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Wednesday, March 12, 2003
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Thomas P.M. Barnett, PhD writes: Let me tell you why military engagement with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad is not only necessary and inevitable, but good. When the United States finally goes to war again in the Persian Gulf, it will not constitute a settling of old scores, or just an enforced disarmament of illegal weapons, or a distraction in the war on terror. Our next war in the Gulf will mark a historical tipping point—the moment when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization. That is why the public debate about this war has been so important: It forces Americans to come to terms with I believe is the new security paradigm that shapes this age, namely, Disconnectedness defines danger. Saddam Hussein’s outlaw regime is dangerously disconnected from the globalizing world, from its rule sets, its norms, and all the ties that bind countries together in mutually assured dependence. The problem with most discussion of globalization is that too many experts treat it as a binary outcome: Either it is great and sweeping the planet, or it is horrid and failing humanity everywhere. Neither view really works, because globalization as a historical process is simply too big and too complex for such summary judgments. Instead, this new world must be defined by where globalization has truly taken root and where it has not. Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder. These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core. But show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and—most important—the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists. These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap. (03/12/03) | |
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Peter Russell writes: In chaos theory, "The Butterfly Effect" refers to the discovery that in a chaotic system such as the global weather, tiny perturbations in the system may sometimes lead to major changes in the overall system. It is theoretically possible that a butterfly flapping its wings in Mexico could create tiny changes in the air flow that would eventually lead to different weather in Europe. In most cases the flapping wings would make no difference whatsoever, but just occasionally, very very occasionally, when the system is at a cusp where it could go either way (like a ball ballanced on top of a cone), the flapping may be just the difference that causes the future to unfold differently. The same principle applies to human society. Tiny changes in one person's state of mind can, on occasions, lead to major changes in society as a whole. (03/12/03) | |
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New Scientist -- In the second half of the 20th century, the Earth lost 300,000 species. Humanity has created its own mass extinction. The best guess of biologists is that species are disappearing between 100 and 1000 times as fast as they were before Homo sapiens arrived. But our impact is different from the mass extinctions of the past. They wiped out whole groups of animals, notably the dinosaurs, whereas humans are picking off individual species. In the past, biodiversity recovered as species spread into new ecological niches, but humans are wiping out niches as well as organisms. Wildlife will have a tough time regenerating. The winners after the mass extinction that finished off the dinosaurs are about to become the losers. One in four mammal species and one in eight bird species face a high risk of extinction in the near future: the population of each species is expected to fall by at least a fifth in the next 10 years. Almost all are endangered by human activity. The invertebrates are tipped to dominate the new world order. Only around 0.1 per cent of the 1.6 million known species are thought to be threatened, though many undiscovered species are likely to be dying out before we even know of their existence. As global climate change shifts temperatures across the planet, species may not be able follow fast enough. According to UNEP, they will have to migrate 10 times as fast as they did after the last ice age. Many won't make it. Species that do up and leave will move at different rates, breaking up existing communities. At high latitudes, entire forest types are expected to disappear, to be replaced by new ones. During this transition, carbon will be lost to the atmosphere faster than it can be replaced by new growth, accelerating climate change. The romantic notion of "wilderness" is fast becoming outmoded. Lee Hannah at Conservation International in Washington DC found that human activity has displaced the natural habitat over two-thirds of the habitable surface of the planet. Much of the undisturbed land is merely rock, ice and blowing sand, already shunned by wildlife. (03/12/03) | |
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New Scientist -- Planet Earth is in the throes of one of the six great periods of mass extinction in its history. Can we get by with fewer species? ... There was great news for sea horses, basking sharks and whale sharks last month. The big-leaf mahogany tree may also have been celebrating in its own woody way. The good news was that, against all the odds, a meeting in Chile of the UN Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) had voted to control international trade in these creatures. Decisions like this give hope that the tide of opinion is turning in favour of tough international legislation to preserve biodiversity. They make it less likely that endangered trees will end up as coffee tables, that the only surviving sea horses will be swimming in aquaria, and that the remains of the last shark 's fin will be floating menacingly in a bowl of Chinese soup. It seems biodiversity has become a buzzword beloved of politicians, conservationists, protesters and scientists alike. But what exactly is it? The Convention on Biological Diversity, an international agreement to conserve and share the planet 's biological riches, provides a good working definition : biodiversity comprises every form of life, from the smallest microbe to the largest animal or plant, the genes that give them their specific characteristics and the ecosystems of which they are a part. ... Why the fuss? Does it really matter if there are fewer species of snail or beetle in the world, if some unknown plant species ceases to exist or if the gene pool of a rare species is shrinking? In short, yes. Biodiversity is the basis of a healthy, balanced global ecology capable of sustaining life on Earth. A diverse ecosystem is a stable ecosystem because it is complex and flexible enough to be self-regulating. Earth 's air and water, for example, are kept pure through the action of a wide range of organisms. Even the humblest creatures play their part. Through decomposition, dead matter is recycled and often detoxified in the process. For instance, microorganisms in soil and water convert toxic ammonia to nitrate ions, which are then taken up and used by plants. The atmosphere and the world 's climate are stabilised by plants through photosynthesis, absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. (03/12/03) | |
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BBC Science -- A 20-year plan to make hydrogen fuel cells a green alternative to conventional car engines is likely to fail, says a report. The research, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), says that diesel and petrol "hybrid" vehicles will still be the best option at this point, despite "aggressive research" on hydrogen fuel. ... Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are seen as one possible way to dramatically cut the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions. The hydrogen used in the cells is extracted from natural gas, or petrol, and a simple chemical reaction between this and oxygen would produce energy. The only by-product of this is water. However, producing the fuel itself would involve substantial carbon dioxide emissions, and the MIT report concludes that these, coupled with the extra "green" costs of fuel distribution, would cancel out these advantages. (03/12/03) | |
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New York Times: Health -- The need for trust, Dr. Shay argues, comes from human prehistory. Without claws, wings or other natural weapons, human ancestors survived by watching one another's backs. As a result, Dr. Shay argues, the need for trust is part of human biology. Trust makes us feel safe; feeling safe is good for our mental and physical health. American troops in Vietnam often could not establish deep bonds of trust because men were rotated in and out of combat as individuals. The troops found themselves fighting next to strangers. Dr. Shay described it as the human need for cohesion being at odds with a military doctrine from the industrial age — "replaceable parts, centralized control and a division of labor." As a psychiatrist, he finds many of his patients have grievances against their leaders — for betraying their sense of what is right — that are as bad as Achilles' against Agamemnon. For one Vietnam veteran, Dr. Shay writes in the new book, an unforgettable violation was watching a friend lose the right side of his face and the fingers of his right hand because his gun jammed during a show staged for the secretary of defense. Drugs can treat this kind of psychological trauma, he says, and therapy can help. But the best thing for his patients has been to connect and trust. (03/12/03) | |
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New York Times: Science -- Long ago in the dawn of the computer age, college students often whiled away the nights playing a computer game called Spacewar. It consisted of two rocket ships attempting to blast each other out of the sky with torpedoes while trying to avoid falling into a star at the center of the screen. Although cartoonish in appearance, the game was amazingly faithful to the laws of physics, complete with a gravitational field that affected both the torpedoes and the rockets. Only one feature seemed outlandish: a ship that drifted off the edge of the screen would reappear on the opposite side. Real space couldn't work that way. Or could it? Imagine that the Spacewar screen is wrapped around to form a cylinder or a section of a doughnut so that the two edges meet. That is the picture of space, some cosmologists say, that has been suggested by a new detailed map of the early universe. Their analysis of this map has now provided a series of hints — though only hints — that the universe may have a more complicated shape than astronomers presumed. Rather than being infinite in all directions, as the most fashionable theory suggests, the universe could be radically smaller in one direction than the others. As a result it may be even be shaped like a doughnut. (03/12/03) | |
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New York Times -- Paul Klugman writes: Last week the Congressional Budget Office marked down its estimates yet again. Just two years ago, you may remember, the C.B.O. was projecting a 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. Now it projects a 10-year deficit of $1.8 trillion. And that's way too optimistic. The Congressional Budget Office operates under ground rules that force it to wear rose-colored lenses. If you take into account — as the C.B.O. cannot — the effects of likely changes in the alternative minimum tax, include realistic estimates of future spending and allow for the cost of war and reconstruction, it's clear that the 10-year deficit will be at least $3 trillion. So what? Two years ago the administration promised to run large surpluses. A year ago it said the deficit was only temporary. Now it says deficits don't matter. But we're looking at a fiscal crisis that will drive interest rates sky-high. A leading economist recently summed up one reason why: "When the government reduces saving by running a budget deficit, the interest rate rises." Yes, that's from a textbook by the chief administration economist, Gregory Mankiw. But what's really scary is the looming threat to the federal government's solvency. That may sound alarmist: right now the deficit, while huge in absolute terms, is only 2 — make that 3, O.K., maybe 4 — percent of G.D.P. But that misses the point. "Think of the federal government as a gigantic insurance company (with a sideline business in national defense and homeland security), which does its accounting on a cash basis, only counting premiums and payouts as they go in and out the door. An insurance company with cash accounting . . . is an accident waiting to happen." So says the Treasury under secretary Peter Fisher; his point is that because of the future liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, the true budget picture is much worse than the conventional deficit numbers suggest. (03/12/03) | |
3:04:24 AM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
4/1/2003; 5:16:57 AM.
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