug off the parasite to get back to a neutral technological or cultural possibility. I think capitalism shapes our context and existence in subtler ways than that, although it is always a contradictory social formation. While I would say there is no simple “outside” to capitalism, I don’t think this is a counsel of despair because I’d attend to the contradictions and struggle that always and everywhere exist within this social relation.

AG: Let’s talk in particular about abstraction. Abstraction has always presented something of a problem within critical theory. Yet today many on the left are taking up the question of abstraction again with renewed energy. How do you understand the role of abstraction today? Do you think of abstraction in philosophical terms or in, shall we say, strictly material terms?

BN: I think the crucial category here is Marx’s “real abstraction”, or more precisely Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s formalization of Marx’s comments to define this concept. The paradox of “Real Abstraction” is crucial, in that abstractions, notably “abstract labor”, are very real and very abstract at the same time. In this way abstraction is brutally material in the way, for example, it violently homogenizes all forms of labor into the category of abstract labor, which is geared to value production. Keston Sutherland (pdf here) has written very nicely on how Marx’s German word “Gallerte”, usually translated as “congealed”, refers to boiled down animal products (blood, bone, connective tissue, etc.). When our labor is congealed into abstract labor we become mere “ingredients” and, as Sutherland says, we are processed into abstract “stuff”. I think this usefully expresses how the usual oppositions of abstract and concrete or abstract and material don’t quite capture this process. The abstract is concrete or pseudo-concrete.

This is why, in what’s becoming a theme of this conversation, I think accelerationists are right, but for the wrong reasons. They are right to draw attention to abstraction as a crucial process, but they disengage it too rapidly from this horizon. This is why I think there is a tendency in their work to fetishize abstraction by choosing its most extreme forms to focus on, such as High-Frequency Trading. While this form of algorithmic trading expresses, almost too perfectly, a kind of terminal point of commodity fetishism, in which all we have are ghostly circulations of value, it too requires a brutal series of interventions into “material” forms (as Alberto Toscano has explained). I’d add that this attention to the extreme forms of abstraction also risks missing the more prevalent global forms of real abstraction that, as with abstract labor, dominate and pervade our experience.

It’s for this reason that I also suggest we need to traverse abstraction and can’t simply leap out of abstraction into some “good” alternative. The very search for such alternatives, such as the valorization of the concept of “life” as an excessive force, seems to me to create another abstraction. My problem with accelerationism is that it embraces and then abandons this ground of abstraction. Certainly it does not seek an outside point, a cozy “warm abstraction”, but in its embrace of “cold abstraction” as a global force it neglects these effects of “processing” and the material becomes disembodied in the fantasy of full integration with the abstract.

AG: From abstraction to culture: you also have a keen interest in art and culture. But culture is so unfashionable today! The Linguistic Turn, with its focus on culture and ideology, has been targeted by a number of new schools of thought, including speculative realism and new materialism. Hermeneutics and other interpretive methods, once so dominant, are suffering in the academy at the hands of “distant reading” and other positivistic approaches. What is your relationship to those once stalwart critical methods? I’m thinking of allegory in particular, which you also deploy.

BN: I think this is also a question about the abstract and the material. It seems to me that the general “turn” in the humanities to the material – and my day job is teaching literature – is part of a longer historicist turn that goes back to the 1980s. While everyone tends to think of the humanities as dominated by a “linguistic” post-structuralism (a false image, in fact), the reality I find is a common historicism that constantly invokes the density of “materiality”. This I call a “pop Burkeanism”, as it repeats Edmund Burke’s counter-revolutionary stress on the social as a “dense medium”, but now translated into the form of material artefacts – everything from book covers to letters, from publisher’s offices to architecture, to “material culture”.

This drift is not only politically problematic, but also the general invocation of the “material” often seems fatally abstract. It seems to me that the new materialisms and the various forms of “distant reading” share a paradoxical structure in which the attention to material specificity is coupled with the capacity to skim over or pick and choose between “objects” treated as equal. In what is perhaps a crass allegory I see this as symptomatic of the omission of the commodity-form, which is a form that at once equalizes all commodities as measurable by value and insists on their specific value within this frame. That’s why I have generally tried to explore the continuing possibilities of critique and question this turn to a “post-critical” way of thinking. Critique, I hope, can attend better to the constant processes of transformation of the material to the abstract and vice versa.

In terms of accelerationism I think culture is a central element, which can’t simply be wished away. I often say I think we should have all debates about accelerationism in terms of dance music, and this isn’t a (probably bad) joke. The role of dance music and electronic music in shaping accelerationism goes back to the work of Nick Land and the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) at Warwick, which drew heavily on jungle and drum and bass. These forms of post-rave dance music, which deployed sped-up breakbeats, were taken as aesthetic examples of the power of accelerationism. I was also an avid follower of this music, combined with my ongoing interest in Techno. I belong to the same generation as many of the original accelerationists and so we share, to some degree, a common cultural formation. The crucial role of music in the formation of accelerationism, along with a related visual culture, means that the “aesthetic” reception of accelerationism isn’t simply a category error. In my work, while I don’t deny the energy and acceleration of these forms I’m also interested in how they reflect on elements of friction, both to generate this sense of acceleration and in the way this friction incarnates attempts to transcend or leave behind the body and its labors. The body on the dance floor is both detached from labor, but also experiences a new form of labor, or the repetitions that at once mimic and take to an extreme the repetitions of work.

The logo of the “Metalheads” music label

To treat accelerationism aesthetically is often seen as dismissive, but I think it has to be placed in the context of various avant-garde attempts to instantiate what Badiou calls “the passion for the real”: this is the attempt to not only represent social forms, but to intervene or create something by cutting into those forms. The modernist impulses of accelerationism make it heir to this task. The problem I find, again!, is this misplacing of this problem and a collapsing of the difficulty of representation. This is why I also think the psychoanalytic category of fantasy is crucial, as a social or ideological fantasy, to grasping the accelerationist desire. In terms of accelerationism this is a fantasy we could have done with fantasy, which I think is the final fantasy.

Accelerationism turns on fantasies of integration and immersion, with capitalism, with the machinic, and with the abstract. While these fantasies register our experience of the pains of labor and the threats of unemployment, they also transform them into the dream of ecstatic enjoyment – jouissance. I think the task today is to resist this sort of pleasure, which also involves pain, in a kind of masochism, but not through the dismissal of enjoyment. Instead of a new asceticism I think the task is to articulate and politicize pleasures that resist and interrupt our immersion in contemporary capitalism. This requires neither the appeal to a “pure” outside nor the demand for complete immersion, but a practice that engages with the contradictions and violence we confront.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWEE
Benjamin Noys teaches at the University of Chichester and his recent publications includeThe Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Theory (Edinburgh, 2010) and Malign Velocities: Accelerationism & Capitalism (Zero Books, 2014). He is currently writing a critique of vitalism in contemporary theory.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
Alexander R. Galloway teaches at New York University. His latest book is Laruelle: Against the Digital (Minnesota, 2014).

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First published in 3:AM Magazine: Tuesday, November 4th, 2014.

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JC 5060, 6 de novembro de 2014

Acelerar inovação é urgente, afirma CNI (Valor Econômico)

Fórum sobre o tema reuniu 250 empresários, representantes do setor público e pesquisadores ontem em Porto Alegre

Acelerar o passo da inovação é uma necessidade urgente, caso contrário o Brasil ficará para trás no contexto internacional. O alerta é da diretora de Inovação da Confederação Nacional da Indústria (CNI), Gianna Sagazio, uma das palestrantes do Fórum Inovação Social, Eficiência e Produtividade Empresarial, realizado ontem pelo Valor na capital gaúcha.

Leia a matéria na íntegra em: http://www.valor.com.br/empresas/3768914/acelerar-inovacao-e-urgente-afirma-cni

(Dauro Veras / Valor Econômico)

Here comes the story of the Dylan fans (ki.se)

07/11/2014Uncategorizedciência, Rock'n Rollrenzotaddei

Updated on 2014-09-25. Published on 2014-09-25

Dylan fans: Jonas Frisén, Konstantinos Meletis, Jon Lundberg, Kenneth Chien and Eddie Weitzberg. Photo: Gustav Mårtensson

An internal contest has been ongoing between a little band of researchers at Karolinska Institutet. And the one who succeeds in quoting Bob Dylan in most scientific articles before going into retirement is the winner.

The story begins 17 years ago. Jon Lundberg and Eddie Weitzberg, today both professors at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at KI, had an article published in Nature Medicine with the title: ‘Nitric Oxide and Inflammation: The answer is blowing in the wind’.

“We both really like Bob Dylan so when we set about writing an article concerning the measurement of nitric oxide gas in both the respiratory tracts and the intestine, with the purpose of detecting inflammation, the title came up and it fitted there perfectly,” says Eddie Weitzberg.

Some years later they saw an article written by Jonas Frisén, Professor at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, together with Konstantinos Meletis, Research Assistant at the Department of Neuroscience. The subject of the article was whether blood cells can change and become nerve cells.

“The title was ‘Blood on the tracks: a simple twist of fate’; this is the name of the album on the one hand, and a song of Bob Dylan on the other, and the article contained additional Dylan references,” points out Eddie Weitzberg.

Jon Lundberg and Eddie Weitzberg then succeeded in introducing ‘The times they are a-changin’ into the title in a separate article and, at the same time, sent an email to Jonas Frisén and announced the launch of an internal competition.

“The one who has written most articles with Dylan quotes, before going into retirement, wins a lunch at the Solna restaurant Jöns Jacob,” explains Jon Lundberg.

Jonas Frisén and a colleague responded with the article ‘Eph receptors tangled up in two’ in Cell Cycle the same year, 2010, the title of which is inspired by Bob Dylan’s song ‘Tangled up in blue’. The following year, Jon Lundberg and Eddie Weitzberg countered with ‘Dietary nitrate – a slow train coming’ in The Journal of Physiology.

“This article also concluded with a paraphrase of Dylan: ‘We know something is happening, but we don’t know what it is – Do we, Dr Jones?’ where we jokingly addressed a British colleague with the same surname,” says Jon Lundberg.

Moreover, Kenneth Chien, Professor of Cardiovascular Research at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology and the Department of Medicine, Huddinge, has also been quoting Bob Dylan but – until very recently – was completely unaware of the articles of the others. ‘Tangled up in blue: Molecular cardiology in the postmolecular era’was published in Circulation 1997; the same year that Lundberg’s and Eddie Weitzberg’s first article with a Dylan quote was published.

When the five researchers met up in August to have their photo taken for this article, Bob Dylan is the obvious subject of conversation. They discuss eagerly who has read the Bob Dylan autobiography entitled Chronicles and enquire about the internal competition.

“The contest is open for everyone,” says Jon Lundberg. He goes on to explain that they usually draw attention to one another’s new articles via email.

The researchers also point out that it is primarily in review articles and commentaries that it is possible to use quotes since these articles are often slightly lighter in tone (less heavyweight) than others.

“But it’s important that the quote is linked to the scientific content, that it reinforces the message and raises the quality of the article as such, not the reverse,” says Jonas Frisén.

What then is so special about Bob Dylan? Eddie Weitzberg thinks he merits a Nobel prize for Literature while Kenneth Chien compares him to a modern Shakespeare, though in music. But the researchers also draw parallels between Bob Dylan’s music and the world of research.

“A musician who merely continues down the same highway for 30 years is not one who many want to listen to. Good music is innovative, like Bob Dylan’s. And the same thing applies to good research. A researcher must also try to find new and different paths,” says Konstantinos Meletis.

Text: Lisa Reimegård

In the photo:

Jonas Frisén, Professor of stem cell research at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. Member of The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet.

Konstantinos Meletis, Research Associate at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet.

Jon Lundberg, Professor of Nitric Oxide Pharmacologics at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet.

Kenneth Chien, Professor at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, and the Department of Medicine.Karolinska Institutet. Before Dr. Kenneth Chien was recruited to Karolinska Institutet he was a Professor in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University in Cambridge.

Eddie Weitzberg, Professor of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet.

NASA resolveu preparar astronautas para se comunicar com alienígenas ? 31/10/2014 (Jornal da Cultura)

07/11/2014UncategorizedInteligência extraterrestre, NASArenzotaddei

Última chance (Página 22)

05/11/2014clima, Incerteza, IPCC, mudança climática, política, previsãorenzotaddei

04/11/2014 – 10h19

por Diego Viana, da Página 22

Foto: http://ambientalsustentavel.org/A humanidade dispõe de dinheiro, tecnologia e conhecimento para mudar a rota que conduz a uma alta catastrófica da temperatura no planeta. A bola está com atores políticos e econômicos, que têm pouco mais de um ano para fechar um acordo global decisivo.

As notícias não foram boas nos últimos meses. Apesar de estagnada desde 2008, a economia mundial não consegue reduzir as emissões de carbono no ritmo necessário. Para manter o aquecimento global em 2 graus [1] até 2100, teríamos de emitir 6,2% a menos ano após ano. Em 2013, a redução foi de só 1,2%, de acordo com relatório da consultoria PwC. No ritmo anual, caminhamos facilmente para um aquecimento de 4 graus. Entre os dois cenários – de 2 e de 4 graus –, a diferença é um abismo: ou um planeta mais difícil de viver, com desastres frequentes, falta de comida e de água, populações deslocadas, ou uma mudança climática descontrolada e completamente inóspita para a civilização (ver gráfico 1).

Já os oceanos, responsáveis por segurar boa parte do aquecimento global, estão esquentando a uma velocidade superior à prevista, segundo o Painel Intergovernamental sobre Mudança Climática (IPCC, na sigla em inglês). Assim, fica ainda mais estreito o ultimato para encontrar soluções climáticas. Em setembro, a ONG WWF anunciou que, nos últimos 40 anos, por efeito da ação humana, a população mundial de animais vertebrados caiu à metade, enquanto a distância entre a oferta de recursos naturais do planeta e as demandas do sistema econômico só cresce (ver gráfico 2).

Gráfico 1

Gráfico 2

A sucessão de dados negativos acrescenta uma dose de urgência ao esforço de controlar o acúmulo de carbono na atmosfera e, assim, reduzir boa parte da nossa pegada ecológica.

Depois de anos em que negociações multilaterais esbarraram na incapacidade de encontrar um terreno comum para um acordo entre políticos de diversos países, é cada vez maior a convicção, em sociedades ao redor do mundo, de que não se pode mais postergar uma solução por motivos políticos.

A 21a Conferência da ONU para o clima (COP 21), que ocorrerá em Paris em dezembro de 2015, torna-se tão mais decisiva para o futuro da civilização quanto mais se aproxima a data. Negociadores e ativistas esperam conseguir até lá chegar a um acordo climático eficaz. A COP 20 ocorrerá em dezembro deste ano em Lima (Peru), mas só no ano seguinte os ativistas acreditam que se produzirá algo concreto.

“Se fizermos tudo que pode ser feito, há 75% de chance de conseguirmos manter o aquecimento global dentro dos 2 graus até 2100”, diz o ecologista Tom Athanasiou, diretor- executivo da ONG americana EcoEquity, citando estudos do IPCC.

Athanasiou separa a questão em duas: técnico-científica e político-econômica. “Temos o dinheiro, a tecnologia e a ciência para fazer uma redução emergencial rápida o suficiente para segurar a linha de 2 graus. É um declínio global de emissões muito veloz e que ainda seria muito perigoso, porque envolveria o dobro do aquecimento que tivemos até hoje [de 0,8 grau]”, diz. “Mas com o ‘business and politics as usual’ , duvido que dê para evitar os 3 graus ou até 4 graus.”

Mecanismos de Mercado

Segundo o sociólogo Sérgio Abranches, que edita o site Ecopolítica, o fato de os modelos climáticos terem margens de erro elevadas resulta em discordância entre cientistas sobre a possibilidade de a temperatura ficar abaixo dos 2 graus de aquecimento. O resultado se reflete sobre a política, porque “a política trabalha com certezas. Se alguém manifesta qualquer dúvida sobre um ponto, os políticos adiam a decisão, e é isso que tem acontecido”.

Muitas das propostas para reduzir as emissões ao redor do mundo envolvem mecanismos de mercado, propiciados pelo Protocolo de Kyoto, baseados no cap-and-trade, que impõe um limite de emissões e cria créditos que podem ser negociados. Mas, sem poder de sanção e sem o apoio de países importantes como EUA e China, o protocolo é considerado um fracasso.

“Os mecanismos de mercado já mostraram que (sozinhos) não são suficientes”, diz Abranches, citando o exemplo dos créditos de carbono europeus, que não foram capazes de reduzir as emissões no continente. “Não é possível fazer o mercado funcionar só com incentivos. É preciso combiná-los com penalidades que tornem os incentivos mais atraentes para empresas emissoras.”

Para o sociólogo, o único instrumento econômico eficaz é o imposto sobre o carbono, adotado por vários países e recentemente aprovado no Chile, que também contém um sobrepreço aplicado a importações de países que não têm o imposto. A Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC) publicou no ano passado uma portaria em que aprova o imposto de carbono e não o considera como prática desleal de concorrência. “O imposto precifica de forma penalizadora as emissões, e as empresas buscam formas de se adequar. Esse é o único jeito de fazer com que o mercado tome iniciativas para reduzir suas emissões”, argumenta (mais sobre a eficácia dos mecanismos de precifição do carbono emreportagem).

Athanasiou lembra que as catástrofes climáticas dos últimos anos ocorreram no contexto de um aquecimento ainda na casa dos 0,8 grau. Uma lista exaustiva pode ser encontrada no website do Centro de Pesquisa em Epidemiologia de Desastres (Cred), da Universidade Católica de Louvain, na Bélgica . “Um aquecimento de 2 graus causará imensa destruição e sofrimento, mas não significa o fim da civilização humana”, diz o ativista, que antevê um cenário de migrações massivas, fome, extinções e guerra constante caso cheguemos a 3 ou 4 graus. Athanasiou falou à PÁGINA22 enquanto se preparava para viajar até Bonn, na Alemanha, onde ocorreu uma conferência preparatória para a COP 20, em Lima.

O Cred informa que na década de 1940 houve 120 desastres hidrometeorológicos (que podem ter tido origem humana) contra 52 geológicos (eventos naturais). De2000 a 2005, foram 233 geológicos contra 2.135 hidrometeorológicos. O resultado sugere que o ser humano é que tem cada vez mais causado desastres ambientais.

Na ONG EcoEquity, que ele mantém com outros especialistas do clima, foi desenvolvido o conceito de Global Development Rights. Trata-se de um cálculo destinado a orientar um futuro sistema de impostos globais, cujo foco está na convicção de que nenhum acordo será obtido sem atacar o problema da desigualdade. Daí a divisão entre a responsabilidade – o quanto um país, empresa ou indivíduo polui – e a capacidade de enfrentar o problema – o quanto é capaz de contribuir para reduzir as emissões.

“A crise do clima é uma crise global dos comuns. Mas a habilidade de pagar pela transição é geográfica e economicamente separada de onde a transição deve acontecer. É preciso mover a finança e a tecnologia através do pla- neta, e muito, para atingir as taxas altíssimas de descarbonização necessárias para estabilizar o sistema climático”, explica.

Marcha do Clima

A maior tentativa de mobilizar as sociedades de todo o mundo para pressionar governantes e negociadores de acordos climáticos ocorreu em 21 de setembro, com a Marcha Popular Global do Clima [2]. Em Nova York, dois dias antes do encontro de líderes mundiais que a cidade sediou, 400 mil pessoas foram às ruas, acompanhadas à distância por manifestações em centenas de cidades ao redor do mundo, incluindo Rio de Janeiro e São Paulo (mais em reportagem).

Os organizadores da marcha foram os membros da ONG 350.org, dedicada a conscientizar a população quanto aos perigos ligados à mudança climática. O número que dá nome à instituição, “350”, corresponde ao limite de concentração, em ppm (partes por milhão), de partículas de gases de efeito estufa, abaixo do qual ainda é possível controlar o aquecimento global. No ano passado, porém, a marca de 400 ppm foi ultrapassada.

Alguns organizadores da marcha esperavam que Nova York recebesse até 1 milhão de manifestantes, a exemplo de protestos semelhantes na década de 1970, contra os armamentos nucleares ou em prol das primeiras leis ambientais. Os 400 mil foram um número expressivo, mas abaixo do desejado. Segundo Sérgio Abranches, o principal motivo é o desencanto das populações com a ação política: as pessoas passaram a considerar que não adianta se mobilizar para pressionar políticos que não reagem às pressões.

Athanasiou considera que o comparecimento foi satisfatório, mas afirma que não é o mais importante. Aos poucos, diz, os grupos de ativistas de todo o mundo estão convergindo para uma agenda comum. “É no ano que vem, em Paris, que vamos precisar juntar 1 milhão de pessoas”, crava. “A Europa tem um monte de verdes! Vamos juntá-los em Paris!”

A 350.org também é promotora da iniciativa “Divesting from Fossil Fuel” (Desinvestir em Combustíveis Fósseis), lançada em 2012 . A estratégia consiste em convencer fundos de investimento, universidades, filantropos e outras entidades a retirar seus investimentos de empresas petrolíferas.

Os membros da ONG consideram que a iniciativa já pode ser considerada como bem-sucedida, porque gerou discussões na mídia e conseguiu adesões de universidades e fundos filantrópicos ao redor do mundo. Uma adesão recente tem sabor particularmente irônico: os descendentes do magnata do petróleo John D. Rockefeller, fundador da Standard Oil, anunciaram que vão retirar gradativamente seus investimentos em empresas petrolíferas (mais em reportagem).

Algo a comemorar

Nem todas as notícias foram ruins este ano. Em grande medida graças à iniciativa alemã de ampliar a participação de usinas eólicas e painéis solares em sua matriz energética, o custo das fontes renováveis de energia está cada vez mais competitivo. Ainda não é certo, porém, que a transição para uma matriz energética mais limpa ocorra na velocidade necessária. “A mudança da matriz energética mundial está impulsionando o desengarrafamento de alguns problemas tecnológicos urgentes”, diz Abranches. “Um ponto que vai nos levar a um novo patamar em energia eólica é a armazenagem, que ainda não está resolvida.”

O cientista político cita também o desenvolvimento de biocombustíveis de segunda geração, cuja produção não compete com produtos de alimentação. “Claramente,esta é uma transição longa e gradual. Não temos ainda uma fonte que possa substituir o petróleo nas mesmas condições de eficiência energética e variedade de uso em curto prazo”, afirma o cientista político (leia reportagem sobre o pré-sal brasileiro).

[1] Dois graus é o aumento mínimo que o planeta sofrerá, no cenário mais otimista desenhado pela comunidade científica. Mesmo assim, imporá uma forte mudança nas formas de vida na Terra.

[2] Mais sobre as marchas ao redor do mundo aqui.
* Publicado originalmente no site Página 22.

(Página 22)

New CSIRO head wants to make water divining easier for farmers (Melbourne Skeptics)

05/11/2014UncategorizedAustrália, água, Conhecimento tradicional, Radiestesiarenzotaddei

By Ben Finney | October 20, 2014

The incoming leader of our top scientific research organisation is promoting water-dowsing to Australian farmers.

The CSIRO has a new leader, Dr. Larry Marshall, who will take the reins in 2014-12.

Currently the managing director of the California-based Southern Cross Venture Partners, an outfit specialising in creating and growing Australian technology companies, Dr Marshall holds a doctorate in physics from Macquarie University. He has 20 patents to his name and has co-founded six companies.

The 52-year-old, who admits he hasn’t applied for a job in 25 years, suspects it was this combination of science and business that got him the CSIRO’s top job following a competitive global search.

“I started as a scientist, became an entrepreneur and learnt a lot about business the hard way,” he said.

[…]
Innovation Minister Ian Macfarlane, whose portfolio takes in science, welcomed Dr Marshall’s appointment.

Highlighting his commercial background, Mr Macfarlane said Dr Marshall’s arrival came at a time when the agency was embarking on a “significant new phase” in which the CSIRO would play an increasingly important role in the economy. This included strengthening links between business and science, he said.

The leader of CSIRO is chiefly welcomed by Australia’s Innovation Minister? What about our Science Minister? Oh that’s right, Australia’s current government has scrapped the ministry for science. Instead, our Prime Minister has appointed himself the head of a Science Council, with no minister responsible for science — and CSIRO left to the mercies of the “industry” portfolio.

So our federal government’s appointed head of CSIRO, Larry Marshall, himself seems to place much more emphasis on what is financially profitable than what is scientifically sound. He’s not been working as a scientist for a very long time; the past 25 years was spent as a venture capitalist.

And now, on the basis that charlatans can fool him, he wants to use his new position as head of CSIRO to fund research for water dowsing.

He’d like to see the development of technology that would make it easier for farmers to dowse or divine for water on their properties.

“I’ve seen people do this with close to 80 per cent accuracy and I’ve no idea how they do it,” he said.

“When I see that as a scientist, it makes me question, ‘is there instrumentality that we could create that would enable a machine to find that water?’

“I’ve always wondered whether there’s something in the electromagentic field, or gravitation anomaly.”

Dr Marshall believes the CSIRO can ‘push the envelope’ with such projects and contribute to improving agricultural productivity.

Really? Shouldn’t we reserve funding for technologies whose claimed phenomenon can pass a simple blinded controlled objective study, rather than assuming Larry Marshall has seen it and he can’t be fooled? (The Victorian Skeptics has a guide to dowsing among other educational materials.)

In an age when all of climate science shows that we are in for, among other catastrophic results, devastating drought unless we act now to reverse our damaging activities, Australia’s leading government science body will spend its precious attention on pseudoscience and fakery.

We are under the rule of one of the worst governments in Australian history, in terms of the scientific soundness of policy.

Midterm Elections, the Senate, and Republican Science Denial (Slate)

05/11/2014UncategorizedEleições, Estados Unidos, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionismo, Política, Republicanosrenzotaddei

By Phil Plait

NOV. 4 2014 7:00 AM

If Republicans win the Senate, James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, could be in charge of the committee that controls the EPA. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Today is the midterm election for the United States, where many seats in the House and Senate will be determined. It seems pretty obvious that the House will remain in control of the Republicans. It seems likely the GOP will get a slight majority in the Senate today as well.

What does this mean? Well, in the short term and for many issues, not a lot. This previous Congress will go down in history as the least effective ever, since all it really did is block White House initiatives. They couldn’t even approve a surgeon general nomination! A GOP majority in the Senate will probably mean more of the same, since they’ll lack the supermajority needed to prevent Democratic filibustering of big items.

But this vast, gaping polarization of American politics is toxic, especially where it comes to the crucial issue of global warming. Here, a Senate GOP majority can have an extremely destructive effect. It will put a cohort of science-deniers into positions of authority over the very science they want to trample. This is extremely worrisome to me, and it should be to you as well.

Nowhere is this more important thanthe Environment and Public Works Committee. A Republican win will almost certainly make James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, chairman. This committee controls the Environmental Protection Agency, which is charged with addressing climate change and what to do about it. Inhofe is probably the most ludicrously adamant global warming denier in the Senate; he has called it a hoax and denies it to levels that would make the frothiest conspiracy theorists shake their heads in wonder.

Inhofe has indicated he will attack greenhouse gas regulators, so giving him control of this committee puts the “fox in charge of the henhouse” simile to shame.

Other committees will fare no better; as just one example Ted Cruz, R-Texas, could be chairman of the committee on science and space, and he also denies global warming. The irony is as excruciating as it is familiar.

Of course, the Republican mantra of late is to claim “I’m not a scientist, but …” as if this excuses them when they deny reality. I’ve excoriated this ridiculous notion before; it started in 2012 when Marco Rubio, R-Florida, used it when he said he wasn’t sure how old the Earth is (!), but it is now being wielded like a shield for Republican rejection of global warming. It was baloney then, and it’s still baloney now. Their lack of scientific qualifications hasn’t stopped them from trying to create medical legislation to control women’s bodies, or to try to make laws about agriculture, health care, and so many other science-based topics. It’s clearly a cynical dodge.

And it will cost us. These elections happen mere days after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its fifth Synthesis Report, a 40-page opus making it very clear that global warming is real, humans are causing it, and it’s disrupting our planet’s climate.

The summary for policymakers is as succinct as it is brutal in its assessment:

Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.

[…]

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.

It then gives evidence and support for these claims, going into terrifying specificity:

Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence), with only about 1% stored in the atmosphere.

So much for “the pause”.

Since the beginning of the industrial era, oceanic uptake of CO2 has resulted in acidification of the ocean … corresponding to a 26% increase in acidity.

Ocean acidification is killing off entire species, upsetting the ecological balance of the oceans. This is on top of sea level rise, the disruption of the heat transport balance of the planet, and the amplification of extreme weather we’re seeing all over the Earth.

Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.

Ask Californians suffering from one of the worst droughts in history how they feel about “long-lasting changes in the climate,” for example, or how much you enjoyexcursions in the polar vortex bringing frigid cold into the U.S. eastern states in the winter.

Global warming is real. It’s causing climate change on a planetary scale, and this isextremely dangerous for humanity.

Yet Republican politicians deny it as if their careers and funding depend on them doing so.

This is what these elections today mean. I am by no means a single-issue voter, unless you count reality as an issue. When you vote today, it quite literally affects the future of humanity.

Do we finally take action about the single greatest threat we as a species face today? Or do we elect officials who would rather take money from the fossil fuel industryand bury their heads firmly in the sand, putting off for at least another two years taking any action, or even recognizing that we need to take action against it?

Remember that today as you go to the polls. Your vote counts. Make it count.

What Happened On Easter Island — A New (Even Scarier) Scenario (NPR)

03/11/2014UncategorizedAdaptação, Biodiversidade, Desastre, Ecologia, Extinção, Ilha da Páscoa, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

December 10, 2013 8:41 AM ET

ROBERT KRULWICH

We all know the story, or think we do.

Let me tell it the old way, then the new way. See which worries you most.

Robert Krulwich/NPR

First version: Easter Island is a small 63-square-mile patch of land — more than a thousand miles from the next inhabited spot in the Pacific Ocean. In A.D. 1200 (or thereabouts), a small group of Polynesians — it might have been a single family — made their way there, settled in and began to farm. When they arrived, the place was covered with trees — as many as 16 million of them, some towering 100 feet high.

These settlers were farmers, practicing slash-and-burn agriculture, so they burned down woods, opened spaces, and began to multiply. Pretty soon the island had too many people, too few trees, and then, in only a few generations, no trees at all.

Robert Krulwich/NPR

As Jared Diamond tells it in his best-selling book, Collapse, Easter Island is the “clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources.” Once tree clearing started, it didn’t stop until the whole forest was gone. Diamond called this self-destructive behavior “ecocide” and warned that Easter Island’s fate could one day be our own.

When Captain James Cook visited there in 1774, his crew counted roughly 700 islanders (from an earlier population of thousands), living marginal lives, their canoes reduced to patched fragments of driftwood.

And that has become the lesson of Easter Island — that we don’t dare abuse the plants and animals around us, because if we do, we will, all of us, go down together.

Robert Krulwich/NPR

And yet, puzzlingly, these same people had managed to carve enormous statues — almost a thousand of them, with giant, hollow-eyed, gaunt faces, some weighing 75 tons. The statues faced not outward, not to the sea, but inward, toward the now empty, denuded landscape. When Captain Cook saw them, many of these “moai” had been toppled and lay face down, in abject defeat.

OK, that’s the story we all know, the Collapse story. The new one is very different.

A Story Of Success?

It comes from two anthropologists, Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, from the University of Hawaii. They say, “Rather than a case of abject failure,” what happened to the people on Easter Island “is an unlikely story of success.”

Success? How could anyone call what happened on Easter Island a “success?”

Well, I’ve taken a look at their book, The Statues That Walked, and oddly enough they’ve got a case, although I’ll say in advance what they call “success” strikes me as just as scary — maybe scarier.

Here’s their argument: Professors Hunt and Lipo say fossil hunters and paleobotanists have found no hard evidence that the first Polynesian settlers set fire to the forest to clear land — what’s called “large scale prehistoric farming.” The trees did die, no question. But instead of fire, Hunt and Lipo blame rats.

Robert Krulwich/NPR

Polynesian rats (Rattus exulans) stowed away on those canoes, Hunt and Lipo say, and once they landed, with no enemies and lots of palm roots to eat, they went on a binge, eating and destroying tree after tree, and multiplying at a furious rate. As a reviewer in The Wall Street Journal reported,

In laboratory settings, Polynesian rat populations can double in 47 days. Throw a breeding pair into an island with no predators and abundant food and arithmetic suggests the result … If the animals multiplied as they did in Hawaii, the authors calculate, [Easter Island] would quickly have housed between two and three million. Among the favorite food sources of R. exulans are tree seeds and tree sprouts. Humans surely cleared some of the forest, but the real damage would have come from the rats that prevented new growth.

As the trees went, so did 20 other forest plants, six land birds and several sea birds. So there was definitely less choice in food, a much narrower diet, and yet people continued to live on Easter Island, and food, it seems, was not their big problem.

Rat Meat, Anybody?

For one thing, they could eat rats. As J.B. MacKinnon reports in his new book, The Once and Future World, archeologists examined ancient garbage heaps on Easter Island looking for discarded bones and found “that 60 percent of the bones came from introduced rats.”

So they’d found a meat substitute.

Robert Krulwich/NPR

What’s more, though the island hadn’t much water and its soil wasn’t rich, the islanders took stones, broke them into bits, and scattered them onto open fields creating an uneven surface. When wind blew in off the sea, the bumpy rocks produced more turbulent airflow, “releasing mineral nutrients in the rock,” J.B. MacKinnon says, which gave the soil just enough of a nutrient boost to support basic vegetables. One tenth of the island had these scattered rock “gardens,” and they produced enough food, “to sustain a population density similar to places like Oklahoma, Colorado, Sweden and New Zealand today.”

According to MacKinnon, scientists say that Easter Island skeletons from that time show “less malnutrition than people in Europe.” When a Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggevin, happened by in 1722, he wrote that islanders didn’t ask for food. They wanted European hats instead. And, of course, starving folks typically don’t have the time or energy to carve and shove 70-ton statues around their island.

A ‘Success’ Story?

Why is this a success story?

Because, say the Hawaiian anthropologists, clans and families on Easter Island didn’t fall apart. It’s true, the island became desolate, emptier. The ecosystem was severely compromised. And yet, say the anthropologists, Easter Islanders didn’t disappear. They adjusted. They had no lumber to build canoes to go deep-sea fishing. They had fewer birds to hunt. They didn’t have coconuts. But they kept going on rat meat and small helpings of vegetables. They made do.

Robert Krulwich/NPR

One niggling question: If everybody was eating enough, why did the population decline? Probably, the professors say, from sexually transmitted diseases after Europeans came visiting.

OK, maybe there was no “ecocide.” But is this good news? Should we celebrate?

I wonder. What we have here are two scenarios ostensibly about Easter Island’s past, but really about what might be our planet’s future. The first scenario — an ecological collapse — nobody wants that. But let’s think about this new alternative — where humans degrade their environment but somehow “muddle through.” Is that better? In some ways, I think this “success” story is just as scary.

The Danger Of ‘Success’

What if the planet’s ecosystem, as J.B. MacKinnon puts it, “is reduced to a ruin, yet its people endure, worshipping their gods and coveting status objects while surviving on some futuristic equivalent of the Easter Islanders’ rat meat and rock gardens?”

Humans are a very adaptable species. We’ve seen people grow used to slums, adjust to concentration camps, learn to live with what fate hands them. If our future is to continuously degrade our planet, lose plant after plant, animal after animal, forgetting what we once enjoyed, adjusting to lesser circumstances, never shouting, “That’s It!” — always making do, I wouldn’t call that “success.”

The Lesson? Remember Tang, The Breakfast Drink

People can’t remember what their great-grandparents saw, ate and loved about the world. They only know what they know. To prevent an ecological crisis, we must become alarmed. That’s when we’ll act. The new Easter Island story suggests that humans may never hit the alarm.

It’s like the story people used to tell about Tang, a sad, flat synthetic orange juice popularized by NASA. If you know what real orange juice tastes like, Tang is no achievement. But if you are on a 50-year voyage, if you lose the memory of real orange juice, then gradually, you begin to think Tang is delicious.

On Easter Island, people learned to live with less and forgot what it was like to have more. Maybe that will happen to us. There’s a lesson here. It’s not a happy one.

As MacKinnon puts it: “If you’re waiting for an ecological crisis to persuade human beings to change their troubled relationship with nature — you could be waiting a long, long time.”

U.N. Panel Issues Its Starkest Warning Yet on Global Warming (New York Times)

03/11/2014UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Diplomacia climática, Incerteza, IPCC, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

By JUSTIN GILLISNOV. 2, 2014

Machines digging for brown coal in front of a power plant near Grevenbroich, Germany, in April.CreditMartin Meissner/Associated Press

COPENHAGEN — The gathering risks of climate change are so profound that they could stall or even reverse generations of progress against poverty and hunger if greenhouse emissions continue at a runaway pace, according to a major new United Nations report.

Despite growing efforts in many countries to tackle the problem, the global situation is becoming more acute as developing countries join the West in burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said here on Sunday.

Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.

“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” the report found.

In the starkest language it has ever used, the expert panel made clear how far society remains from having any serious policy to limit global warming.

Doing so would require leaving the vast majority of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels in the ground or, alternatively, developing methods to capture and bury the emissions resulting from their use, the group said.

If governments are to meet their own stated goal of limiting the warming of the planet to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level, they must restrict emissions from additional fossil-fuel burning to about 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, the panel said. At current growth rates, that budget is likely to be exhausted in something like 30 years, possibly less.

Yet energy companies have booked coal and petroleum reserves equal to several times that amount, and they are spending some $600 billion a year to find more. Utilities and oil companies continue to build coal-fired power plants and refineries, and governments are spending another $600 billion or so directly subsidizing the consumption of fossil fuels.

By contrast, the report found, less than $400 billion a year is being spent around the world to reduce emissions or otherwise cope with climate change. That is a small fraction of the revenue spent on fossil fuels — it is less, for example, than the revenue of a single American oil company, ExxonMobil.

The new report comes just a month before international delegates convene in Lima, Peru, to devise a new global agreement to limit emissions, and it makes clear the urgency of their task.

Appearing Sunday morning at a news conference in Copenhagen to unveil the report, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, appealed for strong action in Lima.

“Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message,” Mr. Ban said. “Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.”

Yet there has been no sign that national leaders are willing to discuss allocating the trillion-ton emissions budget among countries, an approach that would confront the problem head-on, but also raise deep questions of fairness. To the contrary, they are moving toward a relatively weak agreement that would essentially let each country decide for itself how much effort to put into limiting global warming, and even that document would not take effect until 2020.

“If they choose not to talk about the carbon budget, they’re choosing not to address the problem of climate change,” said Myles R. Allen, a climate scientist at Oxford University in Britain who helped write the new report. “They might as well not bother to turn up for these meetings.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific body appointed by the world’s governments to advise them on the causes and effects of global warming, and potential solutions. The group, along with Al Gore, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for its efforts to call attention to the climate crisis.

The new report is a 175-page synopsis of a much longer series of reports that the panel has issued over the past year. It is the final step in a five-year effort by the body to analyze a vast archive of published climate research.

It is the fifth such report from the group since 1990, each finding greater certainty that the climate is warming and that human activities are the primary cause.

“Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, and in global mean sea-level rise; and it is extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the report said.

A core finding of the new report is that climate change is no longer a distant threat, but is being felt all over the world. “It’s here and now,” Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the panel, said in an interview. “It’s not something in the future.”

The group cited mass die-offs of forests, such as those killed by heat-loving beetles in the American West; the melting of land ice virtually everywhere in the world; an accelerating rise of the seas that is leading to increased coastal flooding; and heat waves that have devastated crops and killed tens of thousands of people.

The report contained the group’s most explicit warning yet about the food supply, saying that climate change had already become a small drag on overall global production, and could become a far larger one if emissions continued unchecked.

A related finding is that climate change poses serious risks to basic human progress, in areas such as alleviating poverty. Under the worst-case scenarios, factors like high food prices and intensified weather disasters would most likely leave poor people worse off. In fact, the report said, that has already happened to a degree.

In Washington, the Obama administration welcomed the report, with the president’s science adviser, John P. Holdren, calling it “yet another wake-up call to the global community that we must act together swiftly and aggressively in order to stem climate change and avoid its worst impacts.”

The administration is pushing for new limits on emissions from American power plants, but faces stiff resistance in Congress and some states.

Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University and a principal author of the new report, said that a continuation of the political paralysis on emissions would leave society depending largely on luck.

If the level of greenhouse gases were to continue rising at a rapid pace over the coming decades, severe effects would be avoided only if the climate turned out to be far less sensitive to those gases than most scientists think likely, he said.

“We’ve seen many governments delay and delay and delay on implementing comprehensive emissions cuts,” Dr. Oppenheimer said. “So the need for a lot of luck looms larger and larger. Personally, I think it’s a slim reed to lean on for the fate of the planet.”

Quando vai acabar a água do Cantareira e do Alto Tietê? Cenários, por Sérgio Reis (Luis Nassif Online)

03/11/2014UncategorizedAlckmin, água, Cantareira, Desastre, Sabesp, São Paulo, Secarenzotaddei

SAB, 01/11/2014 – 08:08

Sergio Reis

Para “celebrar” o 29º artigo a respeito da crise hídrica, resolvi montar um fluxograma para tentar explicar didaticamente aos leitores o futuro dos sistemas Cantareira e Alto Tietê. O fundamento desse exercício é basicamente a questão: nas condições atuais, até quando eles vão durar?

A maneira básica para estipular esse prazo se dá por meio de uma técnica chamada de “construção de cenários”. Em linhas gerais, trata-se de determinar, com base em algum critério razoável, como se comportarão determinadas variáveis consideradas importantes para a explicação do resultado que se está tentando prever.

Considerando-se a gravidade da crise hídrica e a validade do próprio argumento, exaustivamente empregado pelo Governo Alckmin, a respeito da excepcionalidade hidrológica e pluviométrica enfrentada, seria óbvio admitir como cenário possível (e, até mesmo, provável), a continuidade das condições atuais ao longo dos próximos meses. Isso é particularmente evidente quando notamos que não há, até o presente momento, elementos que nos forneçam indícios de que o futuro será radicalmente diferente.

No entanto, o “plano de contingência” delineado pela SABESP não fez isso. Pelo contrário, construiu 3 cenários e considerou, como o pior deles, a repetição da estiagem de 1953 (sendo os outros a própria média histórica e o equivalente a 50% dessa média, em todos os casos a partir das vazões de entrada de água). O problema é que, em 2014, observamos que a água que entra no sistema tem equivalido a apenas 44% desse pior ano. Se já faria pouco sentido não considerar o prolongamento desse contexto vigente como o mais plausível na confecção do planejamento, sequer considera-lo como um cenário a ser desenhado beira a mais absoluta irresponsabilidade.

Por óbvio, contudo, a razão para essa não admissão desse contexto nos cálculos (e apenas a sua utilização como retórica de defesa para justificar a crise) está, simplesmente, no fato de o governo não dispor de alternativas para o caso de a escassez permanecer. E não seria nada alentador, é claro, se a SABESP confessasse isso ou plotasse os dados desse cenário mais adverso em seus relatórios.

Para contribuir nesse sentido, resolvi montar dois fluxogramas: um para o Sistema Cantareira, outro para o Alto Tietê. Para o caso do Cantareira, o que fiz foi: 1) calcular, para o período considerado crítico do ponto de vista da estiagem (Janeiro-Outubro/2014) qual a relação percentual entre as vazões de entrada e as vazões médias históricas (22,43%); 2) utilizar o valor encontrado para estipular as vazões de entrada para os próximos meses, considerando-se esse referencial; 3) admitir a vazão média de saída de 22,5 m³/s (aproximadamente a atual, a partir da soma entre os 18 m³/s que vão para São Paulo – valor prometido pela SABESP – com os 4,5 m³/s enviados para as cidades da Bacia do PCJ – valor atual); 4) calcular o déficit diário e mensal, a partir das variáveis acima.

O resultado pode ser conferido abaixo:

Como é possível observar na figura, busquei considerar outras questões possíveis, como a eventual impossibilidade de extrair toda a 2ª cota do volume morto, ou a judicialização da questão a partir da extração da 3ª cota (que impedirá, nas condições atuais, o envio obrigatório de água para o PCJ), ou ainda a inviabilidade técnica de extração, na parte ou no todo, dessa 3ª cota. De todo modo, fica claro perceber que, mesmo que seja possível retirar toda a água restante no Sistema – sem qualquer óbice operacional –, notamos que o Cantareira duraria até 21 de Julho de 2015. A partir daí, ele estaria totalmente esgotado, e passaríamos a viver em uma situação ainda pior do que a observada, atualmente, para a cidade de Itu. Seria o caos completo para, pelo menos, 10 milhões de habitantes.

Dadas as crescentes dificuldades operacionais, contudo, é válido supor que o esgotamento (ou a inviabilidade da continuidade do abastecimento) ocorreria antes – talvez em Abril, quando o Sistema se encontraria, aproximadamente, com – 31% de sua capacidade operacional (o valor, em Abril de 2014, era de 15% positivo). Como sabemos, não parece o Governo dispor, pelo menos para daqui a 2 ou 3 anos, de alternativas capazes de compensar devidamente o esgotamento do Cantareira. O futuro, nesse cenário, é o da total e absoluta falta de água para todas as atividades humanas – das mais triviais e satisfacionais, até aquelas relacionadas à produção agrícola, comercial e industrial. O impacto disso sobre a vida em sociedade é incalculável.

No Alto Tietê, a situação ainda é incrivelmente mais dramática

Se a situação do Cantareira é apavorante, no Alto Tietê ela é nada menos do que indescritível. Para a construção do fluxograma abaixo, voltado a apresentar a continuidade do cenário atual, admitimos: 1) a continuidade das vazões atuais de saída, de cerca de 15 m³/s; 2) a manutenção dos padrões de déficit atuais (verificados, pelo menos, desde Julho, quando iniciei um monitoramento diário do Sistema) para as represas de Paraitinga e Ponte Nova (de cerca de 520 milhões de litros ao dia) e para as represas de Biritiba-Mirim, Jundiaí e Taiaçupeba (de cerca de 346,65 milhões de litros ao dia); 3) o cálculo dos déficits diárias, verificando-se o impacto deles nas reservas remanescentes das represas.

A confecção desse cenário resultou no seguinte fluxograma:

Notamos, então, que a extrema gravidade da situação do Alto Tietê pode ser percebida a partir do fato de que, mesmo que admitamos a completa extração dos volumes mortos de Biritiba-Mirim e de Jundiaí, o Sistema se esgota completamente em meados de Janeiro (no dia 15, de acordo com a simulação). Isso significa o fim do abastecimento para mais de 5 milhões de pessoas, em um prazo seis meses mais cedo do que o identificado para o Cantareira.

Vale dizer que a contabilidade dos volumes mortos sequer tem sido admitida pela SABESP, embora ela já esteja a pleno vapor, há várias semanas, no caso da represa de Biritiba (mais de 4 bilhões de litros já foram retirados). Os estudos, para esse sistema, são bem mais precários, de forma que temos muito menos noção de se, efetivamente, toda essa água situada abaixo dos níveis operacionais poderia ser, de fato, extraída. Qualquer imprevisto nessa condição significaria o desabastecimento já para Dezembro ou, até mesmo, para Novembro.

No caso do Sistema Cantareira, um Comitê Anticrise foi formado, a partir de iniciativa federal, e então forçou-se a gradativa redução da retirada de água dos seus reservatórios (hoje, as vazões de saída correspondem a pouco mais da metade das observadas em Janeiro, logo antes da criação do GTAG). No caso do Alto Tietê, sistema sobre o qual a ANA não possui qualquer interferência legal, a SABESP manteve as elevadíssimas vazões de saída – as quais foram irresponsavelmente autorizadas pelo DAEE em Fevereiro, quando a crise já era óbvia (conforme assinalou a recente – e indeferida – Ação Civil Pública protocolada pelo Ministério Público Estadual). A tragédia desse sistema, então, é a verbalização mais clara da gestão criminosa realizada pelo Governo do Estado de São Paulo.

Em síntese, a crise hídrica vai adquirindo proporções jamais imagináveis para qualquer um de nós mesmo há cerca de 6 meses, quando ela ganhou alguma publicidade. Suas consequências vão se tornando cada vez mais trágicas e tétricas para um público potencial de praticamente 10% da população brasileira. Mais do que nunca, levando-se em conta a completa inação do Governo Alckmin, será preciso que a sociedade – a Academia, as ONGs, os militantes e quem mais se dispuser – tome as rédeas do processo de tentativa de sua superação. A arrogância do governo tucano em lidar com o problema, como já aprendemos por mal, jamais poderá ser a sua solução, mas apenas um lastimável tapar de sol com a peneira – exatamente o contrário do que precisamos.

Os: Abaixo, deixei os links para todos os 28 artigos anteriores que publiquei aqui no Blog do Nassif e no Jornal GGN a respeito da crise hídrica. Conforme sabem os colegas mais assíduos, desde Abril eu tenho buscado informar, a partir de uma perspectiva crítica, a população, compartilhando minhas análises, estudos e achados. Pretendo continuar dando minha contribuição, sabendo, agora, que felizmente, muitos cidadãos igualmente indignados estão se articulando e produzindo conteúdos para que venhamos a refletir e agir sobre essa trágica crise.

Projecting a robot’s intentions: New spin on virtual reality helps engineers read robots’ minds (Science Daily)

31/10/2014UncategorizedInteligência artifical, Mediação tecnológica, Robótica, Tecnofetichismorenzotaddei

Date: October 29, 2014

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Summary: In a darkened, hangar-like space inside MIT’s Building 41, a small, Roomba-like robot is trying to make up its mind. Standing in its path is an obstacle — a human pedestrian who’s pacing back and forth. To get to the other side of the room, the robot has to first determine where the pedestrian is, then choose the optimal route to avoid a close encounter. As the robot considers its options, its “thoughts” are projected on the ground: A large pink dot appears to follow the pedestrian — a symbol of the robot’s perception of the pedestrian’s position in space.

A new spin on virtual reality helps engineers read robots’ minds. Credit: Video screenshot courtesy of Melanie Gonick/MIT

In a darkened, hangar-like space inside MIT’s Building 41, a small, Roomba-like robot is trying to make up its mind.

Standing in its path is an obstacle — a human pedestrian who’s pacing back and forth. To get to the other side of the room, the robot has to first determine where the pedestrian is, then choose the optimal route to avoid a close encounter.

As the robot considers its options, its “thoughts” are projected on the ground: A large pink dot appears to follow the pedestrian — a symbol of the robot’s perception of the pedestrian’s position in space. Lines, each representing a possible route for the robot to take, radiate across the room in meandering patterns and colors, with a green line signifying the optimal route. The lines and dots shift and adjust as the pedestrian and the robot move.

This new visualization system combines ceiling-mounted projectors with motion-capture technology and animation software to project a robot’s intentions in real time. The researchers have dubbed the system “measurable virtual reality (MVR) — a spin on conventional virtual reality that’s designed to visualize a robot’s “perceptions and understanding of the world,” says Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, a postdoc in MIT’s Aerospace Controls Lab.

“Normally, a robot may make some decision, but you can’t quite tell what’s going on in its mind — why it’s choosing a particular path,” Agha-mohammadi says. “But if you can see the robot’s plan projected on the ground, you can connect what it perceives with what it does to make sense of its actions.”

Agha-mohammadi says the system may help speed up the development of self-driving cars, package-delivering drones, and other autonomous, route-planning vehicles.

“As designers, when we can compare the robot’s perceptions with how it acts, we can find bugs in our code much faster,” Agha-mohammadi says. “For example, if we fly a quadrotor, and see something go wrong in its mind, we can terminate the code before it hits the wall, or breaks.”

The system was developed by Shayegan Omidshafiei, a graduate student, and Agha-mohammadi. They and their colleagues, including Jonathan How, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics, will present details of the visualization system at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ SciTech conference in January.

Seeing into the mind of a robot

The researchers initially conceived of the visualization system in response to feedback from visitors to their lab. During demonstrations of robotic missions, it was often difficult for people to understand why robots chose certain actions.

“Some of the decisions almost seemed random,” Omidshafiei recalls.

The team developed the system as a way to visually represent the robots’ decision-making process. The engineers mounted 18 motion-capture cameras on the ceiling to track multiple robotic vehicles simultaneously. They then developed computer software that visually renders “hidden” information, such as a robot’s possible routes, and its perception of an obstacle’s position. They projected this information on the ground in real time, as physical robots operated.

The researchers soon found that by projecting the robots’ intentions, they were able to spot problems in the underlying algorithms, and make improvements much faster than before.

“There are a lot of problems that pop up because of uncertainty in the real world, or hardware issues, and that’s where our system can significantly reduce the amount of effort spent by researchers to pinpoint the causes,” Omidshafiei says. “Traditionally, physical and simulation systems were disjointed. You would have to go to the lowest level of your code, break it down, and try to figure out where the issues were coming from. Now we have the capability to show low-level information in a physical manner, so you don’t have to go deep into your code, or restructure your vision of how your algorithm works. You could see applications where you might cut down a whole month of work into a few days.”

Bringing the outdoors in

The group has explored a few such applications using the visualization system. In one scenario, the team is looking into the role of drones in fighting forest fires. Such drones may one day be used both to survey and to squelch fires — first observing a fire’s effect on various types of vegetation, then identifying and putting out those fires that are most likely to spread.

To make fire-fighting drones a reality, the team is first testing the possibility virtually. In addition to projecting a drone’s intentions, the researchers can also project landscapes to simulate an outdoor environment. In test scenarios, the group has flown physical quadrotors over projections of forests, shown from an aerial perspective to simulate a drone’s view, as if it were flying over treetops. The researchers projected fire on various parts of the landscape, and directed quadrotors to take images of the terrain — images that could eventually be used to “teach” the robots to recognize signs of a particularly dangerous fire.

Going forward, Agha-mohammadi says, the team plans to use the system to test drone performance in package-delivery scenarios. Toward this end, the researchers will simulate urban environments by creating street-view projections of cities, similar to zoomed-in perspectives on Google Maps.

“Imagine we can project a bunch of apartments in Cambridge,” Agha-mohammadi says. “Depending on where the vehicle is, you can look at the environment from different angles, and what it sees will be quite similar to what it would see if it were flying in reality.”

Because the Federal Aviation Administration has placed restrictions on outdoor testing of quadrotors and other autonomous flying vehicles, Omidshafiei points out that testing such robots in a virtual environment may be the next best thing. In fact, the sky’s the limit as far as the types of virtual environments that the new system may project.

“With this system, you can design any environment you want, and can test and prototype your vehicles as if they’re fully outdoors, before you deploy them in the real world,” Omidshafiei says.

This work was supported by Boeing.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utM9zOYXgUY

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