“Renewables Are Not the Answer”

(p.B1) . . . : Global carbon-dioxide emissions have stopped rising. Coal use in China may have peaked. The price of wind turbines and solar panels is plummeting, putting renewable energy within the reach of meager budgets in the developing world.
And yet as climate diplomats gather this week in Bonn, Germany, for the 23rd Conference of the Parties under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, I would like to point their attention to a different, perhaps gloomier statistic: the world’s carbon intensity of energy.
(p. B2) The term refers to a measure of the amount of CO2 spewed into the air for each unit of energy consumed. It offers some bad news: It has not budged since that chilly autumn day in Kyoto 20 years ago. Even among the highly industrialized nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the carbon intensity of energy has declined by a paltry 4 percent since then, according to the International Energy Agency.
This statistic, alone, puts a big question mark over the strategies deployed around the world to replace fossil energy. In a nutshell:
. . .
The most worrisome aspect about the all-out push for a future powered by renewables has to do with cost: The price of turbines and solar panels may be falling, but the cost of integrating these intermittent sources of energy — on when the wind blows and the sun shines; off when they don’t — is not. This alone will sharply curtail the climate benefits of renewable power.
Integrating renewable sources requires vast investments in electricity transmission — to move power from intermittently windy and sunny places to places where power is consumed. It requires maintaining a backstop of idle plants that burn fossil fuel, for the times when there is no wind or sun to be had. It requires investing in power-storage systems at a large scale.

For the full commentary, see:
EDUARDO PORTER. “Why Slashing Nuclear Power May Backfire.” The New York Times (Weds., NOV. 8, 2017): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date NOV. 7, 2017, and has the title “Wind and Solar Power Advance, but Carbon Refuses to Retreat.”)

Lobstermen Retooling as Oyster Farmers

(p. A10) COREA, Me. — The boats start up around 3:30 in the morning, stirring the village with the babble of engines before they motor out to sea. They will return hours later, loaded with lobster.
Joe Young’s boat has not gone out lately. Instead, he puts on waders and sloshes into the salt pond behind his house, an inlet where water rushes in and out with the tides. After a lifetime with most of his income tied to what he finds in the sea, this lobsterman — and sixth-generation fisherman — is trying his hand at something new. He is farming oysters.
“Said I would never have a garden,” Mr. Young, 64, says, as he tends to his briny nursery. Tens of thousands of oysters the size of peanuts are growing inside porous boxes, stacked up like underwater file drawers, in a contraption called an “oyster condo.” He gives one of the boxes a shake, hoping to dislodge a slimy orange growth that has taken up residence, and flings away a green crab. Nearby, kelp he is growing sways lazily from a long underwater rope.
Reaching into the glassy water, Mr. Young plucks larger oysters from among the smooth stones, popping the mottled mollusks into a big white bucket.
“It’s different from lobstering,” Mr. Young said, “because I’m in the whole process.”
. . .
“Lobstermen are saying, ‘Boy, not (p. A11) only personally, but community level, we’re all invested in lobsters,’ ” Jon Lewis, the director of the state’s aquaculture division, said. ” ‘Natural resources tend to come and go. If this happens, what do I do?’ ”
. . .
To Mr. Young, aquaculture does not look so different from catching lobsters. “Fishermen are farmers,” he said. “There’s one crop, and it’s lobster.”

For the full story, see:
JESS BIDGOOD. “A Lobsterman Tries a New Line: Oyster Farmer.” The New York Times (Mon., OCT. 23, 2017): A10-A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 10, 2017, and has the title “A FISHERMAN TRIES FARMING.”)

Innovation Benefits from Constructive Arguments

(p. 7) When Wilbur and Orville Wright finished their flight at Kitty Hawk, Americans celebrated the brotherly bond. The brothers had grown up playing together, they had been in the newspaper business together, they had built an airplane together. They even said they “thought together.”
These are our images of creativity: filled with harmony. Innovation, we think, is something magical that happens when people find synchrony together. The melodies of Rodgers blend with the lyrics of Hammerstein. It’s why one of the cardinal rules of brainstorming is “withhold criticism.” You want people to build on one another’s ideas, not shoot them down. But that’s not how creativity really happens.
When the Wright brothers said they thought together, what they really meant is that they argued together. One of their pivotal decisions was the design of a propeller for their plane. They squabbled for weeks, often shouting back and forth for hours. “After long arguments we often found ourselves in the ludicrous position of each having been converted to the other’s side,” Orville reflected, “with no more agreement than when the discussion began.” Only after thoroughly decimating each other’s arguments did it dawn on them that they were both wrong. They needed not one but two propellers, which could be spun in opposite directions to create a kind of rotating wing. “I don’t think they really got mad,” their mechanic marveled, “but they sure got awfully hot.”
. . .
Wilbur and Orville Wright came from a wobbly family. Their father, a preacher, never met a moral fight he wasn’t willing to pick. They watched him clash with school authorities who weren’t fond of his decision to let his kids miss a half-day of school from time to time to learn on their own. Their father believed so much in embracing arguments that despite being a bishop in the local church, he had multiple books by atheists in his library — and encouraged his children to read them.
. . .
The Wright brothers weren’t alone. The Beatles fought over instruments and lyrics and melodies. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony clashed over the right way to win the right to vote. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak argued incessantly while designing the first Apple computer. None of these people succeeded in spite of the drama — they flourished because of it. Brainstorming groups generate 16 percent more ideas when the members are encouraged to criticize one another. The most creative ideas in Chinese technology companies and the best decisions in American hospitals come from teams that have real disagreements early on. Breakthrough labs in microbiology aren’t full of enthusiastic collaborators cheering one another on but of skeptical scientists challenging one another’s interpretations.
If no one ever argues, you’re not likely to give up on old ways of doing things, let alone try new ones. Disagreement is the antidote to groupthink. We’re at our most imaginative when we’re out of sync. There’s no better time than childhood to learn how to dish it out — and to take it.

For the full commentary, see:
Grant, Adam. “Kids, Would You Please Start Fighting?” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., NOV. 5, 2017): 7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date NOV. 4, 2017.)

For an Autistic Boy, Siri’s Patience Is “the Gift of Common Courtesy”

(p. C6) Late in the book, as a girl in Gus’s school takes him under her affectionate wing, the reader watches it all through Newman’s trepidation, followed by the dawning recognition that her son is someone “who may never be able to be responsible for another life, but who is nevertheless capable of deep affection, caring and considering. Sure, those emotions started with machinery and electronics — trains, buses, iPods, computers — and, particularly with Siri, a loving friend who never would hurt him.”
Hence, the title – drawn directly from a New York Times article Newman wrote in 2014, about Gus’s bond with Siri, Apple’s “intelligent personal assistant,” who could endlessly answer his questions, keep her son company and express — in that flat, sweet Siri voice — the gift of common courtesy. It went viral and led to this book. Why? Because the autistic boy displayed the dream/nightmare of this era: humans bonding with machines to get what they’re not getting from flesh-and-blood interactions. In this chapter, late in the book, Newman gallops through all the continuing experiments that use technology to lift and unleash the autistic (including my own effort to build augmentative technologies).
This is fertile terrain, born of the gradual recognition that technology’s great promise may in fact be to summon, capture and display our most human qualities, both the darkness and the light, to pave avenues of deepened connection with others. Here’s where the autistic, with their search for alternatives to traditional human connection, are actually innovators.
Does it dehumanize us if tenderness is tried out first with a machine? While his hyper-aware twin is showing standard bright-future achievements, Gus tentatively feels his way through life. But make no mistake. Gus’s deft fingers — rendered with unsentimental affection by his mom — are feeling things others will miss.
At one point, Gus says, “Good night, Siri, will you sleep well tonight?” Siri replies: “I don’t need much sleep, but it’s nice of you to ask.”
Newman’s response could speak for the entire book: “Very nice.”

For the full review, see:
RON SUSKIND. “A Character Among Characters.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, Aug. 20, 2017): 13.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 16, 2017, and has the title “A Family Memoir Makes the Case That Autism Is Different, Not Less.”)

The book under review, is:
Newman, Judith. To Siri with Love: A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of Machines. New York: HarperCollins, 2017.

Can Incremental Oil Innovations Preserve Combustion Engines?

(p. A10) Big oil companies and giant auto makers are teaming up to preserve the internal combustion engine, as tough regulation and electric vehicles put the car industry’s century-old technology at risk. Their secret weapon: high-tech engine oil.
Exxon Mobil Corp., BP PLC, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and other oil companies are spending millions of dollars a year in concert with auto makers such as Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV to create the next generation of super-slick engine lubricants. They are betting that the new, thinner oils will help them squeeze even more efficiency out of traditional car engines, allowing them to comply with stricter environmental rules and remain relevant as new technologies such as zero-emission electric vehicles gain traction.

For the full story, see:
Sarah Kent and Chester Dawson. “Combustion Engines Catch New Spark.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., NOV. 20, 2017): A10.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 18, 2017, and has the title “Big Oil and Auto Makers Throw a Lifeline to the Combustion Engine.”)

Google Did Evil in Firing Damore

(p. C2) I was fired by Google this past Monday [Aug. 7, 2017] for a document that I wrote and circulated internally raising questions about cultural taboos and how they cloud our thinking about gender diversity at the company and in the wider tech sector. I suggested that at least some of the male-female disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences (and, yes, I said that bias against women was a factor too). Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai declared that portions of my statement violated the company’s code of conduct and “cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”
My 10-page document set out what I considered a reasoned, well-researched, good-faith argument, but as I wrote, the viewpoint I was putting forward is generally suppressed at Google because of the company’s “ideological echo chamber.” My firing neatly confirms that point. How did Google, the company that hires the smartest people in the world, become so ideologically driven and intolerant of scientific debate and reasoned argument?
. . .
For many, including myself, working at Google is a major part of their identity, almost like a cult with its own leaders and saints, all believed to righteously uphold the sacred motto of “Don’t be evil.”

For the full story, see:

James Damore. “Why I Was Fired by Google.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 12, 2017): C2.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 11, 2017.)

Knowledge Transforms a Weed into a Resource

(p. A10) ZADAR, Croatia — For generations, residents of Zadar, an idyllic town on the Adriatic coast of Croatia, used the dry, stringy stems and yellow blossoms of a common variety of a wild daisy as kindling, mostly to singe the hair off pigs destined for the spit.
But about five years ago, cosmetics manufacturers and the essential oils industry started using a rare extract from the flower — known as the curry plant for its spicy aroma — as a critical ingredient in high-end creams, ointments and tinctures, sold for their purported rejuvenating powers.
So let the pigs shave themselves, local residents decided, turning their attention to gathering bushels of the once widely ignored weed, in hopes of creating a new local industry to add to an economy based on construction, fruit farming, olive oil and a touch of tourism.

For the full story, see:
JOSEPH OROVIC. “ZADAR JOURNAL; Croatian Farmers’ Hopes of New Life Rest on a Weed Called Immortelle.” The New York Times (Fri., NOV. 24, 2017): A10.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 23, 2017, and has the title “ZADAR; JOURNAL; Can a Wild Daisy Rejuvenate Croatia’s Farming Economy?”)

Record High Temperatures in London

(p. C6) During London’s long summer of 1858, the sweltering temperatures spawned squalor. With a population of more than 2 million, London had outgrown its medieval waste-removal systems, turning Spenser’s “sweet Thames” into an open sewer. Epidemics such as cholera and diphtheria ravaged the poor and rich alike. The stench, as we now know, was a symptom of a bacterial problem. But at the time it was believed to be, in itself, the cause of disease. The dominant medical notion of miasmas held that “noxious and morbific” contagion was carried through the air.
The heat of 1858 made the problem of London’s effluvia unignorable. At the end of May, Rosemary Ashton notes in “One Hot Summer,” the temperature was 84 degrees in the shade; there followed three months of hot days, with record highs in the 90s for the shade and well over 110 degrees in the sun.
. . .
The Great Stink, as the noisome ordeal came to be called, is a terrific subject for Ms. Ashton, the noted scholar of George Eliot, George Henry Lewes and literary London. She excels at unearthing and explaining the daily distractions of the nose-holding populace over the course of the summer: horse races, art shows, murder and divorce trials, even the breezes that, as Darwin noted, wafted thistle seeds across the English Channel from France. Ms. Ashton also convincingly uses the Great Stink as a backdrop to crisis points in the lives of three great figures of the day whose biographies rarely overlap: Darwin, Disraeli and Charles Dickens.

For the full review, see:

Alexandra Mullen. “The Stink That Sank London; As highs climbed toward 100 degrees, raw sewage roasting on the Thames created the ‘Great Stink’.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Aug. 20, 2017): C6.

(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 11, 2017.)

The book under review, is:
Ashton, Rosemary. One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, and the Great Stink of 1858. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017.

Immunotherapy Cocktails, Like Chemotherapy Cocktails, May Benefit from Trial-and-Error Experiments

(p. A16) A new way of genetically altering a patient’s cells to fight cancer has helped desperately ill people with leukemia when every other treatment had failed, researchers reported on Monday [Nov. 20, 2017] in the journal Nature Medicine.
The new approach, still experimental, could eventually be given by itself or, more likely, be used in combination treatments — analogous to antiviral “cocktails” for H.I.V. or multidrug regimens of chemotherapy for cancer — to increase the odds of shutting down the disease.
Researchers say the treatment may be more promising as part of a combination than when given alone because, although some patients in the small study have had long-lasting remissions, many others had relapses.
The research, conducted at the National Cancer Institute, is the latest advance in the fast-growing field of immunotherapy, which fires up the immune system to attack cancer. The new findings build on two similar treatments that were approved by the Food and Drug Administration this year: Kymriah, made by Novartis for leukemia; and Yescarta, by Kite Pharma for lymphoma.
In some cases, those two treatments have brought long and seemingly miraculous remissions to people who were expected to die.
Kymriah and Yescarta require removing millions of each patient’s T-cells — disease-fighting white blood cells — and genetically engineering them to seek and destroy cancer cells. The T-cells are then dripped back into the patient, where they home in on protein molecules called CD19 found on malignant cells in most types of leukemia and lymphoma.
The new treatment differs in a major way: the T-cells are programmed to attack a different target on malignant cells, CD22.

For the full story, see:
DENISE GRADY. “Experimental Gene Treatment Shows Promise in Combating Leukemia.” The New York Times (Tues., NOV. 21, 2017): A16.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 20, 2017, and has the title “New Gene Treatment Effective for Some Leukemia Patients.”)

The Nature Medicine article, mentioned above, is:
Fry, Terry J., Nirali N. Shah, Rimas J. Orentas, Maryalice Stetler-Stevenson, Constance M. Yuan, Sneha Ramakrishna, Pamela Wolters, Staci Martin, Cindy Delbrook, Bonnie Yates, Haneen Shalabi, Thomas J. Fountaine, Jack F. Shern, Robbie G. Majzner, David F. Stroncek, Marianna Sabatino, Yang Feng, Dimiter S. Dimitrov, Ling Zhang, Sang Nguyen, Haiying Qin, Boro Dropulic, Daniel W. Lee, and Crystal L. Mackall. “CD22-Targeted CAR T Cells Induce Remission in B-ALL That Is Naive or Resistant to CD19-Targeted CAR Immunotherapy.” Nature Medicine (published online on Nov. 20, 2017).

Startups ‘Push the Flywheel’ Longer than They Admit

(p. A8) Some startups that spend years developing their product say the clock doesn’t start with those years. They count time from the day they came upon a solution that worked–never mind time spent looking for ideas or toiling at approaches that failed.
Milpitas, Calif.-based View Inc., which makes window glass that changes tint electronically, incorporated as Echromics and was in development as early as 2007. When its first technical approach failed, almost the entire staff turned over, said CEO Rao Mulpuri. He took over in December 2008.
A spokeswoman says the company considers 2009–the year it made breakthroughs that made its product possible–as the year it “really started its journey.” The company changed its name to View in 2012.
When it comes to the question of founding a company, Mr. Mulpuri says, “there’s a technical answer, which is the official answer. When was the company founded in the state of Delaware? But as a team, it’s not as simple as that.”
Silicon Valley investors are used to the idea that a “pivot” or new name takes off the years like a shot of Botox–though not all are thrilled.
David Gurle, chief executive of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Symphony Communication Services LLC, isn’t amused by startups that play the age game.
He founded private-messaging startup Perzo in 2012. After Symphony, another startup, acquired it in 2014, it began targeting financial-services clients. He proudly cites 2012 as Symphony’s founding year, despite its permutations.
“If you told me that a flower only started growing when it was out of the earth, then I would say, ‘No, it’s already been growing,'” Mr. Gurle said.

For the full story, see:
Patience Haggin. “Forever Young: Tech Startups, Like Hollywood Celebrities, Fudge Their Age; To look like overnight successes, new companies are playing around with their origin stories.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 12, 2017): A1 & A8.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 11, 2017, and has the title “The Secret to Startup Success? Fudge Your Age; To look like overnight successes, new companies are playing around with their origin stories.” The passages quoted from the online version, above, are about a sentence and a half longer than the similar passages in the print version.)