2015 22
How to stop rising sea level
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with
Here’s an idea I had to stop rising sea level. This plan assumes that we will fail at stopping emissions and that rising sea level will be a reality. It is estimated that sea level has already risen 15cm from 100 years ago and that currently sea level is rising around 1cm every 4 years. So the question here is what could make sea level fall 1cm every 4 years and my idea is to use nuclear power to pump water on to the Antartic continent and accumulate it there to compensate for the 25mm or so that sea level is rising every year. Now in order to calculate if this is feasible first we need to know what is the sea level surface around the world and that is 510 million km2. Then we need to calculate the area of Antartica that is above 500m, as you know for every 500m you go up temperature drops 3C and so far global warming has been .85C in the last 100 years. The area of Antartica is around 14 million Km2. This means that the ratio of oceans to Antartica is around 30 to 1. That means that for every cm we take out of the ocean we need to accumulate 30cm in Antartica. Sounds doable. So if we pumped water above 500m that is the same of 500 years of global warming at current rates and it is safe to say that way before then will have stopped burning fossil fuels so it is very unlikely that the earth will warm more than 3C. So any ice that is now ice at whatever altitude it is it will be ice at 500m higher. But it turns out that Antartica is surprisingly a very high continent. The average height of Antartica is 2500m which means that the average Antartic temperature is 9C lower than at sea level so it is extremely likely that any water pumped over Antartica will freeze there for millions of years.
So now that we know all these the next thing we have to calculate is how much water is there in 25 mm multiplied by 510 million km2 because that is the amount of water than the ice melting is currently pouring in the oceans. And the plan here is that whatever water we are losing at sea level we pump to an altitude where it will stay frozen forever somewhere in Antartica. After that we need to calculate the energy we need to pump that water 500m up. And then we need to build a number of power stations which in my view should be molten salt nuclear reactors because they are much cheaper to build and also use very commonly available fuel. This video shows what China is doing with them and explains there advantages.
So using Wolfram Alpha I came up that there is around 1250km3 of water melting from the ice cap per year in the world. This doesn’t seem to be an impossible volume of water to pump up in Antartica to a level where it will stay frozen forever. If you´d like to please help me complete this calculation, I need to find out the energy that is needed to pump this amount of water up 500m over one year.
2015 22
Let’s stop blaming ourselves for ISIS
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with
The war on terror has been brutal, inhumane, extremely costly and ineffective. But as opposed to what many argue, it is not Western brutality that gave rise to ISIS. European democracies are the kindest social systems around the world. With free health care and education for all, EU nations are more caring than US. And in terms of military interventions in the Middle East US has led in presence and arguably in inhumanity. Yet an estimated 4000 ISIS terrorists were raised in this kind Europe and went to the Middle East to behead Christians, Gays, to enslave women, to destroy history, to kill Shias, to send thousands of families to their death and millions into exile. Some of these terrorists are going back to Europe to bring their terror. We saw that twice in the horrible attacks in Paris, in Brussels, Copenhagen, Toulouse. Am I in favor of Western responses like Guantanamo or drone attacks? No. But not because closing Guantanamo or stopping drone attacks would end terrorism, but because becoming terrorists ourselves is not who we are nor what we stand for. But the brand of terrorism we are experiencing now is growing, not because of what we do, but because of its appeal to many. Jihadism has an evil logic of its own that is unrelated to our actions. Because of our colonial past we tend to believe that everything that happens around the world is because of our policies. But those days are over. ISIS is a movement similar to Nazism, an incredibly powerful ideology that draws people to it for its simple logic, clear explanations, black and white world, quick answers for everything. I would also love to think that if we were only nicer so would be ISIS. But I don’t think we have evidence that that is the case. ISIS hates us not for what we do, but for who we are. Because in Western democracies we promote the very uncertainties that they think they have eliminated. They don’t hate our actions, they hate our presence. Germany has been the kindest country in the world to Muslim refugees. I think we can all agree that there is no guarantee ISIS won’t attack there. No, we did not create ISIS.
2015 10
What is disappearing from my life and what is replacing it
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with
Here is a list that explains how technology is disrupting my life.
-newspapers: Twitter,Facebook,newspaper online apps, news apps.
-magazines:Medium, Tumblr, magazine apps.
-my car: Uber, Lyft
-my desk: iPad lying in the couch.
-cable TV: fiber optic internet.
-linear TV: Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu.
-fix line telephones: smartphones.
-cooking: Seamless
-libraries: Kindle
-CD holders: Spotify
-desktops: tablets
-laptops: smartphones.
-hotels: AirBnB
-movie theaters: large TV displays with video on demand.
-cameras: smartphones
-hard drives: cloud
-paper agendas and calendars: apps
-intercoms: whatsapp from downstairs.
-shopping malls: Amazon
-credit cards: Apple pay, CC inside smartphone
-dictionaries: Google
-printed photography: looking at photographs on iPad
-travel guides: Yelp, Google, Tripadvisor.
-pens, pencils, markers, handwriting: glass keyboards.
-printers: iPad, QR codes.
-alarm clocks: clock app.
-dumb watches: smart watches
-maps and asking for directions: google maps.
-phone calls and texting: whatsapp, viber, Messenger.
-GPS devices like Garmin: google maps, sports apps.
-Microsoft Office: Google docs.
-reading on airplanes: WiFi on airplanes.
-travel agents: travel app.
-in person learning: online tutorials, Youtube, Udacity.
-taxis: Uber, Lyft
2015 6
Fathers and their boys: the ten year silence
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with
I am a father to three girls and three boys. But this post is only about the father son relationship. More precisely it is about father son communication, or lack of it. First my experience: as a dad it is easy to speak with boys until they are around 8, then there’s a ten year silence and communications restarts after they are 18. From 8 to 18 it is extremely hard for dads to have normal conversations with their boys, or at least that’s been my experience. With Tom, I am still getting over the car rides we took alone on skiing trips when he was 13, we would say one sentence every 100km. Now I am spending a weekend in Menorca alone with Leo (9) and getting a conversation out of him, getting him out of his books, his games, his movies is like getting a splinter out from his foot. And while I hope it’s not the case, I fear the same will be true of Davidi when he turns 8. Now at 2 he does talk a lot to me, in broken English, German or Spanish but because of what I lived through with the older boys he must think it weird when I hug him with gratitude. He doesn’t know what I know, that this hug is a slow good bye to the time in which I will be unable to get him to look up from his iPad. These days I thank him for whatever broken language I get. Davidi go dad pool? Yes Davidi, go pool!! Let`s go swimming. With Mia (4) instead I don’t worry. I know ours will be an uninterrupted conversation.
Women, and by that I mean sisters and moms, do find ways to talk to boys. Like Nina Varsavsky does get Leo to speak. And she was able to get Tom to speak when he went through his 10 year silence. Women know how to play men along, somehow be interested in their obsession of the week. But dads, we just don’t know what to say to them. Men you know, we are not great conversationistas. And when a game obsessed boy meets a work obsessed dad conversation is not easy. Because as a dad to start a conversation with your 12 year old, either you totally get into whatever weird game he´s into at the moment, or whatever book that has 350 characters in 150 moods each (a book that your dad brain would never be able to keep up with but he knows all possible combinations)….or well, they just won’t talk. As opposed to girls don’t expect them to start a conversation. So you stay quiet and they go back to their book, iPad, or as in the case of Leo, Kindle book in the iPad.
I understand girls who are 14 and fall in love with a 14 year old boy only to cry over the fact that they just won’t talk to them. Hey girls, you are not alone. That boy can’t talk to his own father! But there is hope. Now Tom and I meet and have the most awesome conversations, yes he´s 21 but dads, be patient. The silence cracks, it just takes a decade