Tag: india

Peak Water

With water privatization, maybe the waste in places like Las Vegas can be curtailed?
2007-10-22:

N.A.W.A.P.A. is nothing less than the hydrological fantasy project of a certain class of US water engineers. In fact, Reisner talles us, N.A.W.A.P.A. would “solve at one stroke all the West’s problems with water” – but it would also take “a $6-trillion economy” to pay for it, and “it might require taking Canada by force.” He quips that British Columbia “is to water what Russia is to land,” and so N.A.W.A.P.A., if realized, would tap those unexploited natural waterways and bring them down south to fill the cups of Uncle Sam.

The coming water war in the US is drawing closer.
2007-11-12:

Perdue isn’t the first governor to hold a call for public prayer during the epic drought gripping the Southeast. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley issued a proclamation declaring a week in July as “Days of Prayer for Rain” to “humbly ask for His blessings and to hold us steady in times of difficulty.”

Tools. If they had raised water prices sufficiently to stop people washing their SUVs, they would not have to humiliate themselves now.
2008-04-23:

Pretty good, but why don’t they come out and say that the southwest of the US is fucked? I guess that would not go down well with their sophomoric “gadget guy” audience.
2008-06-06:

In California, building projects are being curtailed for the first time under state law by the inability of developers to find long-term water supplies.

It begins.
2008-07-19: Price water properly, and the scourge of Las Vegas will get swallowed by the desert, as it should be. Instead, the failed policies of the oil shock era are being repeated.

Nixon made the OPEC oil shocks worse by capping prices and using coercive government tools to reduce demand. This is exactly what California is doing with water. Demand exceeds supply. The price to users is too low.

It would be simpler to let water prices rise to a market-clearing price. This would quickly reduce aquifer overdrafts, while leaving sufficient water to support ecosystems and the species they support. It would also mean that most Californians would see prices increase a lot.

2010-09-26:

There’s no black magic going on here, just basic math. Part of the problem is an ongoing 12-year drought that’s limiting inflow from snow melt in the Rockies. But, as seen throughout Lake Mead’s history, droughts come and go. The really worrying issue here is on the demand side. Decades of population growth have led to increased water demand in the Southwest. Take, for instance, Las Vegas, which gets 90% of its water from Lake Mead.

2011-12-14: Las Vegas and similar places have always been an abomination. With the water gone, this will become clear even to the dullest defender of sprawl.

Drought affects people differently from other disasters. After something terrible happens – tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes – people regularly come together in memorable ways, rising above the things that divide them. In a drought, however, what is terrible is that nothing happens. By the time you know you’re in one, you’ve already had an extended opportunity to meditate on the shortcomings of your neighbors. You wait for what does not arrive. You thirst. You never experience the rush of compassion that helps you behave well. Drought brings out the worst in us.

2012-07-31: All that constantly washing your car / sprinkling your pointless lawn / fountains in Vegas shit is coming down hard. I wonder if the massive relocation and water rationing can happen without a civil war.

The chronic drought that hit western North America from 2000 to 2004 left dying forests and depleted river basins in its wake and was the strongest in 800 years. Those conditions will become the “new normal” for most of the coming century.

2012-09-15:

“Recent droughts in the mid-western United States threaten to cause global catastrophe. We are on the verge of another crisis, the third in 5 years, and likely to be the worst yet, capable of causing new food riots and turmoil on a par with the Arab Spring.”

2014-05-10:

Representatives from the US and Mexico agreed to a complex, multi-part water deal that will give them desperately needed flexibility for weathering the drought. More surprisingly, the 2 nations will join the team of environmental organizations to release a flood of 130b liters of water into the Delta’s ancient floodplain, and chase it with a smaller, permanent annual flow to sustain the ecosystem.

2015-01-07: What happens when the water table disappears. California hasn’t seen anything yet.

Only this isn’t the way the water went dry in Fairmead. No disrespect to the reverend, but the way it went dry is that 1 day last June, Annie Cooper was looking outside her kitchen window at another orchard of nuts going into the ground. This one was being planted right across the street. Before the trees even arrived, the big grower — no one from around here seems to know his name — turned on the pump to test his new deep well, and it was at that precise moment, when the water in his plowed field gushed like flood time, that the Coopers’ house went dry.

The kitchen faucet, the fancy bathtub, the washing machine, the toilet — all drew back into themselves. A last burble. Their old domestic well, sitting 85m deep, could no longer reach the plummeting aquifer, could no longer compete with the new farm wells sunk 100s of m deeper.

2015-02-12:

between 2050 and 2100, droughts in the Southwest and Great Plains will become more severe than the megadroughts of the 12th and 13th centuries that wiped out the Pueblo Indians

2015-03-14: Let’s see whether California gets real, and innovates itself out of this situation. The alternatives are terrible.

Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.

In short, we have no paddle to navigate this crisis.

2017-05-07:

Bangalore has a problem: It is running out of water, fast. Cities all over the world, from those in the American West to nearly every major Indian metropolis, have been struggling with drought and water deficits in recent years. But Bangalore is an extreme case. Last summer, a professor from the Indian Institute of Science declared that the city will be unlivable by 2020. “The projections are relatively correct. Our groundwater levels are approaching 0.”

2015-05-11: Agriculture are water criminals

While California Is Dying Of Thirst so it’s good to see a summary that’s a lot better researched: if we wanted to buy out all alfalfa growers by paying them their usual yearly income to just sit around and not grow any alfalfa, that would cost $860m per year and free up 5.3t liter, ie pretty much our entire shortfall of 6t liter, thus solving the drought

2018-08-23:

Besides California, the other American place in water jeopardy is the High Plains, which sits on top of an aquifer called the Ogallala. The Ogallala is sometimes described as an ocean of groundwater. One of the largest known aquifers in the world, it runs from South Dakota to Texas, more or less in the shape of a monkey wrench. Near the top, in places, it is 300m deep, and at the lower end, in places, there are areas where it is as shallow as 1m. The Dust Bowl, which played out above the Ogallala, was, in a way, a period phenomenon. All the water necessary to sustain the crops that now cover the plains was always there, but 1m deeper than Depression-era farmers could reach with windmill pumps. Electric pumps, which only became widespread by the end of the thirties, made it accessible. For decades farmers thought the Ogallala was inexhaustible. By 1975 the amount of water taken each year from the aquifer equaled the flow of the Colorado River, and now the annual draw is ~18x that amount. Farmers have been pumping out 1-2m a year in places where 1cm is being added. As far as continuing to be useful, the Ogallala might be exhausted by 2070. A reasonable estimate is that it would take 6 ka for rain to replenish it.

2019-06-18:

During the summer, the Midwest will see drought conditions similar to what California, Greece, or Italy have. A mediterranean climate seems nice, as a concept: temperate winters and warm, dry summers, guaranteed to get you an even tan. If you’re a farmer trying to grow corn it means something very different: You need more water. Because the warmer the air is, the more water plants require.

Hyderabad land scam

this argues strongly in favor of keeping archives of successive generations of Google’s base layer. Added bonus: placemarks of time-sensitive artifacts like planes in flight could be metatagged to a specific generation of imagery.

As part of a general amnesty, houses built before 2001 on plots of illegally sold land were “regularised”, and thus allowed to be resold on the market. Somebody with government connections got the bright idea of “backdating” some houses built after 2004, pretending that they were there since 2000, so that they could benefit from the amnesty and sell them. Digital Globe imagery from 2004 in Google Earth quickly put paid to that lie.

Pacification by trade

At a summit meeting of 7 regional leaders, including those of India and Pakistan, it was clear that the global economic environment was forcing change on South Asia. The 7 leaders spoke of their concern about how to cope with new trade arrangements, and the need to resolve differences to enable formation of a regional trade bloc. Pakistan agreed to join a regional free trade agreement the leaders signed Tuesday, which would lower tariffs over 10 years. Previously, Pakistan had resisted regional economic cooperation until its dispute with India was resolved.

another instance of the lexus changing the old ways of the olive tree (for better)?

Nuclear Weapons

Broken pipes and rusty fences. If that ain’t scary, few things are.

The main entrances to Los Alamos are only marginally better defended than TA-33’s land. The military-like guards keeping watch at these points certainly look fierce in camouflage paints and black bulletproof vests. But there’s little to back up the image. Their belts have gun holsters, but no guns to fill them. Around facilities like the biology lab, where anthrax and other biotoxins have been handled, no sentries stand guard at all. Nor is there any kind of fence to keep the curious and the malicious away — not even a piece of string.

2006-10-09: Might it all be posturing?

The United States Geological Survey is now reporting the magnitude of the claimed North Korean nuclear test as 4.2. This seems to be curiously low. Now, estimating explosive yield from the body magnitude of a seismic event is a tricky business, and requires knowledge of details such as the depth of the detonation and the geological properties of the surroundings, but a magnitude around 4.2 is what you’d expect for a detonation of 1 kiloton. The “natural size” of a crude fission bomb is in excess of 10 kilotons, from which you’d expect a magnitude closer to 5. It is very unlikely that a low kiloton yield device would be used in an initial test.

2006-12-03: The Agony of Atomic Genius, biographical sketch of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds

2008-06-28: Man-made nuclear explosions in the 1940s and 1950s released isotopes into the environment that do not occur naturally, allowing the dating of works of art.
2010-09-21: The Atom Bomb on Film. Or you could go to the atomic testing museum in Vegas and see these and much more in person.

2010-11-25: Nuke Detector. Turn a supertanker into an antineutrino detector by kitting it out with the necessary photon detectors and filling it with 10^34 protons. Then station it off the coast of suspicious countries and submerge it.
2013-11-26: India nuclear assassinations and the Indian government is mum about it. Nuclear scientists have very high mortality in Iran too, but the government there is making a huge ruckus about it.

Indian nuclear scientists haven’t had an easy time of it over the past 10 years. Not only has the scientific community been plagued by “suicides,” unexplained deaths, and sabotage, but those incidents have gone mostly underreported in the country—diluting public interest and leaving the cases quickly cast off by police.

2014-02-05: Nuclear backpacks

during the Cold War, the United States did deploy man-portable nuclear destruction. If Warsaw Pact forces ever bolted toward Western Europe, they could resort to nukes to delay the advance long enough for reinforcements to arrive. These “small” weapons, many of them more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, would have obliterated any battlefield and irradiated much of the surrounding area.

2014-11-15: X-Ray Man

In 1957, a young man named Darrell Robertson enlisted in the US Army and participated in a secret training program in the middle of the Nevada desert. He and his fellow recruits were sworn to secrecy and, for decades, told no one of their experiences. In 1996, the US government declassified the project and Robertson was finally able to tell his story. In X-Ray Man, Robertson recalls training exercises in which the Department of Defense used him and other soldiers in nuclear tests more than 10 years after the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were already well known. Kerri Yost’s powerful short documentary is an account of how Cold War-era fears allowed for shocking treatment not just of supposed enemies, but also of those enlisted to fight against them. Though cancer has attacked his body, Robertson, supported by his wife, remains stoic and dignified, offering the quiet but forceful observation that ‘any person in the military becomes part of military science’.

2015-09-09: Nuclear wars for SETI. Nuclear explosions might be the first thing we see of other life at interstellar distances. Gamma rays are much easier to detect than radio waves, but would only last a few days at most. You’d have to be extremely lucky to catch that, but then we can spot GRB like that all the time.
2016-07-17: The H-Bombs in Turkey

Among the many questions still unanswered following Friday’s coup attempt in Turkey is one that has national-security implications for the United States and for the rest of the world: How secure are the American hydrogen bombs stored at a Turkish airbase?

2019-03-12: Trinity Test. The first detonation of a nuclear bomb

2021-02-20: $100b nuclear deterrence

To avoid being destroyed and rendered useless—their silos provide no real protection against a direct Russian nuclear strike—they would be “launched on warning,” that is, as soon as the Pentagon got wind of an incoming nuclear attack. Because an error could have disastrous consequences, James Mattis testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2015 that getting rid of America’s land-based nuclear missiles “would reduce the false alarm danger.” Whereas a bomber can be turned around even on approach to its target, a nuclear missile launched by mistake can’t be recalled.

Space exploration

Against Human space exploration

It is true that science can be done in the space station. But science can also be done dressed in a clown suit atop a large Ferris wheel. The argument ought to be over where is the best place for it. Performing experiments in microgravity does not require a $100B platform. Moreover, much of the work that can genuinely be done only on the station is justified through another magnificently circular leap of logic. Research into the effects of microgravity on human health and the growth of soybeans, for instance, is useful only in the context of a manned mission to Mars.

It doesn’t pay to lift humans out of earth’s gravity well. Billions each year could instead be spent on research and development for cheaper transport options, spurring the advent of a commercial space industry.
2006-10-24: Our Non-Expeditions to the Moon and Mars

President Bush is right. The space shuttle and the space station deserve termination. The true heart of his proposal is the elimination of these programs, and the substitution of robotic exploration.

2007-01-28: Space for Survival

Space exploration is fundamentally about the survival of the species, about ensuring better odds for our survival through the promulgation of the human species. But as we do it, we will also ensure the prosperity of our species in the economic sense, in a 1000 ways.

NASA is starting to take extinction events seriously and arguing for space missions as a hedge. About time.
2007-06-06: Future of NASA

Reducing the cost of space access is now being addressed by the private sector. NASA is now acting as a responsible potential customer of commercial launch services (COTS). The government has a poor record competing with the private sector in the arena of cost effectiveness. NASA spent many years and billions of dollars in pursuit of next generation launch technologies, with limited success. NASA has now wisely chosen to provide a market with exploration programs and to permit private enterprise to have a crack at making that affordable. In the meantime NASA is developing the Ares family of launch vehicles to provide the capabilities it requires to initiate the human exploration program until the market is able to offer cheaper alternatives. As for the International Space Station (ISS), it is essential that we learn how to truly live and work in space – not just pay visits. ISS is a vital international laboratory for learning how to build, live aboard, maintain, and operate a complex vehicle in space. The same is true for a lunar base that enables us to use the resources of space and assists our education in how to reach Mars. As for favored contractors, the COTS program and the market established by exploration will open new venues for many companies and communities around the world to participate.

nasa’s reply to allegations of suckiness by wired et al
2010-05-15: The New Space Frontier

Today, the President will articulate an ambitious and exciting new plan that will alter our destiny as a species. I believe this address could be as important as President Kennedy’s 1962 speech at Rice University. For the first time since Apollo, our country will have a plan for space exploration that inspires and excites all who look to the stars. Even more important, it will work.

NASA finally creates a real space industry. You know, with competition and stuff.
2012-03-03: Space exploration future .Beyond on a related note, getting into AMNH early without all the crowds makes it twice as awesome.

2012-05-27: Mars Drive

The reference mission design of the MarsDrive Consortium is discussed, which has been created to facilitate exploration of the red planet through methods that are both realizable and cost-sustainable with existing technology. This mission plan—known as Mars for Less—is predicated on the use of existing medium-lift launch vehicles. In this architecture, 25-ton propulsion stages are placed individually in low-Earth orbit, where they are mated to Mars-bound payloads and ignited at successive perigees to execute trans-Mars injection. Spacecraft follow conjunction-class trajectories to the red planet and utilize aerodynamic methods for orbital capture and descent. Return vehicles are fueled with methane/oxygen bipropellant synthesized primarily from Martian resources. Dispatching expeditions from orbit with individual, high energy stages—rather than directly from the Earth’s surface—allows for the division of mission mass into more manageable components, which can be launched by vehicles that exist today. This plan does not require the development of heavy-lift launch technology: an effective yet costly proposition that may otherwise hinder current space exploration initiatives. Without the need for heavy-lift boosters, piloted missions to Mars may be undertaken presently, and within the capabilities of private initiatives. It is argued that the mission design herein represents a more viable method of conducting early human Mars exploration than proposals which require heavy-lift launch vehicles—an alternative method by which the red planet can be opened to humanity.

Between the safety fetish and cover your ass problems with government funded spaceflight, private companies have a 100x cost advantage. What flag will they plant in the regolith?

Here is one such proposal
2013-02-27: Going to Mars in 2018? This will be the most awe-inspiring and profound event this quarter-century.

Inspiration Mars Foundation believes in the exploration of space as a catalyst for growth, national prosperity, knowledge and global leadership. History has shown that strong nations reap these benefits when they boldly follow a path rooted in curiosity and guided by technological innovation. In 2018, the planets will literally align, offering a unique orbit opportunity to travel to Mars and back to Earth in only 501 days. Inspiration Mars is committed to sending a 2-person American crew – a man and a woman – on an historic journey to fly within 160 km around the Red Planet and return to Earth safely.

2013-03-12: Mars Research Station. I salute this effort. Very often, things look silly to our eyes that become crucial for humanity later on.

In the vast open spaces of southern Utah, Reuters photographer Jim Urquhart recently paid a visit to the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS). Built and operated by a space advocacy group called the Mars Society, the research facility is investigating the feasibility of human exploration of Mars, using the Utah desert’s Mars-like terrain to simulate working conditions on the red planet. Since 2000, more than 100 small crews have served 2-week rotations in the MDRS, conducting research in an on-site greenhouse, observatory, engineering area, and living space. Urquhart was able to accompany members of the Crew 125 EuroMoonMars B mission inside the MDRS facility, and on a simulated trip to collect Martian geological samples.

2014-02-18: Indian Mars Exploration. India’s Mars mission is 9x cheaper than a similar NASA one. I hope they succeed and put another nail into the coffin of bloated military-industrial complex projects.

While India’s recent launch of a spacecraft to Mars was a remarkable feat in its own right, it is the $75m mission’s thrifty approach to time, money and materials that is getting attention.

2014-10-31: Exploration is sacrifice, and we’d best re-learn that lesson.

I would like to share my deepest personal thoughts on today’s Virgin Galactic Accident. As you know, this is deeply meaningful to me, my family and friends.

Today, most importantly, my heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones, and the many at Virgin Galactic, Scaled Composites, the Virgin Group and the Mojave Spaceport who this accident deeply affects.

I urge all of us to keep something in mind. We are on the verge of opening the space frontier, one of the greatest endeavors of our species.

Many Americans forget that 500 years ago 1000s of European gave their lives to open the Americas, and 200 years ago, the early American’s risked their lives to open the west. This is what exploring is all about. We risk our lives for what we believe in. This is the American way, the explorer’s way.

I for one, am proud to be a Virgin Galactic client. I believe in the company, and know, without a doubt, that they will succeed, and I will fully trust them with my safety when my turn to fly materializes.

2014-12-15: No More Space Race

A far cry from the fierce Cold War Space Race between the US and the Soviet Union, exploration in the 21st century is likely to be a far more globally collaborative project. This spirit of trans-border ownership and investment seems set to continue. One key part of this is the Global Exploration Roadmap, an effort between space agencies like NASA, France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, among many others, that is intended to aid joint projects from the International Space Station to expeditions to the Moon and near-Earth asteroids—and to reach Mars. On a recent trip to India’s space agency, Stofan recounted to me, she met with many Indian engineers who were just as excited as the Americans to get scientists up there, not only to explore, but also to begin nailing down the question of whether there was ever life on the red planet. It’s also clear that the next stage of space exploration will not only be more global, but will equally involve greater private and public partnerships. Companies like Space X are increasingly involved in NASA’s day-to-day operations

2015-02-03: The caveman in space

At 61, Dr Stone appreciates the limits of human exploration. 23 of his friends lost their lives on expeditions and he has personally recovered 7 bodies. Now Stone Aerospace is developing a team of robots to hunt for microbial life on Europa. The discovery of Europan life would, Dr Stone reckons, be “a pretty good contender” for one of the most momentous events in human history. That might satisfy most explorers, but not Dr Stone. He has founded the Shackleton Energy Company to process water on the Moon into oxygen and hydrogen for rocket fuel.

2018-03-27: NEO Manned missions

The possibility of applying the Space-X Falcon-Heavy booster to human exploration of the inner solar system is discussed. A human-rated Dragon command module and an inflatable habitat module would house and support the 2-4 person crew during a ~1 year interplanetary venture. To minimize effects of galactic cosmic rays, older astronauts should conduct the mission during Solar Maximum. Crew life support is discussed as is application of a ~1-km square solar photon sail. The sail would be applied to rendezvous with the destination Near Earth Object (NEO) and to accelerate the spacecraft on its return to Earth. An on-line NASA trajectory browser has been used to examine optimized trajectories and destinations during 2025-2026. A suitable destination with well established solar-orbital parameters is Asteroid 2009 HC.