Perspectives

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You may not realize it, but by buying my book, The Unexpected Perspective, you're helping a worldwide coalition complete the eradication of a terrible disease – polio.  The monumental task of ridding the world of this terrible disease is nearly complete, and when the job is finished it will be only the second major disease ever eradicated, the first being smallpox in 1979.

            Only 30 years ago, polio was truly a worldwide scourge.  Every year, there were about 350,000 new cases of polio reported, and polio was endemic in 125 countries around the world.  The leadership of Rotary, an organization of which I'm proud to be a part, was the first to envision the possibility and potential of a polio-free world.  For the past 30 years, a coalition that includes Rotary, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and UNICEF has been fighting this terrible disease.  More recently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has joined the effort.   To learn more about this partnership, go to http://polioeradication.org/who-we-are/partners/.  Today, polio remains endemic in only 3 countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria - and fewer than 30 cases have been reported worldwide in 2016 through mid-October.  While the eradication task is nearly complete, nothing short of complete eradication will keep this dreaded disease from re-emerging on a worldwide scale.

            How does a purchase of my book help this effort?  For each book sold, I'm personally contributing $ 4.00 US to the Rotary Foundation.  Each dollar that I contribute is being generously matched on a 2:1 basis by the Gates Foundation, meaning that a single book purchase will turn into a $ 12.00 contribution.  That's more than the cost of the electronic version of the book, and nearly the cost of a softcover version.  It costs sixty cents to immunize a child against polio, so each book sale means that 20 children can be immunized against the ravages of polio.

            The Global Polio Eradication Initiative hopes to record the last case of polio sometime before the end of 2017.   The World Health Organization will certify the world to be polio free once three years time elapses without a single case of polio reported worldwide.

            Once polio has been eliminated, there will be two tremendous benefits.  First, no child or adult will ever suffer the ravages of polio again.  Second, eradication will produce a "polio dividend."  Right now, the world spends more than a billion US dollars every year on fighting and preventing polio.  Once the disease is eliminated, that money can be redirected towards other diseases.  This won't be a single year phenomenon, it will re-occur every year in the future.

            Polio has been a scourge for mankind for thousands of years.  Thanks to the work of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, as well as the governments of every country in the world, we truly are on the verge of polio eradication.

            If you would like to learn more about this incredible initiative, please visit http://www.polioeradication.org.

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            There's a good chance that sometime in the last 24 hours, you've had a drink from a plastic bottle.  If you live in the USA, there's about a 31% chance you recycled it (50% if you're in Europe). 

            Chances are, you've also heard the horror stories about where all those un-recycled bottles are ending up.  

            Absent a medical miracle, you and I will have departed this Earth within 100 years, and absent another scientific breakthrough, all of those plastic bottles will still be here, creating an even bigger environmental nightmare.  The problem has become so bad, it's reported that there are now islands of plastic garbage floating in the world's oceans.

            I'm not aware of any breakthroughs to extend human life, but a game-changing solution for plastic bottles may be just around the corner, thanks to an important discovery that was recently reported by Professor John McGeehan at the University of Portsmouth and Dr. Gregg Beckham at the US Department of Energy's National Renewal Energy Laboratory.  The researchers have found an enzyme that digests PET – polyethylene terephthalate – a plastic that was first developed, and patented, in the 1940's. 

            The average consumer will recognize it by the triangle with a number one in it.  Broadly speaking, there are seven different types of plastic.  PET represents about 8% of worldwide plastic.   It is commonly referred to as polyester, and is often found in textiles, some clothing, and some types of packaging.  Because PET has excellent water repelling properties, it's a great for packaging soft drinks and water. There's a good chance you've got it on the floor of your home or office, your clothes closet, and even in your refrigerator.

            While PET was first developed only about 70 years ago, and wasn't widely used in drinks packaging until the 1970's, evolution has already produced a bacterium that eats PET as food.  The bacterium – named Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6 – was first discovered at a PET industrial recycling facility in Sakai, Japan.  The bacterium has developed the amazing ability to break down PET and use it to provide carbon for energy.  The reason the bacterium could do this, the researchers found, was because it contained a PET-digesting enzyme named PETase.  When you think about it, it's pretty amazing that the PETase enzyme was able to evolve so quickly to develop the capacity to convert PET plastic into energy! 

            The researchers didn't discover either the bacterium or the PETase enzyme.  That was done by other researchers at the Kyoto Institute of Technology and Keio University in Japan.

            Professors McGeehan  and Beckham built upon the research done in Japan by gaining an understanding of the structure of PETase.  They were able to determine the crystal structure of the enzyme using what's called the Long Wavelength Macromolecular Crystallography beamline at a place called Diamond Light Source.  It's the only device of its kind in the world.

            The researchers were able to get PETase to degrade commercial PET bottles.  They also found that PETase was able to degrade another plastic called PEF, a new type of plastic. The nice thing about PEF is that it is bio-based, as opposed to being a petroleum derivative, as are PET and most other plastics.  Thus it appears the PETase enzyme will be capable of degrading both traditional PET as well as bio-based PEF.

            But in the course of their research, they actually found a way to improve the capacity of PETase to gobble up PET.  The researchers acknowledged that their improvement was somewhat serendipitious, but who cares?  The end result is a more capable enzyme.

            What McGeehan and Beckham have come up with isn't really a solution, at least not yet.  That's because, as previously noted, PET represents only about 8% of all plastic.  Even if all PET can be recycled using the new process, that still leaves the other 92% of plastic still piling up around the world.

            Not only that, but there isn't yet a commercial way to put the PETase to work.  It's probably going to take some time for the researchers to come up with a way for the PETase enzyme to gobble up industrial quantities of PET bottles and other forms of PET waste.

            But think of the possibilities?  The researchers have demonstrated the capacity to improve the digesting capabilities of PETase.  They'll likely continue making improvements; and if fortune truly shines, they'll develop a Moore's Law-like improvement in the process, thus truly creating the potential to recycle huge amounts of PET, and PEF when the latter gains commercial scale.

            It could be a blessing.  But like many blessings, there are some potential downsides.  You really don't want to let plastic eating enzymes get into the wrong hands.  I can envision the next big prank: putting PETase on your friend's polyester pants or sweater.  The clothes you thought you were wearing suddenly start disappearing!  Or how about coating it on some other PET surface and watching the surface disappear?

            On the positive side, it creates the potential for an entirely new industry - large scale elimination of plastic waste.  Recycling is already a pretty big business, but commercialization of the PETase process could dramatically change the environment by providing a way to deal with the 70% of PET containers in the USA - and 50% in Europe - that don't presently get recycled.

            Once again, however, don't start celebrating quite yet.  That's because even if and when a commercially viable process is developed to get PETase to ingest huge amount of PET waste, there's still the problem of getting the un-recycled waste from the consumer to the PETase "factory".

            Someone will have to come up with a viable way to get that "other 70%" recycled, otherwise we'll still have mountains of waste.  While people profess a desire to recycle plastic waste, the actual results fall far short of an ideal solution.  So even if PETase can be commercialized, that doesn't mean the amount of plastic refuse will decrease much.  Needless to say, that requires something other than a scientific or technological breakthrough.

            Recycling has always depended upon getting people either to separate out recyclable items and/or to take them to a special location.  Some people do, and some people don't.  Even then, sometimes it's just hard to recycle. 

            So why not turn the entire model around?  Instead of asking people to take their waste to a recycling center, why not bring the recycling center to them?  The new discovery about PETase creates the potential for portable, personal PET recycling.  Why not create a consumer-sized box filled with PETase?  Just put your PET bottles in the unit and let the PETase feast on the waste? Make it easy!  Commercial and industrial sized units could also be built to handle larger quantities.  

            And then there's still the problem of the "islands of plastic" in the ocean.  Someone needs to develop a "floating factory".  That may sound crazy, but not that crazy.  After all, just as there are "factory ships" that do industrial scale fishing on the high seas, why not a ffloating recycling ship filled with PETase?  The PETase could feast upon the plastic waste, then turn the waste into energy that could be sold back on land.  If the economics work out, there's a potential new business.

            Crazy?  Maybe so.  The more important question though is, is it crazy enough?  What the scientists have come up with is certainly a promising first step, so now they need to take the next step and create both a solution to the "islands of plastic" nightmare, as well as a business of the future.  

 

 

        

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THE SEVEN VIEWPOINTS

Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, his famous book on the theory of evolution by natural selection, in 1859, so we've been arguing about the theory now for more than 150 years.  Unless you're part of a relatively small group of people, you probably don't pay much attention to the debate.  From a distance, it looks as though there are two broad groups: one group that believes in evolution and doesn't believe in Christianity, and a group of Christians who don't believe in Darwin's theory.  

It's actually a lot more complicated.  In fact, there are actually seven different broad viewpoints.  Six of these have been identified by Gerald Rau, a former professor at Wheaton College in Illinois.  To Rau's list of six I will add a seventh.  I'm bringing this up in order to give you an idea of the diversity of opinion on the subject. You'll see why I'm doing this.

 

Viewpoint #1: Naturalism

The first school of though is what is called naturalism.  Naturalists strongly accept Darwin's theory.  In particular, they believe that the world, and the emergence of all life, can be explained without the need to invoke God.  It happened because of a completely natural process.  Usually, naturalists are either atheists or, at best, agnostics.

 

Viewpoint #2: Deism

Deists believe that God created the world, but after the creation, God pretty much took a holiday.  Deists tend to think of God as the great watchmaker – He created the world, but has chosen to sit back and watch the creation operate on its own, without influence or interference by God. 

 

Viewpoint #3: Planned Evolution

Supporters of planned evolution believe that both the Bible and Charles Darwin are right.  The world was created by God, but He used the evolutionary processes described by Darwin.

 

Viewpoint #4: Directed Evolution

Directed evolution is pretty much the same viewpoint as planned evolution, but there is an important difference.  Those who support planned evolution tend to believe that Adam and Eve weren't really people whereas those who support directed evolution tend to believe that Adam and Eve were real life people.

 

Viewpoint #5: Old Earth Creationism

Creationism is the idea that the description in the early part of Genesis is largely correct.  Those who support the "old earth" variety believe that God definitely created the world, but that his timetable was a little longer than one might infer from the Book of Genesis.  The big question concerns the length of a "day".  For an old earth creationist, the length of a "day" might be hundreds of millions of years.  As such, an old earth creationist can reconcile what the Bible is saying with the evidence of geology, that the world is millions, or billions of years old.

 

Viewpoint #6: Young Earth Creationism

For a young earth creationist, a "day is a day", meaning that God literally created the world in six days or so, and the world itself is probably not much more than six or seven thousand years old.  Young earth creationists reject both Darwin and modern geology.

 

Viewpoint #7: Intelligent Design

The seventh viewpoint is Intelligent Design (ID for short).  This is the concept that the world was designed by God.  It's an idea that traces back at least to St. Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages, but it's modern day variant has become much more famous. Briefly, ID is an attempt to apply a modern day scientific critique to Darwin's theory.  It is an attempt by serious, and well trained, scientists to raise objections to Darwin's theory.  We'll discuss it more in a later posting.  

Many Christians love ID but most scientists hate it.  While ID theorists raise a number of concerns about the robustness of Darwin's theory, there are two key objections: 1) ID isn't a competitor theory to Darwin, merely a series of disparate objections; and 2) most scientists think it is "junk science," so even if ID were a coherent alternative theory to Darwin, it would likely still be rejected by most scientists.

Some Christians probably have the impression that non-Christian scientists line up behind Charles Darwin and Christian scientists both support ID and reject Darwin.  The case is nowhere near that simple.  Probably the majority, if not the vast majority, of Christian scientists reject ID – because they believe it doesn't qualify as good science.  Conversely, not all supporters of ID are Christians: some support ID because they really believe Darwin didn't create a rigorous theory.

So what's the takeaway?  First, that there are so many different viewponts.  Second, that there isn't any consistent "Christian" viewpoint.  About the only truly consistent viewpoint is that of atheist scientists, who pretty nearly universally believe in a "naturalist" view of Darwin.  More importantly, these atheist scientists tend to be almost universally shocked that Christians haven't embraced the science the way they have.  But as others have pointed out, the only ones who really should be shocked are the atheist scientists themselves.  In our next few postings, I'll explain why nobody should be shocked about what Christians believe … and don't believe.
 

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            Given that news is made worldwide 24 hours per day, seven days a week, it's little wonder that even the most well informed person misses an awful lot of stories that are important, sometimes profoundly.

            One such story was the agreement reached last week by the International Maritime Organization (IMO).  That's the agency within the United Nations responsible for safety and security in shipping, as well as the prevention of marine pollution by ships.  Historically, it's been focused on controlling discharges by ships into the oceans.  Like many around the world, now it's trying to tackle the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

            When it comes to greenhouse gases, we all tend to think of the obvious sources such as power plants and automobiles.  But there are all kinds of other sources, and shipping is a comparatively small, yet still important, contributor.

            It's estimated that ships around the world on an annual basis emit the equivalent greenhouse emissions of 185 coal fired power plants.  The various participants/members in the IMO have agreed to eliminate 50% of those emissions by 2050.  It's a great idea, and an historic agreement, but don't uncork the champagne just yet.  That's because there are two key problems with this: 1) it's comparatively easy for participants to agree to reduce emissions, but there really isn't a very good enforcement mechanism, so it's fairly easy to have what are called "free riders"; and 2) even if everyone complies, there's concern that it won't happen quickly enough to achieve the "2 degrees Celsius" limit on temperature increase.

            In a certain sense, it's the very same problem that the Paris Climate Accord has.  How do you prevent countries from falling short, even reneging, on their pledges? Moreover, how do you get the needed reductions done in a sufficiently timely manner?  And failure to comply isn't necessarily a case of malfeasance or dishonesty.  After all, there's no doubt that members of the European Union REALLY want to eliminate greenhouse gases, but they're having a very difficult time doing so.

            I think there is a solution to the problem, and one applicable to both agreements.  Let me explain it, then show you why it's a superior approach. 

            The goal is to eliminate 50% of shipping related emissions by 2050, approximately the output of 93 coal fired power plants.  Gertrude Stein famously said, "a rose is a rose is a rose".  Similarly, while there are some variations, greenhouse gas is greenhouse gas.  If the shipping industry could find a way to eliminate the equivalent of  at least 93, and as many as 185, coal fired plants worth of greenhouse gas, they could claim "mission accomplished".  In fact, it would be double what they've promised.

            So my proposal is to reframe the problem.  We now know that renewables plants can be economically viable investments, so here's my idea: assign each party to the agreement a specific greenhouse gas reduction goal (with the sum of the individual commitments equal to the 185 coal plant total), but then leave it up to them to figure out the best way for them to accomplish the goal, either by focusing on reducing emissions in their own operations or by investing in another business; and encourage them to find the most economically profitable way to accomplish the goal.  They could then choose either to make the investment to reduce emissions in their own facilities, or they could commit the same amount of money to invest in building a renewables plant to replace an existing coal fired plant.

            The key idea here is to provide companies and countries a choice in how they eliminate greenhouse gases.  Besides that, it provides them an economic incentive to do so.  It also changes the calculus for making investment decisions.  It becomes one of the following: a) for a given amount of money, how can we create the greatest financial return while at the same time eliminating greenhouse gases; or b) to eliminate a given amount of carbon from the air, what's the least amount we're required to invest?  Pretty quickly everyone will focus investments on the following: a) Investments that provide the greatest financial return per ton of greenhouse gas removed; b) Investments that require the least amount of investment per ton of greenhouse gas removed.

            The real question for each party to ask itself is: can I/we more profitably/effectively eliminate our assigned target by investing in our own business, or should I/we instead commit the funds to eliminate our target number in another industry?

            The shipping industry – or any other industry trying to address this problem – could pool its resources and offer to build a bunch of renewables plants to replace current older plants.  Once the plants are built, the old plants would be decommissioned.   Alternatively, companies could work individually, making investments into existing entities that build and operate renewables plants. 

            Lots of people complain that old, inefficient coal fired power plants continue to operate in the USA, spewing tons of greenhouse gases.  Why aren't they replaced?  Because the owners don't want to abandon un-depreciated investments.  So here's an idea: the shipping industry could make a deal to provide the required capital to build new plants to replace the inefficient plants.  It could get as many as 185 renewables plants built and get up to 185 coal fired plants decommissioned.  Greenhouse gas reduction goal achieved.

            How could it pay for this?  Instead of spending money to reduce greenhouse gases in the shipping industry, the money could be invested in the renewables plants that would replace the coal fired plants.  Both industries could benefit. 

            The other important thing is for each group to have its members report on the investments they've made.  Within any given industry, each participant could be required to report on the financial performance of their greenhouse gas reduction investments.

            The reframing reduces or eliminates the "free rider" problem.  That's the problem of people agreeing to do something (e.g., do their part to eliminate greenhouse gases) but then doing nothing, figuring that they can get away with doing nothing.

            Here's why this is a better solution: a) if the investor can choose investment options from outside, it increases the chances that a better investment will be made; b) the investments can be made comparatively quickly.  In fact, the 185 plants could be eliminated within just a few years, far more quickly than if the investments are made to retrofit ships.  This will greatly increase the probability of achieving the "2 degree Celsius" goal.

            Realistically, this approach doesn't completely eliminate the "free rider" problem.  A given party may still decide not to follow through on its commitments.  After all, at the end of the day, human nature hasn't changed … and it isn't going to change.  But the "free rider" problem should be significantly reduced because the problem has been reframed more as an economic opportunity and less as a burden.  

            So isn't this just another form of trading carbon credits?  No, because in the case of carbon credits, the only way a company can meet its goals is by focusing its attention on reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions.  In this approach, a company can choose to reduce emissions in any business or industry.  Thus, if a particular company needs to eliminate X tons of emissions per year, it can choose to do it either in its own operation or any other operation.  It could conclude it's more economical or efficient to invest in reducing emissions elsewhere.  Thus, the shipping company might decide it's better to invest in a renewables plant that will eliminate a coal fired electricity plant rather than cutting emissions in its own business.

            Some may criticize this approach because it may not result in any reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by shippers.  Maybe not, but if properly implemented, it will result in overall emissions reduction.  Remember, greenhouse gas is greenhouse gas!  If the shipping industry does nothing to reduce ship emissions, but it takes steps to eliminate 185 coal fired power plants worldwide, consider it "mission accomplished".   But it probably won't happen quite that way.  That's because some parties will conclude that they can invest a certain amount of money to reduce emissions from their operations, and the investment will produce a greater economic return to them than making equivalent investments in other industries to reduce emissions.  But that's business!

            No doubt, everyone should commend the International Maritime Organization for what it is setting out to do.   The various parties may succeed by focusing on sources of carbon emissions just within the industry.  However, I strongly believe the probability of success will increase significantly if the shipping industry – or any industry – adopts the approach I've laid out here.  That's because, quite simply, greenhouse gases are more likely to be eliminated if everyone focuses on greenhouse gas elimination as a profit making opportunity, not an economic burden.

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In my last blog post I described my inspiration for writing the book, beginning with my observation that the 150 year failure of Christians to come up with a generally agreed upon understanding of how Darwin and other modern scientific ideas square with the Bible has led to many problems.  Many Christians, particularly the young, have left the church because of this.  Further, Christians are increasingly viewed as anti-science and out of touch.  Worst of all, Christians are also increasingly perceived as stupid.  I believe Christians need to do something about this.  I'm not at all suggesting we change our views in order to win a popularity contest, but I think we need to come up with better answers than we have, otherwise another 100 years could quickly pass and our Christian descendants would face even more scorn and less respect.

            Pretty much everyone has their heels dug in on the issue, locked into their respective views.  Likely, the only way to get some type of change on this is for someone to propose a new way of thinking.  Something like that happened about 500 years ago – it was called the Reformation – and it turned into far more than just a battle of ideas.  I think there's a solution to this that falls far short of what Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the other great Reformers had to do, and shouldn't create the bloody consequences of the 16^th century.  In short, my idea is to adopt some "entrepreneurial thinking."

            When I say "entrepreneurial thinking", I'm referring to the process that many entrepreneurs go through to create new business opportunities.  While I'm not thinking of this issue as a "business opportunity", I seriously think we could apply some of the concepts in order to come up with a good solution.

            The first thing to note is something already pretty well known: most great business ideas come from outsiders, meaning from people who aren't already insiders in a particular business or industry.  For example, the great personal computer revolution of the past 30 years was started by people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.  Gates and Jobs were both outsiders.  The benefit was that they weren't wedded to the views of the big companies in information technology at the time, companies such as IBM and Digital Equipment.  Ken Olson, the head of Digital Equipment at the time, famously asked the question, "why would anyone want to have a computer on his desk?"  Unless you live near Route 128 in Boston, or are more than 60 years old, you've likely never heard of  Ken Olson and his company, Digital Equipment, once a titan in the mini-computer industry.

            The same is true about music.  The recorded music industry has been completely upended in recent years by the Ipod, ITunes, and similar technology.    Similarly, while the idea for digital photography first emerged at photography titan Kodak, the leadership of the company was too invested in the status quo to see the need to rethink things.

            What has that to do with Charles Darwin, the Big Bang Theory, and Christianity?   Simply this: I think many prominent scientists and theologians are too "invested" in their respective current "views" about Darwin and Christianity.  They're too wedded to familiar assumptions, so any really new thinking on the subject will likely have to come from outside. 

            Why not from an accountant?  Sounds preposterous, but is it any more preposterous than a couple of college dropouts without much, if any, formal education in computer science upending the computer industry, or that Kodak could have been toppled as a photography titan?  While I'm a committed Christian, I'm neither a scientist nor a theologian, so I'm not "invested" in 150 years of thinking about Darwin.  Instead, I can come along and do what entrepreneurs tend to do well: ask unconventional questions.  Just as entrepreneurs can come in from outside an existing industry and develop new solutions to old problems by asking unconventional questions, so I believe that I, or someone like me, can come in and ask some unconventional questions about Darwin, the Big Bang, and Christianity. 

            I said I'm an accountant.  By profession I am a CPA, though I haven't practiced as a CPA for many years.  Instead, I'm an entrepreneur, as well as an inventor.  As the people who work with me regularly know, I love to ask unconventional questions.  Asking unconventional questions has been the basis for starting and building businesses, as well as inventing things.  It was also the starting point for my investigation into this whole question.  The end product, of course, was the book I've written.   

            While the book addresses a whole series of unconventional questions, it really begins with two.  It's been noted than non-Christian scientists are absolutely astounded that even given all of the evidence that what Darwin postulated is true, only about half of the general American public believes it.  But it's also been said that the only people who really should be surprised about that are the scientists themselves; and the reason is the argument that in the minds of those Darwin skeptics, even given all of the science, they've never been given a good reason they should want to believe Darwin.  Thus, the first unconventional question is, "what would have to happen for Christians to want to believe in Darwin and the Big Bang Theory?"    The second unconventional question follows from that.  It is, "might there be reasons Christians would want to believe in Darwin and the Big Bang Theory and, if so, what would be those reasons?"

            So far as I know, no one has been asking those questions.  In my mind, they're the starting point for taking an "entrepreneurial look" at this entire issue, the place to launch a rethink of the matter.  Ken Olson of Digital Equipment couldn't conceive that anyone would want a computer on his desk, much less in his shirt pocket or on his wrist, and the failure to at least pose the question limited his thinking … and cost his shareholders a very fine company.  Have the people involved with the "Darwin versus Christianity" debate been thinking too much like Ken Olson?  I'm afraid they have.

 

 

 

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            No doubt about it, the dinosaurs that roamed the Earth millions of years ago were big, powerful, and likely very fierce.  But like the stereotypical "jocks" in your high school, who at the time seemed equally big, powerful, and fierce, maybe those dinosaurs weren't very smart. 

            At least they weren't smart enough to realize that the food they were eating was slowly killing them. 

            It's what has been termed "the biotic revenge hypothesis".  In recent years we've pretty much all concluded that the dinosaurs were killed off by a giant meteor that struck the Earth 66 million years ago.  A recently published study by Michael Frederick of the University of Baltimore and Gordon Gallup of the State University of New York at Albany proposes that the dinosaurs began declining BEFORE the Chicxlub meteor impact.  It isn't that the meteor was unimportant, just that it can't explain everything that happened.  Let's take a look at the argument.

            Needless to say, be very happy that you weren't around when the meteor hit the Yucatan Peninsula.  Scientists who've studied the resultant crater estimate that the meteor itself was about 6 to 9 miles in diameter.  They've hypothesized that when it hit the Yucatan, it released energy equivalent to a billion times what was released in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs combined!

            We humans have had some experience with the result of massive volcanic explosions.  Anyone more than a few years old in May, 1980 probably recalls the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State.  Of far greater consequence, however, was the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815.  The Tambora eruption was so big that it had huge climactic impacts for years thereafter. 

            But even Tambora was a trivial event compared to the Yucatan meteor explosion.  The dust cloud created by the Yucatan meteor likely lasted for ten years, doubtless causing widespread destruction, as well as extinctions of many plants and animals.

            While large animals died, a number of smaller creatures survived the disaster, likely because the latter were able to get by living off detritus.  I like to joke that this phenomenon will ensure that cockroaches - which apparently have been with us for 320 million years - will be the last creature standing when the world ends!

            No doubt, the meteor killed a lot of dinosaurs!  But did it cause them to go extinct?  The evidence suggests that dinosaurs actually went extinct over a seven million year period.  While the meteor explosion caused an awful lot of premature deaths, its effects probably didn't stretch out over seven million years.  That suggests there had to have been something else.

            One theory of the "something else" is what's called the Deccan Traps, located in what is now India.  Geologists believe that the traps began forming 66.25 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period.  The timing coincides perfectly with the demise of the dinosaurs.

            Those studying the Deccan Traps believe there were a series of large volcanic eruptions over a 30,000 year period.  Imagine, not one Tambora sized eruption but nearly continuous ones over 30,000 years!  The eruptions released a very large amount of sulphur dioxide, leading to an average temperature drop of two degrees Celsius.  You probably know that scientists today fear the effects of an increase of global temperatures of two degrees Celsius on Earth's climate.  The Deccan Traps may have caused a climatic disaster in reverse.

            But the Deccan Trap theory suffers the same problem as the meteor one: it can't really explain why it took about seven million years for the dinosaurs to disappear.  You know those stereotypically drawn out operatic death scenes in operas such as "Carmen" or "Don Giovanni"?  Trivial, if the meteor strike and Deccan Traps took seven million years to kill off the dinosaurs.

            Enter the new theory of Professors Frederick and Gallup.  Their thesis is that the dinosaurs started going extinct before either the meteor strike or the Deccan Traps.  The cause, they believe, was toxic plants eaten by dinosaurs that were herbivores.

            Evolution has caused some plants to develop shells as a defense against predators.  Likewise, others have developed toxins to discourage others from eating them.  Conversely, many animals have developed the ability to avoid toxic plants.  It's called "learned, or conditioned taste aversion".  Rats apparently are especially good at this.  They lack the ability to regurgitate bad things, so they have to be especially careful what they eat.  Rats have exquisitely learned how to avoid eating bad things.

            Not the dinosaurs.  Thus, the "dumb jock" hypothesis: the dinosaurs died because they were too dumb to realize what they were eating was killing them!  Professors Frederick and Gallup are more charitable to the hapless dinosaurs, calling their theory "the Biotic Revenge Hypothesis".

            That could explain why herbivorous dinosaurs went extinct, but what about the carnivores?  They weren't eating these toxic plants.  But they were eating the dinosaurs who were eating them.  Thus, if toxic plants were killing off the herbivorous dinosaurs, the food supply for the carnivores would have slowly disappeared … to be followed by the carnivorous dinosaurs themselves.

            The idea of plant toxins killing dinosaurs actually isn't new.  In fact, Tony Swain, a biologist working at the Royal Botanic Gardens, advanced the idea about forty years ago, before anyone had discovered the Yucatan meteor site.  But Swain's theory didn't gain much traction because the available evidence suggested that herbivorous dinosaurs were thriving right up to the time of the meteor impact.

            So what evidence do Professors Frederick and Gallup provide in their new paper?  They focused on crocodilians, including modern day crocodiles, alligators and caimans, each a descendant from precursors to dinosaurs.  They then constructed an experiment that showed caimans do not develop specific learned taste aversions. 

            The fact that the caimans didn't develop specific learned taste aversions, then in contrast to animals such as rats, they wouldn't avoid food that turned toxic.  So with respect to food, they're today's "dumb jocks", incapable of realizing something they're eating is killing them!

            But what about birds?  After all, there is evidence that birds are descendants of the dinosaurs.  If dinosaurs were killed off because they were indiscriminate eaters, why haven't robins gone the way of T-Rex?  The authors cite the work done in the 1970's showing that birds can form food aversions.  They do it, however, not by taste but by sight.  So if a bird has a bad experience with a particular type of food, they develop a visual association and avoid it in the future. 

            The experimenters provided some jays an opportunity to eat monarch butterflies for the first time.  The butterflies have a milkweed toxin that makes life miserable for any jay that eats it.  The jays survived the, to them, bad experience that results from eating monarch butterflies, but the jays developed a visual cue and avoided the misery in the future.

            So are Frederick and Gallup suggesting that the dinosaurs died off because of indiscriminate eating?  No, they haven't gone that far.  Instead, they see the "biotic revenge hypothesis" as merely one contributing factor.  So a lot of indiscriminate eating on the part of dinosaurs probably helped weaken them.  Inhaling an excess of sulphur dioxide from the Deccan Traps made it even worse.  All to be followed by the mother of meteor explosions. 

            Death and destruction on a scale never before seen … and all witnessed by those pesky cockroaches, who survived!  I guess size does matter, but in the case of dinosaurs and cockroaches, not the outcome you might have expected.

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            Don't like the way you look, or the way you feel?  Been blaming your parents and grandparents?   Well, maybe you've been blaming the wrong folks.

            Every day, more and more people discover their true genetic ancestry, thanks to ever lower cost DNA test from companies such as 23andme.  Oftentimes, there are unexpected surprises.  My wife, who was born in Italy - and whose entire family appears to have lived in Italy for generations – discovered that her father's ancestors were Vikings!

            All these genetic tests provide us new sources of blame for things we don't like about ourselves – someone other than our immediate family.  Besides checking the DNA of curious people like my wife and others, scientists are doing the same with for those long deceased.  It's been reported that the genomes of several Neanderthals and one Denisovan have been sequenced.  The evidence shows that these various groups interbred at various points in history.  The implications of that inter-breeding are now becoming apparent.    

            You've probably heard jokes about the Neanderthals – and Neanderthal behavior – for years and years.  Evidence now suggests that anyone of European ancestry has anywhere from 1% to 4% of their DNA from the Neanderthals – the result of all that interbreeding.

            Likewise, if you can trace your ancestry to Oceania – meaning one of the South Pacific Islands – or to various parts of Asia, there's a good chance you have DNA traceable to a group called the Denisovans.  For example, Aborginal Australians can trace about 3% to 5% of their DNA to the Denisovans.  The same is true for people from Melanesia and parts of China and Tibet.

            Conversely, if you're from Africa and have neither European nor Asian ancestry, you'll likely have neither Neanderthal nor Denisovan DNA.

            Neanderthals were a species very similar to Homo sapiens, our species.  Some make the argument that the Neanderthals were just close cousins to Homo sapiens.  Both species have a common ancestor who lived about 500,000 years ago.  While Homo sapiens differed somewhat from Neanderthals, we were sufficiently similar that the two species could mate and have children, thus explaining why so many of us have some Neanderthal DNA.

            Neanderthals apparently moved out of Africa first.  Then about 50,000 to 80,000 years ago, Homo sapiens also moved out of Africa.  Homo sapiens and Neanderthals apparently only began to interbreed after the two groups moved out of Africa, thus explaining why the typical African doesn't have Neanderthal DNA.

            We know a lot less about the Denisovans than about the Neanderthals.  That's largely due to the fact that only a few fragments of deceased Denisovans have ever been found – nothing more than a finger bone, a toe bone, and several teeth – from a cave in remote Siberia.

        When two populations, such as the Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals, begin to interbreed, it's called "adaptive introgression".  So what are these DNA studies revealing about adaptive introgression?  A number of interesting things.

              First, it may explain the real reason why you look as you do.  One study identified some twenty different physical traits in modern humans that are traceable to the Neanderthals.  If you happen to have rosy cheeks, little or no protruding chin, or a broad projecting nose, don't blame Aunt Martha or your father, thank one of your Neanderthal ancestors instead.

     But of potentially greater interest are several recent DNA studies suggesting that Neanderthals not only provided some of us with rosy cheeks, they also gave many of us allergies, as well as an increased risk for depression.  Another recent study looked at the health records of Americans and concluded that Neanderthal admixed DNA may affect the risk of depression; explain skin lesions resulting from sun exposure; explain hypercoagulation of blood; and even explain something about tobacco use.

            Having trouble quitting smoking?  I guess you can blame it on that nameless ne'er do well Neanderthal ancestor of yours!

            But the Neanderthals didn't just give some of us a genetic variation of the "lump of coal" for Christmas.  In fact, two other new studies identified three archaic genes from the Neanderthals that boost immune response, a benefit.

            Other studies show the same positive benefit resulting from interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Denisovans.  One positive benefit of that is evidence that the Denisovans provided certain groups in Tibet the ability to survive and thrive at high altitudes.  Anyone who has ever travelled to Pikes Peak in Colorado (elevation 14,110 feet above sea level) or the base camp in Nepal from which teams begin the ascent of Mt. Everest (elevation 18,500 feet above sea level) knows how hard it is for humans to breathe at such altitudes.  However, the Denisovans provided at least some modern day Tibetans the right genes for this.

            Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection posits that "bad genes" will eventually disappear.  If that's the case, then why would bad genes that lead to depression and allergies, for example, persist?  There are two likely answers.

            One reason "bad genes" might persist for such a long time is because they were likely beneficial in prehistoric times.  We obviously live in a very different world than did our Neanderthal, Denisovan, or Homo sapiens forebears.  The conditions that made those "bad genes" beneficial have disappeared.  The genes may be bad in a modern environment, but not bad enough that they would prevent the person with the bad genes from having offspring.  After all, you may have nasty allergies, and life may be a bitch in allergy season, but how many people with allergies do you know who died before they could pass on their genes?

            The other reason may be related to modern day lifestyles and environments.  Take the case of allergies.  There's some evidence that allergies are problematic for modern humans because of the conditions in which we live.  Another is that children are raised in overly sanitary environments, so they do not develop immunity from a range of minor bugs while they're young and their immune response somehow remains immature. 

          At the same time, while the Neanderthals provided us some bad things, another new study

suggests that evolution by natural selection did in fact work: large numbers of Neanderthal gene variants that would be deleterious to humans were purged.  But researchers made another interesting discovery: that "purging" wasn't a foregone conclusion.  Instead, the purging of many of these Neanderthal genes occurred only because the Homo sapiens population was so much larger than the Neanderthal population.  If, instead, the Homo sapiens and Neanderthal populations had been more evenly balanced, not only would more us have rosy cheeks, we'd also have more Neanderthal genes, including ones that are mildly deleterious to modern day humans.  According to Ivan Juric of the University of California Davis, "Selection is more efficient at removing deleterious variants in large populations."  The study further noted, "Weakly deleterious variants that could persist in Neanderthals could not persist in (early modern) humans.  We think that this simple explanation can account for the pattern of Neanderthal ancestry that we see today along the genome of modern humans."

            What that implies is a potentially very different outcome if the populations of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals had been more evenly balanced.  We likely would have a lot more Neanderthal DNA than we do.  Alternatively, we might have a lot less Homo sapiens DNA than we do.  Taking that a step further, maybe we might actually be mainly Neanderthal, not Homo sapiens?

            Of course, passing good and bad genes isn't a "one way street".  I've noted the evidence that Neanderthals have bequeathed upon many of us some not so nice DNA.  According to another recent study, Homo sapiens returned the favor by passing along to Neanderthals the bacterium that causes such truly pleasant things as stomach ulcers, tapeworms, and tuberculosis.  The Neaderthals apparently hadn't developed resistance to such bugs, so exposure was catastrophic, much as the introduction of various bugs by the Spanish explorers to the Americas in the late 15^th and early16th centuries was catastrophic to native populations. 

            Our individual genomes carry surprises of both the good and the bad variety.  Not only that, they shed light on the rich journey of Homo sapiens and related species from the time of the emergence of Homo in Africa.  So be ready to be surprised even more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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            US President Donald Trump never misses an opportunity to take credit, even when he may not deserve it.

            Until this week.  Amazingly, some pretty positive news was reported – and news that Trump could legitimately "crow" about, BUT it looks like he's completely ignored it! 

            What?  Why? 

            The answer?  Because it has to do with climate change.

            The news came in the form of a report by the International Energy Agency.  That's the organization created in the early 1970's to monitor worldwide energy usage.  The USA and 29 other countries are members.  This past week (20 March 2018) the IEA published its first ever Global Energy and CO2 Status Report.

            Of course, not all CO2 emissions are related to energy – think, for example, of agricultural and forestry - but based upon data from the Global Carbon Project, the IEA data cover about 88% of total carbon emissions worldwide.

            As you might expect, it was a case of "good news/bad news".  The overall "bad news" was that the level of carbon emissions related to energy usage went up worldwide last year about 1.4%, after several years of being pretty much flat.

            So what was the good news?  Four economically advanced countries – the USA, Great Britain, Japan, and Mexico – all had emissions reductions.  The USA last year again led the world in total carbon emission reductions.

            That's in spite of the fact that the USA withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord, and the evidence that the Trump Administration is trying to put "climate science deniers" in key positions in the Administration.

            I rather doubt the International Energy Agency is putting out "fake news".   But if it is, the people who should be shouting "fake news" are the people in most of the countries that have been complaining about Trump's environmental policies.  That's because this report doesn't make them look very good.   

            So let's consider seven interesting conclusions one can draw from the IEA report.

#1: The USA continues to lead the world in reducing greenhouse gases, in spite of Trump's moves

 

            That was an unmistakable conclusion of the report.  For the third year in a row, the USA reduced total carbon emissions.  Certainly good news!

            So in spite of all of the moves by the Trump Administration to quash efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, it happened anyway.

            So maybe we've been asking the wrong questions, or drawing the wrong conclusions.  Maybe the real answer is, cleaning up greenhouse gases has more to do with economics and less to do with policymaking at the Federal government and international treaty level.

            The fact that wind and solar are so much more cost competitive than in the past is leading to a huge transition across the USA.  Market forces are very much in play.

            A less well understood fact is how corporations are changing their thinking about greenhouse gases.  An interesting example is Duke Energy, a major electric utility in the southeast USA.  Duke for years has resisted the move towards clean energy.  In fact, the company has been perceived almost as a climate change denier.  Yet the company has recently released a climate change report to its shareholders and the public.  

            The company reports that it is now factoring in an implied cost of carbon in its long range planning.  The fact that a company like Duke is now doing that clearly says, the world has changed!  In the report, the company says, "Sustained financial support for research, development and scaling of low-carbon technologies, including smart grid, energy efficiency, solar, wind, storage, nuclear and carbon capture and sequestration, will be needed to meet these challenges."

            A public relations ploy?  Maybe, but notwithstanding Trump Administration efforts to deny climate change, something has clearly changed in the USA, and major corporations now realize it's in their economic self interest to deal with greenhouse gases.  Less and less do they need outsiders lecturing to them about climate change.  More and more, they can see the economics favor much less carbon.

            These are likely the reasons the USA is at the leading edge of greenhouse gas reductions.

#2: The European Union is "talking the talk", but not exactly "walking the walk", when it comes to greenhouse gas reductions

 

            Perhaps the most interesting "take away" from the report, however, is the poor performance of the European Union.  Buried in the middle of the report are two important data points.  First, the European Union overall increased greenhouse gas emissions last year by 1.5%.  But besides the USA, one of the other major countries that reduced greenhouse gas emissions in 2017 was the United Kingdom – by a whopping 3.8%.

The UK is in the process of leaving the European Union, but is still part of it for reporting purposes.  It represents 16% of the GDP of the EU, at least until the Brexit process is complete, presumably in March, 2019. 

            That means the European Union, excluding Great Britain, actually did worse than a worse 1.5% increase in emissions.  Simple math tells us that if Britain represents 16% of the EU and had a 3.8% emissions decline, and the EU as a whole had a 1.5% increase, then the part of the EU excluding Britain actually had a 2017 emissions increase of at least 1.8%!  

            But that's not all.  In another dimension, the European Union did very poorly.  That's on the dimension of what's called "energy intensity", which is discussed more below.  According to the IEA, worldwide, energy intensity improved by 1.7%.  The report bemoaned that 1.7% reduction because it was actually 2.0% in 2016, the year before.

            So why the worse performance in 2017?  Well, also buried in the report was that the European Union only improved energy intensity by 0.5%, not even a third as good as the worldwide average.  The European Union represents slightly less than 25% of the world economy – an even bigger percentage than the USA.  Simple math tells us that that poor performance by the EU provides the reason worldwide performance went from 2.0% to 1.7% in 2017.

            So if the Paris Climate Accord, as well as other governmental policies, are really the key to solving the greenhouse gas problem – a problem that definitely needs to be solved – then how do you explain the fact that the country with the "climate denying leadership" is way outperforming the very countries so invested in fixing the CO2 emissions problem?

            Bottom line: maybe the European Union should spend less time criticizing USA performance on greenhouse gas emissions, figure out how the USA is getting the job done, and spend a lot more time fixing its own house!

#3: China's results are definitely going in the right direction

         In the IEA report, China was also part of the "good news/bad news".  The bad news was that China's overall emissions increased by 1.7% in 2017.  Part of the good news, though, was that China reported overall economic growth of 7%, so its CO2 emissions increased at a far slower rate than did the economy.

            The other good news out of China is that the government seems to want to do something about cleaning up the air – to give the Chinese blue skies again.  There's now a major initiative to change heating in northern China away from coal and towards more environmentally friendly technology.  Not only that, China is now leading the world in installations of alternative energy such as wind and solar.  Certainly good news! 

#4: Renewables are making great headway

            The truly good news continues to be on the renewables front.  According to the IEA report, "Renewables saw the highest rate of growth of any energy source in 2017 and met around a quarter of global energy demand growth last year. The power sector played the most important role in the growth of low-carbon energy, with renewables-based electricity generation increasing by 6.3% (380 TWh) in 2017. Renewables now account for 25% of global electricity generation. China and the United States together accounted for half of the increase in renewables-based electricity generation, followed by the European Union (8%), Japan and India (with 6% of growth each). The growth of wind power and solar PV in 2017 was unprecedented; wind power accounted for the largest share of overall renewables growth, at 36%, followed by solar PV (27%), hydropower (22%) and bioenergy (12%). China accounted for 40% of the combined growth in wind and solar PV, with new record capacity additions and a reduction in the rate of curtailment. Nearly 40% of the increase in hydropower was in the United States, while climatic conditions in the European Union reduced hydro output by nearly one-tenth. The European Union, China and Japan accounted for 82% of global bioenergy growth in power."

#5: The focus needs to be on Asia, especially countries besides China

 

         So there's positive news coming from China, but the news elsewhere in Asia doesn't seem so good.  That's particularly problematic because energy usage, and greenhouse gases, are growing most rapidly in Asia.  India, in particular, is both expanding its economy rapidly, but is also emitting more greenhouse gases.  Countries such as Indonesia and South Korea are also contributing to the problem.

         If we're going to avoid hitting the "two degrees Celsius" increase in average global temperatures, the battle will likely be won or lost in places like Asia.  More attention needs to be placed on controlling emissions in these areas.

#6: Energy intensity continues to improve, it just needs to happen more quickly

 

            "Energy intensity" refers to the amount of energy required to produce a unit of economic output – GDP.  Again, a "good news/bad news" situation.  On a positive note, worldwide economic output has increased by about 80% since 2000.  However, energy usage has only increased by about 40% - so we're getting more efficient.  We improved again last year – 1.7%

            But if we're going to achieve the "2 degrees Celsius" goal, we've got to increase energy intensity even more, otherwise we've got to find use more renewables.

            Which means the European Union has got to "pick up its game" and improve energy intensity more than 0.5% a year.  Other major economic powers – the USA and China – need to keep pushing to improve, too.

#7: Like other countries, the USA needs to intensify its efforts, just maybe in different ways than everyone's been saying         

 

            The USA results for 2017 are good, but they could still be better. Moreover, if we're going to achieve the "two degree Celsius" goal, we're going to have to step up our game in the USA, too.

            The USA reduced greenhouse gases again in 2017 for two key reasons: 1) growth in renewable energy; and 2) reduction in electricity demand.  To continue to reduce greenhouse gases, focus should likely remain on these two areas.

            The economics of renewables in the USA continue to get better.  In many cases, renewables are more cost competitive than oil, gas and coal.  The proportion of renewables in place will likely continue to grow.  On the other hand, reducing electric demand may be much more challenging.  That's likely because the size of the electric vehicle fleet is going to continue to grow.  Not only that, but electric generation to support server farms for cloud data storage will likely continue to grow rapidly.  Perhaps the best way to reduce electricity demand is to increase the usage of LED's.

Conclusion           

            So, what then can we take away from this IEA report on CO2 emissions? 

Well, we can pretty safely say President Trump isn't going to take credit for the comparatively positive USA results on climate change for 2017. 

            What we don't know is the response of the leaders of countries who do believe in the danger of CO2, yet whose results were pretty lousy.  My recommendation is, stop and ask:

• What are the USA, Great Britain, Japan and Mexico doing that's having a  positive impact? 
• What does the European Union need to do differently that will produce better results this year, next year, and the year after that? 
• What do countries like India need to do in order to get results more like those in China? 

There are other questions to ask, too, but these are some good starters.

            The clock continues to tick on greenhouse gas emissions.  Time for fewer platitudes and more practical action.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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         Three papers published in Science on March 15^th may cause scientists to re-write at least part of the story of the emergence of Homo sapiens - our species.  These new studies suggest five important surprises – two of which could represent very unexpected things about climate change.

         The research was conducted by paleontologists and other scientists in the Olorgesaillie region of Kenya, much of it sponsored by the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program.  Lots of previous research has been done there, probably most famously by paleontologists Louis and Mary Leakey.

            Let's consider each surprise.

Surprise #1: Evidence of sophisticated tools and trade

 

         Earlier research at Olorgesaillie suggests evidence of human-like species as far back as 1.2 million years ago.  These weren't Homo sapiens – our species – but were pre-cursor species such as Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Australopithecus.  One of the most famous paleontological finds was Lucy, a member of the Australopithecus species.  Lucy was a female of that species who lived about 3.2 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia.

            The scientists at Olorgesailie discovered a range of fairly sophisticated tools, many made out of obsidian.  Scientific dating indicates the tools were created roughly 320,000 years ago.  Previously, scientists had observed the creation of very large, crude tools.  Up to now, any such more sophisticated tools scientists had found had dates less than 280,000 years old.

            That was surprising enough, but perhaps the bigger surprise was the fact that many were made of obsidian.  At one Olorgesailie site, 46 percent of more than 3,400 stone artifiacts were obsidian.  Some of the finds indicate signs of having been attached to handles, likely spearpoints, according to the researchers.

            So why was the presence of obsidian so significant?  It's because there is no obsidian in the area where the tools were excavated.  However, analysis of the chemical composition of the obsidian suggests that it could have come from an area 25 to 50 kilometers away.  That means the toolmakers would have had to transport the obsidian over a fair distance.  Not what we moderns consider a great distance, but certainly a great distance for 300,000+ years ago.  That meant that they traveled over relatively long distances, most likely in search of food.  In the course of foraging, they encountered other hominids and undertook trade with them.

Surprise #2: These early groups were using dyes

 

         The researchers also discovered a total of 88 pigment lumps, including two pieces with grinding marks, that came from an indeterminate distance outside Olorgesailie.  The reason this is significant is that pigment might have been applied to one's body or belongings, and that may have provided evidence of group identity or social status, according to the researchers. 

            Rick Potts, from the Smithsonian Human Origins Project, and one of the lead researchers on the project, observed,  "We don't know what the coloring was used on, but coloring is often taken by archeologists as the root of complex symbolic communication."  He went on to say, "Just as color is used today in clothing or flags to express identity, these pigments may have helped people communicate membership in alliances and maintain ties with distant groups."

Surprise #3: Evidence of the emergence of human society earlier than expected

 

            When did human society first emerge?  Up until now, the evidence has suggested the first signs of what we call society appeared about 100,000 years ago.  That conclusion was based upon evidence such as cave paintings found in Ethiopia.  So while Homo sapiens may well have emerged 250,000 to 300,000 years ago, scientists have felt that societies didn't emerge until 100,000 years ago. 

            When you consider the new evidence from Olorgesailie, that probably needs to be reconsidered.  The evidence from these latest studies includes more sophisticated tools, trade, and dyes, and suggests some form of human society 200,000 years earlier than previously thought! 

            In short, what the Olorgesailie researchers found was definitely a surprise.  According to a press statement issued by the researchers, "The obsidian transport and the collection and processing of pigments imply an early development of social networks connecting members of our species across longer distances… This practice is characteristic of our species, but in contrast to our closest primate relatives, and is not implied by the material record of the preceding early Stone Age levels at Olorgesailie," said George Washington University paleoanthropologist Alison Brooks, a senior member of the Olorgasailie team, in an interview with Discover.

         After all, chimpanzees and other non-human primates don't travel into one another's territory.  If they do, they'll like end up in a fight to the death.  So the Homo species that occupied Olorgasailie 300,000 years ago must have developed a higher level of sophistication.

            Rick Potts, the Smithsonian researcher, argues that "greater mobility of these groups encouraged inventive thinking about how to acquire resources."  

Surprise #4: Climate change may have helped Homo sapiens

 

            But why the shift away from clunky, durable hand axes used by these early hoinids?   Can the emergence of more sophisticated tools be explained?  The researchers offer a possible explanation.  "One of the things we see is that around 500,000 years ago in the rift valley of southern Kenya, all hell breaks loose. There's faulting that occurs, and earthquake activity was moving the landscape up and down. The climate record shows there is a stronger degree of oscillation between wet and dry. That would have disrupted the predictability of food and water, for those early people," Potts says. "It's exactly under those conditions that almost any organism—but especially a hunter-gatherer human, even an early one—would begin to expand geography of obtaining food or obtaining resources. It's under those conditions that you begin to run into other groups of hominins and you become aware of resources beyond your usual boundaries.

            The evidence suggests there was dramatic change in wet and dry conditions in the area of Olorgesailie around 320,000 years ago.  Moreover, these changes appear to have occurred over decades, not thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.             

         The Olorgesailie researchers don't know whether the tools and dyes they found were from a Homo sapien population, as there were no remains located.  However, other evidence suggests this is when Homo sapiens first emerged as a species.  So we can't tell if it was Homo sapiens or one of the earlier Hominid species.  But according to the Olorgesailie researchers, rapid climate change could well have been the reason the population started foraging over larger areas with ever smaller, more sophisticated tools.  This would have brought them into contact with other groups.  At some point they started trading with these other groups, the reason they probably first acquired obsidian.

         These interactions probably came through necessity. Like today, natural disasters posed challenges beyond the scope of the individual. Earthquakes and changing seasons and climates likely offered proof to early humanity that it was better to work together.  "This change to a very sophisticated set of behaviors that involved greater mental abilities and more complex social lives may have been the leading edge that distinguished our lineage from other early humans," says Rick Potts, in a press statement.

         Would they have started foraging over wider areas if the climate had been stable?  Why work harder than you need to, especially if by crossing territory you end up encountering other groups?  No doubt, such widespread foraging would have been dangerous – just as its dangerous for a non-human primate to cross into another's territory.  Why do something dangerous … unless you need food? 

            Likely, that's why these populations started moving, and encountering other groups.

Homo sapiens was more sophisticated than the other hominids and eventually became the only hominid species.

            So in a peculiar sense, perhaps we humans can thank climate change for our triumph over the other hominids?   Well, that's the conclusion of Rick Potts, the researcher from the Smithsonian.

Surprise #5: We might actually look forward to dramatic climate change

 

            In a funny sense, climate change has been good to our species.  After all, perhaps the biggest climate change event of all time – the asteroid collision 66 million years ago – led to the demise of the dinosaurs and the triumph of mammals.  Had that not occurred, the dominant species today might still be dinosaurs.  After all, the event occurred a mere 66 million years ago.

            As previously noted, the evidence from Olorgesailie suggests rapid climate change may have been the spur to the hominid population to forage over wider areas, as well as develop more sophisticated tools.  While we don't have proof, there's a very good chance the Olorgesailie population were Homo sapiens.  However, even if they weren't, the observed behavior is consistent with what we know about our species.  Given a difficult situation, Homo sapiens becomes more creative and inventive, as well as more mobile.

            We're facing another time of potentially very rapid climate change.  The evidence seems pretty clear that if we don't take quick action, our climate will rapidly change.

            Which leads to an unexpected possibility: based upon our past experience, rapid climate change might be awful for other species, but it could be great for us!   That's because when Homo sapiens encounters big problems, we tend to become quite resourceful and inventive.  Facing rapid climate change, we might see an outpouring of creativity.

            You can make the argument that we've already seen that.  After all, we've only very recently realized there was a serious climate change risk, yet in short order, our species has developed entirely new technologies for solar, wind, and batteries, for example.  Absent the threat of climate change, would change have occurred so rapidly?  It's hard to say, but there does seem to be plenty of evidence that humans become more creative when they're put under stress.

            Please understand, I'm not suggesting we encourage more destructive climate change.  It's a real problem that should be solved – quickly.  But even if disaster strikes, and traumatic climate change occurs, in a most peculiar, and unexpected, way it actually might benefit humans.

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            It's a "good news/bad news" situation. 

            The good news: there's enough technology available now to solve the climate change problem.  That's because solar and wind power are now highly competitive technologies.  Add to that is the fact that the technology for all electric and hybrid vehicles is now sufficiently good that the world could move fairly quickly to a vehicle fleet composed largely of alternative power.  Plus, technology keeps improving in a broad range of ways, so alternative energy solutions keep getting better.

            And we don't have to eliminate all carbon emissions, just enough to restore the natural equilibrium that existed until just a few years ago.

            Now the bad news: we're in a race against the clock to implement these technologies on a large enough scale to prevent TOO MUCH climate change.  Some people think it's already too late, but I prefer to be optimistic.

            So what might be done to speed up the transition and "beat the clock"? 

            Some people think that this is the perfect time for a good dictator: just implement changes by governmental fiat.  Presto … boom … problem solved!  China's approach comes to mind.  The good news is that the Chinese government seems now to understand the risks to the planet, and large scale alternative energy investments are now underway.

            But anyone who's ever lived under a dictator will quickly tell you it's no panacea … climate change or not.  Besides, most of the world doesn't live that way … and the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan certainly don't. 

            So if you don't happen to live in the Peoples Republic of China, just how do you speed up the transition to a world of much lower carbon emissions?  Here are five ways OTHER THAN WIND, SOLAR, AND ELECTRIC VEHICLES this could be done; and it could be done even if the Trump Administration maintains its negative attitude about climate change risks.

#1: Increase research in negative emissions technologies

            It all starts with basic research and technology.  After all, a key reason wind, solar, and electric vehicles are commercially viable today is because of R&D.  A promising strategy is to encourage more research into "negative emissions technologies", of which there are four types:

1. Bioenergy in combination with carbon capture and storage (BCCS)
2. Afforestation
3. Enhanced weathering
4. Direct capture of CO2.

Afforestation is the idea of planting lots more trees around the world to soak up all of the excess CO2.  It's a great natural solution, with a big problem: it takes up huge amounts of land and is water intensive.

            More likely, the other three strategies have the most potential.  Let's look at some of the most promising research.  Professor Daniel Nocera at Harvard University is developing what's called an artificial leaf.  The idea is to mimic the natural process of chlorophyll in plants: combine water and CO2 in the air, along with sunlight, to produce glucose and oxygen.    He and his team are trying to convert the sugar produced by this into a useful fuel source.  The other approach they're taking is to add bacteria to the sugar byproduct to produce a nitrogen based fertilizer.

            As reported by Forbes, "Nocera has an even bigger vision for the basic technology. Beyond producing hydrogen and carbon-rich fuels in a sustainable way, he has demonstrated that equipping the system with a different metabolically altered bacterium can produce nitrogen-based fertilizer right in the soil, an approach that would increase crops yields in areas where conventional fertilizers are not readily available. The bacterium uses the hydrogen and CO₂ to form a biological plastic that serves as a fuel supply. Once the microbe contains enough plastic, it no longer needs sunshine, so it can be buried in the soil. After drawing nitrogen from the air, it exploits the energy and hydrogen in the plastic to make the fertilizer. Radishes grown in soil containing the microbes ended up weighing 150 percent more than control radishes.  Nocera admits that he initially ran the fertilizer test just to see if the idea would work. He envisions a time, however, when bacteria will "breathe in hydrogen" produced by water splitting and ultimately use the hydrogen to produce desired products ranging from fuels to fertilizers, plastics and drugs, depending on the specific metabolic alterations designed for the bugs."

            At the same time, Professor Jonas Peters at CalTech is conducting experiments to convert CO2 in the atmosphere into multiple carbon products.  The preferred strategy is to create by-products with carbon/carbon bonds.  The reason for this is that such products tend to be in liquid form.  A liquid makes it easier to store energy.

            The Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis is doing similar research, as well as Professor Dunwei Wang at Boston College.

#2: Encourage "impact investment" in carbon capture/negative emissions

         What these scientists are doing is highly speculative basic research.  Even if such research produces useful products, much of it probably won't be commercialized.  That's a key reason why so much basic research is funded by the government.  Unfortunately, in the current climate in the USA, it's hard to get lots of basic research funded, particularly by a Federal Government headed by climate change deniers.

            But while the Federal government is a logical participant, there are other entities that might be just as suitable.  State governments are a possibility, though their budgets are very constrained.  Perhaps the best alternative source is "impact investors".

            So just what is impact investing? It refers to investments "made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return."  Instead of just giving money with no expectation of a return, the impact investor seeks a return of all funds invested, as well as some type of financial return on the investment.  This is all in addition to doing good.  With respect to the problem of greenhouse gases, it makes tremendous sense.

            Impact investing funds could do the following for carbon capture and storage:

1. Make direct investments in companies in the alternate energy space
2. Make direct investments in carbon capture companies
3. Make investments in organizations such as the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis.

How might an impact investor get a return from an investment in basic research?  One way might be to get patent rights assigned to the impact investor for any intellectual property arising from the research.  Such research requires patient capital.  Impact investors typically aren't looking for quarterly returns.  Impact investing capital can be patient, and it might be an important key in financing carbon capture R&D.

#3: Increase investments in carbon capture businesses

         Part of the good news is that carbon capture has moved beyond the laboratory.  Not a lot of people realize is that there are a number of commercial businesses already doing this.  Here's a quick, partial list of new, smaller firms:

            Global Thermostat

            CO2 Solutions

            Carbon Engineering

            Climeworks

But carbon capture isn't the exclusive province of start up companies.  Among big companies – including some "Big Bad Oil Companies" involved in this are:

            Shell Oil

            Chevron

            NRG Energy

Bottom line: more investment is needed in these companies.  Impact investors could be a good source of capital.

#4: Create a bigger market for the products of carbon capture companies

            The carbon capture companies listed above have technology that works, but always remember, you can have the greatest imaginable technology, but not enough customers and you're out of business.  So for this to be a success, the market for carbon capture products needs to grow. 

            So another strategy is to find ways to increase business with those companies.  For example, Climeworks, mentioned earlier, is a Zurich, Switzerland based company that builds modular plants that remove CO2 from the air and concentrates it.  Being modular, the plants can be of widely different sizes and can be placed most anywhere.  Their footprints are pretty small, too.

            One way would be for state and local governments to require companies emitting greenhouse gases to install plants to capture some of the gases emitted.  In the case of electric utilities, regulation is at the state level so it doesn't matter that the Trump Administration opposes this.  A given state public utility commission could tell a utility, you can continue to operate your coal fired plant but you must make an investment in a Climeworks style plant to remove a part of the pollution you create.

            That, however, is a regulatory solution.  How do we get it so consumers and businesses WANT to invest in carbon capture products and technology?

            The fifth strategy may well provide the answer.

#5: Adopt a carbon transfer payment in the USA

            Implementing a carbon tax is an old idea that's been implemented in various countries around the world, but certainly hasn't been in the USA.  It's an elegant solution to the problem … that's dead on arrival in the USA.  The US Congress hasn't raised the gasoline tax in a generation, and that money goes to fund repair and construction, providing an obvious, tangible benefit.  If that's the case, it's hard to believe it would implement a carbon tax.

            But there actually might be a way to do this, and it comes from the most unexpected place – a conservative Republican named Ted Halstead.  Halstead gave a very interesting TED Talk in 2017 on this subject.

            Here's the funny thing about Halstead's idea – it isn't really a tax at all.  It's a transfer payment that goes disproportionately to the less well off.  What it does is place a "tax" on any product that emits carbon.  That would include, for example, oil and gas, as well as coal.  It would mean that prices of gasoline, electricity, and chemical products that are based upon petrochemicals would increase.  The increases would, of course, be a function how much carbon they include.  So in that sense, it would be a tax – a "no no" for Republicans.

            But this is where it gets interesting.  All of the money would be collected, then the money collected would be equally divided amongst all USA citizens and distributed.  That's what's called a "transfer payment".  Billionaires and paupers would each receive the exact same amount.  The idea is that it would cover the cost of the higher prices associated with use of carbon products. 

            The funny thing about this is that Trumpian America should love this.  This would provide regular payments to the down and out – and it would do it without increasing the deficit a penny.  No additional bureaucracy, unless you somehow think the US Postal Service will have to hire more people to deliver all of the checks.

            This would likely make carbon based products more expensive and would help spur a transition to alternative energy.  As traditional carbon based products get more expensive, wind, solar, and carbon capture all become more attractive.  In the meantime, the extra cost that US consumers would pay for products would be offset by the transfer payments.

            Yes, definitely a good news/bad news scenario.  Will we make the transition in time to prevent catastrophic climate change due to a global temperature increases?  Only God knows the answer to that.   In the meantime, we have ways to deal with it.  The real question is, do we have the will to make it happen before the clock runs out?