ZeroAvia keeps on rising

Commercial aviation is one of the greatest facilitators of human progress . It moves people and goods across oceans, mountains and jungles, breaking down barriers and holding the distant promise of a single united world free of war. But it’s no good at all if it pollutes the atmosphere and melts the last remaining strongholds of ice, drowning most of the world’s cities and farmlands in the process.

ZeroAvia seem to have the dilemma neatly in hand. We’ve already covered their new power plants and commercial plans before here (LSS Passim) Set against the general gloom, they’re a story of hope unfolding. So today we bring you a selected pieces of their latest news (there are many). And the reason we chose it is because it shows that, while their hopes are soaring in the clouds, their practices are firmly grounded in the solid world of developing partnerships, agreements and working in general with the vast ecosystem of unglamorous, hardworking people who actually get things done.

Working in partnership with Airbus, they’ve started a thoughtful programme in collaboration with Canada’s three largest airports. . To carefully consider the feasibility and impact of hydrogen and net zero aviation in the medium turn. None of the showy” we-can -do- it- all -now” promises of populist politicians. To quote the company:

this is the first time that a feasibility study of this magnitude has taken place in Canada to pioneer hydrogen for aviation, with the three airports. It reflects the partners’ shared ambition to use their respective expertise to support the decarbonisation of the aviation industry (ICAO, ATAG and IATA) and to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Before you ask, we have no commercial or equity relationship with ZeroAvia whatsoever. Nor Airbus. And none at all with Canadian airports (we’d struggle to locate these ones on a map) But we would like to keep flying. We would like to bring you stories of hope. So we’ll continue to cover ZeroAvia in the fervent belief that someone, somewhere, is really really doing something.

#ZeroAvia #Airbus #Canada #netzero #decarbonisation#aviation #hydrogen

Are Co operatives making a come back?

History: it’s a funny, cantankerous old thing. Any action seems to produce its opposite. It may be happening again. Starting in the South east London Borough of Lewisham.

As every schoolchild knows, the Industrial Revolution produced an atomised, nihilistic society where the overwhelming majority lived in slums, and worked every hour for pitiful wages. The new metropolises like Manchester drew waves of strangers into disease ridden slums. The results were far indeed from the hopes of the philosophers of the Enlightenment whose heady thoughts on free markets had kick-started the whole sorry mess. Yet somehow, in those desperate places, people began to come together. New community organisations began to thrive. Methodist Churches were one example. Trade Unions another. There were things like Working Mens clubs and libraries. Building Societies. And of course the Co operative movement, where poor people could club together to make their purchases at their own shops.(overseas readers might like to know it still exists today, but is barely differentiable from any other hight street grocer) Each in turn contributed to the foundation of the Labour Party. Fast forward one hundred years, what with the collective experience of wars and depressions and most people assumed that collective actions were the optimal solutions to most of our problems.

Following the world crisis of 1973-74,everything changed. Free marketeers saw their chance to exalt the individual above all else. Writers like Hayek and Friedman paved the way for politicians like Thatcher and Reagan. Even popular books like The Selfish Gene could be read in such a way as to exalt the cult of the sovereign individual . Down with the state! Taxes were an imposition on human liberty! Although the adherents of such doctrines could never explain how the National Health Service was Communist, but the Army was not, the individualistic tendency bit deep into our lives and culture. With the results we see today. Once again, atomised communities. Poverty. Capital in the hands of a very few, who invest with a grudging reluctance that would make Mr Gradgrind envious indeed. Pollution, rack rented slums, and growing poverty, especially among children.

Once again there seems to be a reaction setting in. Starting at the bottom, people are beginning to come together in groups to save what is important to them, from the all -dissolving solution of unrestricted free markets. As Kemi Alemoru explains in this article for The Standard [1], it seems to begin around the need to preserve collective things like music venues and pubs. Her piece treats the Southeast London area of Lewisham as a sort of living field experiment. But the thought strikes us. If it works for things like those, why not for bigger ones? Like housing. Controlling air pollution. Making roads safe. Even, whisper it, schools and collective education.

To borrow from another area of learning “every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. Maybe this is the start of one.

[1]https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/property-news/the-battle-for-lewisham-how-coops-are-reinvigorating-communities-b1157728.html

#free markets #collectives #cooperatives #hayek #keynes #methodist #coperative society #friendly society #trade union

Five Problems in the in-Box of a World Government

It’s election time in some of the world’s biggest democracies. This year India, the USA and UK all go the polls, and the EU has just done so (we don’t count the recent sham in Russia) All of these places face immense problems. And we don’t think they can solve them, because the root causes are global, making frontiers out of date. Imagine then, if a Global President were elected this year and took office on 1st January 2025. What would be the top five problems in their in-box?

1 Intractable conflicts. People draw imaginary lines and then fight bloody wars across them. The current conflicts between Russia-and -Ukraine and Israel- and- Palestine are current examples, with no obvious resolution, if the nation state remains the highest form of political organisation. Older readers will recall how the conflicts between Mercia and Wessex dwindled once they were combined into England. It was the same after France and Germany joined the EU. A World Presidency would imply that all these ancient hatreds are in fact futile.

2 Climate Change/Global Warming What happens in the Antarctic, the Amazon Basin and the Great Barrier Reef affects us all equally. The existence of endlessly competing polities, each jockeying for its own advantage may fatally slow efforts to deal with this existential threat. A World Government would rapidly co-ordinate mitigation efforts and resource allocation, and it is likely that this one would indeed soon be a memory.

3 Migration and identity crisis People move from poor areas to richer ones according to the same irrevocable laws that govern the movement of ions in an electric field. Yet the deep crisis of identity this provokes has produced toxic political and intellectual consequences in the richer countries, which make it impossible to transfer resources to the poorer ones. By ordering this done, a World Government would have essentially removed the motivation to migrate at all, thus ending the crisis forever.

4 Pandemics Recent experience has shown that economy-shattering pandemics can spread with lightning speed. And, believe us, Covid-19 was mild compared to some viruses which are waiting in the wings. For some reason, those pesky viruses don’t respect frontiers any more than molecules of carbon dioxide do, suggesting that the whole idea of national solutions may be somewhat out of date.

5 Grasping the Opportunity If humanity is to survive, it would be judicious to give ourselves extra chances. Colonising the Moon or Mars would provide ample second homes, even if our local tribesmen blow this one up with their nuclear weapons. Such a colonisation would be faster, more efficient and more just if all were invited to participate and share in the consequences. A World Government would mean that the undertaking would not only be successful, but that existing squabbles were not exported among the planets.

We know this will be saying the unsayable, especially among certain classes of society. Yet there comes a point when a society is bulging in crises, bursting against the limits which constrain it. It’s our contention that these limits are artificial and self imposed. There can never be a return to the good times of the past. But with thought and effort, they may come again in the future.

#world government #nation state #pandemic #global warming #migration #inequality

Four cheers for the minimum wage

They said it couldn’t be done. It would cause mass job losses and economic melt down. It undermined the morals of the poor. So screeched a whole bevy of right wing “news”papers, magazines and think tanks when Tony Blair’s Government introduced the UK’s minimum wage policy in 1999.[1] We’ll let the excellent Philip Inman of the Guardian give you the details. Our own gloss will be a little more historic.

Scholars scrabbling over the rubble of the Great Crash of 1929 soon discovered one simple, outstanding truth. The boom of the 1920s had held a fatal weakness. Wages stayed low, while tax reforms had ignited an unstable credit and spend boom among the rich. Demand was suppressed, and as the factories filled with unsellable goods, the stocks of the companies that made them were seen to be based on sand. The resulting crash became much worse, for the poor had no reserves to build in the good times to see them through. The message was an is clear to all of us who have managed to move beyond the simple verities of first year undergraduate economics. Helping the poor makes everyone richer.

So to all the pearl-clutchers, and to those who have their own reasons to conveniently believe in free market economics, we would observe this. Study the history of things like minimum wages, working hours directives and the abolition of serfdom. You disparage them not at your own peril, but at everyone’s.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/27/minimum-wage-is-uks-most-successful-economic-policy-in-a-generation

#demand #economics #great depression #wall street crash #jm keynes #minimum wage

Ronnie Lane: why we are into medical research

Here’s an experiment younger readers can try on their grandparents. Ask them about The Faces and they will probably start on about flamboyant front man Rod Stewart. Ask them about the Small Faces and they will say the same about Steve Marriott. Yet alongside these undoubtedly gifted individuals there played-and, more significantly, wrote-a quieter, slightly self-effacing figure called Ronnie Lane.[1] Who was no less talented, but whose life was cut dreadfully and horribly short by the dreadful disease Multiple Sclerosis at the sadly early age of 51.

Younger readers, if you want to explore the back catalogue of Lane and his various collaborators, we promise you some real treats. The Small Faces were an iconic sound for the modernising London of the 1960s. The Faces were the quintessential good time rockers, whose sense of humour and fun in being alive shines through every album. Lane could bring a wistful, slightly melancholic line as well, giving emotional depth to run alongside the more raucous productions of Stewart and Ronnie Wood. Yet after leaving, Lane never achieved the world-brand status of his erstwhile chums. And before he really found his feet, the disease struck; apparently it was hereditary in the family.

And that , ladies and gentlemen, is the point. Because we say; it shouldn’t have happened like this. We offer this man as one personal example of how chronic disease can rob the world. But MS, like other neurological diseases afflicts millions, making life hell for sufferers and their carers alike. The answer of course is research. And, here’s an article of faith: we think research in one area will spread its benefits into many others.

So now, as a tribute to Ronnie, imagine you are Parka-Clad Mod, speeding on a stylish Italian motor scooter through the streets of swinging London, on your way to your favourite coffee bar. The song paying will be All or Nothing[2] And that’s how we want you to treat the research and discoveries which will one day end this disease forever.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Lane

[2]https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=small+faces+all+or+nothing&&mid=DB77E21A8419DB96B9F9DB77E21A8419DB96B9F9&&FORM=VRDGAR

#ronnie lane #small faces #the faces #rod stewart #ronnie wood #steve marroitt #mods #multiple sclerosis

An apology to Dr Joseph Ladapo,and all our readers: now, will our staff please come in from the car park?

Croydon Tram by Peter Trimming is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

Today we published a blog which discussed the controversies around Dr Joseph Ladapo, [1]the Surgeon General of the State of Florida. We hope that the report was fair to both sides. Unfortunately, we committed one unforgiveable error. We got the name of poor Dr Ladapo slightly wrong, spelling it, for the most part, as Dr Lapado. We hope this oversight, this careless Spoonerism, will not cause unnecessary distress or anguish to Dr Ladapo, and undertake to be more careful in future. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there.

Upon learning of this very understandable error, nearly all the staff have walked out. They now occupy a position roughly between the car park and George Street. Moreover some reckless spirits among them have raised vulgar and garish placards, bearing simplistic slogans like: NO MORE MISTAKES AT LSS WE WANT TO WORK FOR A REPUTABLE BOSS and even PAY RISE NOW . This has excited unfavourable and ribald comments from passers by and has brought the company’s reputation even lower in Croydon. And it wasn’t very high after the Christmas Party.

Okay we’re sorry. It was the Board that got it wrong, not any of you lot. We know we’re paid a lot more than most of you, but that is the market rate for Company Directors. Obviously it’s very different to that for an average worker in ,say, IT, HR, telephone sales, or even comparable professions like nurses, teachers and delivery drivers. And the reason people like us get a lot more is because of the heavy burden of responsibilities we carry as the Directorial Classes. And this would be the same if we worked in, let’s see, a water company, the :Post Office or in a large Private bank, for example. And it’s because of all that work that mistakes creep in, like the one we made today. But look, you’ve made your point. Maybe we can look at new drinks machines and new chairs and tables. Maybe more money could be found to fix that leak in the third floor kitchen. But please come in. Please come back to work. We promise not to do it again. And be kinder and more considerate in the next pay round. Please?

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/03/florida-measles-outbreak-preventable

Florida’s Health Battle heats up

As if the US State of Florida didn’t have enough problems, what with coastline erosion and all that, it has now become the epicentre of of a mighty battle over public health, and who calls the shots over what is, and is not, scientific evidence. [1] This is how the two sides square up, according to Richard Luscombe of The Guardian

In the Red corner: Dr Joseph Lapado [2] Florida’s Surgeon General, whose principle back is State Governor Ron Di Santis, who, as older readers will recall, is a former Next President of the United States of America. In the Blue corner, most of what passes for orthodox medical and scientific opinion. And, before you take sides, gentle readers, note this. Dr Lapado is no unqualified quack, but an eminently learned and trained medical doctor. Who, as an immigrant from Nigeria had no doubt to fight more than his fair share of of prejudice before finding his way to a well-deserved place at the top. The trouble is that some of his opinions, are to say the least, controversial. As our sources report, huge storms are now swirling around his recommendations in matters concerning masks, vaccines the use of various medical and public health literature sources, and certain treatment methods [3] The outcome of many is still unresolved, we hasten to add. But, with Big Ron in your corner, does any of this matter? Everyone has a right to their opinion, as they say; maybe Dr Lapado’s is as good as anyone else’s?

The trouble with opinions is that they get get tested in fact. Now an outbreak of measles among the unvaccinated burghers of Florida is testing Dr Lapado’s practices and beliefs to destruction. And it’s not just matters of Life and Death, it’s more important than that. Florida’s economy depends more than most on tourism and real estate, and the guardians of that economy are beginning to realise this, as Richard notes:

Come for the Sunshine, Leave With the Measles, opined the Orlando Sentinel; “Measles? So On-brand for Florida’s Descent Into the 1950s”, was the take of the Tampa Bay Times.

Only time will tell who is correct, Dr Lapado or his detractors. . But we close with this thought. For a long time now- ten, twenty years-everyone has loudly, aggressively proclaimed their right to hold opinions Fair enough; but they cannot all be right. The one that really was right all along only emerges with the tests of fact and experience. Until they come along, a little humility might be in order for all of us. Otherwise that test might be very painful indeed.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/03/florida-measles-outbreak-preventable

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ladapo

[3]https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/floridas-surgeon-general-urges-cvs-to-stock-leeches

# joseph lapado #ron di santis #vaccination #measles #florida #public health #empiricism#measles

Electric Cars: A vault to the future, or just a current fad?

Photo by Chris LeBoutillier on Pexels.com

“Just because something appears in the Daily Mail,” observed George Orwell,”does not automatically mean it’s a lie.” Astute readers will know how, having lost the argument on carbon emissions, climate deniers spend their time sniping and snarking at every new technological advance. Remember all those hecatombs of pigeons supposedly murdered by marine wind farms? Which is not to say that we at LSS dismiss every criticism, every reasoned argument, about how we get to a sustainable world safely, with the minimum possible collateral damage. There’s a debate to be had, especially when it is mooted in the august pages of the New Scientist [1].

One of the troubles with electric vehicles (EVs) is the kind of unpleasant things like lithium (and cobalt) you need to mine to make the batteries, And, as this piece by New Scientist photographer Tom Hagen shows, the local consequences of doing so can be frightful. This is Chile; but you’d find something like it similar production sites across the world. And some pretty dire working conditions, especially in places like Africa. At which point despair seems a very understandable reaction. Surely the cost of making these new EVs, and powering up the grids to run them, makes the whole enterprise futile?

The despair trap is a product of oversimplification; “if a thing is not 100% good, it must be bad. Gotcha!” runs the thinking. In the real world, lasting solutions are a mosaic set of compromises and trade offs, as every engineer knows. On balance, the environmental benefits of using electric vehicles are already in excess of the costs.[2] And this is before the dreadful health impacts of nitrate and particle emissions from our archaic old fleet of combustion vehicles[3] is taken into account (LSS passim).[3] Compared to the world we lived in 10 or 20 years ago, we’re actually rather cheered to live in a world where someone is actually doing something. However imperfect, it’s better than sliding blindly down the ramp to destruction, which is what they did in the Good Old Days.

^{With thanks to Gary Herbert}

[1]https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25333710-200-lithium-fields-beautiful-from-the-air-trouble-on-the-ground/

[2]https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-vehicles-definitely-better-climate-gas-powered-cars

[3]https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/air-pollution

#pollution #electric vehicles #new scientist #lithium #cobalt #particulates #nitrates #batteries

Sexually Transmitted Diseases-new tools needed

The Renaissance brought us massive advances in learning. In Art, the Humanities, in Science and Trade, to name but a few. It also brought us a massive upswing in Sexually Transmitted Diseases. In Europe, Syphilis seems to have started among the troops of Charles VIII of France, who were besieging Naples in 1494. And spread like a forest fire in a drought thereafter. Gonorrhoea seems to have got its big break in the region of Les Clapiers in Paris around the middle of the sixteenth century. [1] Anyway, this wonderful link to Wikipedia will tell you all you want to know.

And STDs certainly haven’t gone away. In both the US and the UK, rates of syphilis have been rising drastically, as this article from the astute Jonathan Neal of the Daily Mail makes clear.[2] But instead of wringing his hands, Jonathan looks possible responses, and , as all good LSS readers will be cheered to discove , from an antibiotics perspective. As some of you will already know, our chief frontline weapon at the moment is doxycycline. Instead of a long course of post- infection antibiotics, why not hit ’em hard, the morning straight after, with a massive pill of the stuff? So say some experts. But there’s always a catch, as Jonathan points out. As you will have guessed, it’s our old friend antibiotic resistance. Which, according to Jonathan’s experts, is already climbing fast among gonorrhoea patients. So what is to be done?

For us at LSS, the conclusion is clear. All public health problems require a mosaic response. Public education, scientific resources, trained staff and above all someone to co-ordinate everyone else are vital. And in a deeper way , that’s true of a lot of other things. Syphilis, like climate change or migration, knows no nations and no borders. Anyone for a World Government?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexually_transmitted_infection

[2]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13095693/This-STI-morning-pill-beat-rising-rates-potentially-life-threatening-syphilis-UK.html

#antibiotics #antibiotic resistance #syphilis #gonorrhoea #STD #public health #jonathan Neal

Kill Krill? You’ll pay a bill

Today we’re devoting our blog to Krill, those humble but immensely prevalent crustaceans which form the basis of immense and vital ocean food chains. [1]They even form the breakfast of the Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus), that mighty monarch of the sea. They may even play a role in carbon capture and sequestration [2 see part #9] and now, you’ve guessed it-they are under threat. From that brutal ignorant species that has the vanity to call itself Homo sapiens. Not only are they being massively overfished. But now the melting glaciers and ocean acidification, both caused by global warming, are starting to eat into their numbers at alarming rates. If that goes on happening then the whole ocean ecology will collapse, with incalculable consequences for the stability of human society.

“So-what can I do?” we hear you asking. It’s a perfectly good question. And in the last analysis, only you will know the answer, gentle reader. But here at LSS we know one thing. The days of living the quiet suburban lifestyle at sports ground and shopping mall are over. We’re not saying it wasn’t good while it lasted. But it can’t be sustained any longer, not at least without some major social and technological engineering. Could you at least help one organisation that is trying to do something? What about the WWF, who have supplied one of today’s links? What have you got to lose? Well you know the answer to that.

^{Thanks to Gary Herbert}

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krill

[2]https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/fascinating-facts/antarctic-krill#:~:text=They%20are%20under%20threat,interest%20in%20the%20krill%20fishery.

#krill #crustaceans #ocean #food chain #blue whale #climate change #global warming #glacier #ice sheet