You’re gonna be driving the car over a cliff

I finished the book The Second World by Jake Korell. I agree with a book I wrote about several weeks ago that says colonizing Mars is a lot harder than people claim it is. Even so, setting a story on Mars can still produce a decent tale. Flip Buchanan is the narrator. I think the first name is a nickname because so many of his friends are referred to with nicknames, but while their real names are occasionally used, his never is. The story is about him from age 8 to 28 from when he was a junior troublemaker until he fully embraces adult responsibilities. All that is complicated because his father Buzz is the Director of Mars and Flip sees him more as a the worst kind of politician and not a good administrator. On top of that Dad is quite annoyed that his son seems to always come in second – second in his generation to be born on Mars, second in his high school graduating class, and more. Even so, Flip does accomplish a lot. There were a couple times I didn’t quite believe the science in the story. However, the author does come up with some cool solutions (though maybe dubious), such as when one environment dome lays siege to another by pulling a gigantic sun blocking blanket over it. I enjoyed the story, but it’s not so great as to get a recommendation. I have praise for the Detroit Free Press and it’s edition for last Sunday. The cover story (front page above the fold) was about Jake transitioning to Jackie. Jake grew up in a west Michigan town with highly conservative beliefs that didn’t like him trying on his mother’s clothes. He trained to be a nurse. After serving through the pandemic and watching patients die he needed counseling. Only then did he began to deal with being transgender. One fear was rejection by his parents and brothers. Once firmly into her transition Jackie did experience that rejection. I thought the Free Press did a fine job of presenting Jackie’s story accurately, fairly, and without sensationalism. Good job! The article is here, though one must be a subscriber to read it. A second page, available to all, shows several pictures, many more than appeared in the printed newspaper. The Free Press also did a great job in turning it’s entire opinion section over to LGBTQ writers. These are not blocked by a paywall. Roland Leggett wrote that Pride is a protest, a call to action. There are many ways to respond, with a top one being voting. Bella Bakeman is a lesbian English teacher who left many clues around her room that it is a safe place. She’s delighted when a student recognized that. Jacob Robinson-Suarez is chief of staff at Teach for America Detroit and emphasized fostering a sense of belonging at school is critical for academic success, especially for LGBTQ kids. Drew Atkins wrote that we need to live authentically even as people try to punish us for doing so. Lyra Opalikhin wrote about realizing she is transgender. Life improved when she transitioned. Again, a big thank you to the Free Press for honoring and sharing so many LGBTQ voices. In a lengthy article (long enough that I just scanned the second half) Maddie Stone of Drilled with help from Amy Westervelt of Drilled and Katie Worth or ProPublica, in an article posted on Daily Kos, wrote about a landmark paper on climate science published in 2004 by Princeton researchers that is now reported to have been heavily influenced by the oil giant BP. The paper is known as “Wedges” and was heavily cited in other research papers and even referenced by Al Gore in his work to spread knowledge of the climate crisis. This paper is a big deal. The general point of the paper is there are enough little things that can reduce carbon pollution that taken together can save the planet. These little things were “wedges” that would flatten the angle of the rising emissions. This was an optimistic message the world wanted to hear. The paper, as ongoing climate research and human action has shown us, has two major and intentional flaws. First, it relied heavily on carbon capture and storage, the process of taking CO2 out of the air and storing it underground. The technology for this is still unable to operate at the scale needed (or at any scale) to reduce the threat of climate change. The rest of the wedges, even if implemented fully (and they weren’t), could not bend the emissions curve enough. The second flaw was that BP was able to claim that all these other things worked so well that the company could continue to encourage the use and growth of fossil fuels that it saw were necessary for economic growth. The paper as a whole made the solution to climate change seem easy. The solution still eludes us. What the paper did was to get us to waste time and allow big oil companies to continue to rake in profits. Stone talks about how influential the paper was. Some of its ideas are still ingrained in our thinking about climate. She talks about the million dollar gifts BP made to Princeton to fund the research. That alone, we now know, is enough to bias research. Stone also talks about how much the authors of the paper reviewed it with BP officials and how much those officials suggested (demanded) and shaped changes. This was not the first time a big oil company paid for research that benefited them. Exxon started doing that in the late 1970s. However, this 2004 paper seems to be the most influential. This post discussed the influence of the paper and how it boosted the careers of the authors. Stone wrote:

In 2006, former Vice President Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” exposed millions of viewers to the fact that fossil fuel use was pushing the planet toward disaster. Gore soberly presented the earth’s dwindling ice, rising seas and increasingly violent weather. And then, toward the end, he shifted to optimism. Americans need not despair, he said, because “we already know everything we need to know to effectively address this problem.” Behind him as he spoke, the opening words of Socolow and Pacala’s paper — the same ones [BP official] Mottershead had suggested moving to the top — appeared on a screen. Papers published in Science often enjoy a media moment before fading into obscurity. “Wedges” was different. Its simple, optimistic message — polished with the help of BP’s sophisticated public relations expertise — had an irresistible allure. And the media loved it. “How to save the world in fifteen easy steps,” read one headline the day it was published. “The 15 ways to stop global warming revealed!” read another.

Gore’s optimism wasn’t accurate. We did not know everything we needed to know. Still don’t. We don’t know how to make carbon capture, the core of the argument, work at a cost that is viable. As for those 15 steps, few have been implemented enough to make a difference. Most of them are not yet mature enough to help and would require much more research. Marty Hoffert, New York University physics professor, wrote a critique of “Wedges” in 2013, saying it “made the solution seem easy.”

To a lot of people, Hoffert said, “Wedges” served a purpose. “You have to give people hope” that climate change could be solved without radically disrupting society, he said in a recent interview. “Yet in the end,” he added, if that hope is gained by convincing people they can continue without getting rid of fossil fuels, “you’re gonna be driving the car over a cliff.” The fact is, he added, BP “got their money’s worth.”

After that a little bonbon that YouTube proposed for my enjoyment. Every year Broadway Backwards puts on a show turning Broadway tunes inside out. The show raises money to fight AIDS. The words are kept the same but the actors are both of the same sex. In the 2017 show Andrew Keenan-Bolger and Jay Armstrong Johnson did the duet “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” from The Sound of Music. I may have to explore more of these.