Bright, Hot, then Cold: The City After Nuclear Blast Dec 28th, 2016 | By | Category: Arstechnica, Nukes

Nuclear war offers a multitude of bad ways to die. The bulk of the initial deaths from a nuclear bomb come from the intense heat from the detonation itself, followed by the firestorms triggered by the blast. Extrapolating from the incendiary bomb attacks in World War II (Tokyo and Dresden being among the more infamous), the authors note, “the projected number of injured requiring medical treatment would be drastically reduced relative to that projected by blast scaling, as many injured that would otherwise require treatment would be consumed in the fires.” If not vaporized at the center of a blast, many of those who survive the initial moments would then promptly be burned alive by a raging super-fire extending for many kilometers from the hypocenter of the blast.

It’s fascinating to see how scientists struggle to determine what would happen during an extraordinary event–like the detonation of megaton fusion-fission bomb over a contemporary city. There really isn’t data; one is left to take data from other events, stretch and make educated estimates of what a different magnitude event would be like.

How big of a firestorm would result? How much soot would be produced? What color soot? The answers to these questions for a modern nuclear bomb (~ 300 kt range) over a modern American city are tricky–and the key for understanding how many would die, and how deep and dark the subsequent nuclear winter would be.

To answer, scientists have attempted to extrapolate from the firebombing of German and Japanese cities in World War II. For the latter (with extensive paper and wood construction) the data may be an overestimate. German cities were constructed more in line with modern construction techniques. Our cities presently have extensive petrochemical stores (gas stations and the like) as well as much plastic (that didn’t exist in the 1940’s). We’re left with (unsatisfying) broad ranges of possibilities. Perhaps the key point is, all of the reasonable possibilities are horrible.

Why wasn’t there a nuclear winter following all the atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons? The test sites were selected explicitly for the lack of flammable materials to throw up into the atmosphere–a constructed best-case scenario.

Sustainability, Not Fear: What CFCs Can Teach Us About Beating Climate Change Oct 28th, 2015 | By | Category: Energy, Environmental, Featured Articles, Lead Article, Science and Society

Cliff Mass (meterologist, and a smart man with a consistently different take on global warming issues), makes an interesting point in a recent post: By focusing on global warming as a moral issue (and from his perspective, using scare tactics about the weather to promote concern) environmental activists are failing to convince the public to make needed changes now. Instead, we should talk about sustainability–switching the conversation to how to adapt to climate change and preserve out lifestyle better, less destructive, technologies.

Cliff Mass’s prescription?

1. Since substantial global warming is certain, we must prepare society for inevitable changes. That means adaptation and making society more resilient. For Washington State, the probably means more storage of water during the spring, since snowpack will be less. Getting folks away from rivers that will flood more often. Fixing the damaged forests of eastern Washington.

2. Global warming is a technological problem and technology is our only hope. New energy sources, better energy storage, ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, safe nuclear and new energy technologies that we can’t imagine today. But developing these technologies will require substantial investments for research and development on a much larger scale than occurring today….

3. Society should use cost effective energy-saving and renewable technologies that are cost effective today, like more efficient appliances, high-mileage and electric cars, smart devices, and better insulation in buildings, better mass transportation, and others. They may not solve the problem, but they will help.

4. Environmentalists have hurt themselves by being fixated on global warming. They, and their political allies, should broaden their view to think about sustainability.

Cliff Mass is worth reading on climate change matters. He in no way is a global-warming denialists. But he is skeptical, in a scientific manner, to claims made by environmentalists, science writers, and politicians. Overall, the net result adds credibility to the reality of our present: we’re due for serious trouble from global warming, and unlikely to do much to avoid it. As Cliff noted:

Few people have thought more about how societies deal with existential threats than Professor Jared Diamond of UCLA, the author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel. Last year, after giving a lecture at the University of Washington, I asked him:

“Can you think of a single example when a society took economically costly and disruptive steps to avoid a future problem that had not been previously experienced?”

He could not. Musing, I can offer one example: Joseph’s warning to Pharaoh above 7 drought years.

I can think of one example, in our own society, that might be a model of where to go from here: Our response to discovering chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) destroy the ozone layer of our atmosphere. It was a new problem, borne out of relatively new technologies (aerosol cans and refrigeration) people loved, involving damage to a relatively abstract thing (a particularly layer of the high atmosphere), with long-term concequences but relatively few immediate concequences to those in areas with the most emissions. A proper response to the problem required the worldwide banning of the use of CFCs. In many ways the challenge of CFCs is quite similar (and in fact intertwined with) the problem we face with carbon emissions. Surprisingly, we’ve been modestly successful at this challenge.

How have environmentalists been more successful saving the ozone layer than combating global warming?

Viable alternatives were available, in part because of direct scientific work by environmental NGOs. Greenpeace funded development of replacements for CFCs, Hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs. Your car’s AC probably uses HFCs rather than CFCs. Despite aggressive propaganda, even domestic refrigerators are slowly transitioning over as well. The response by key environmental groups to ozone depletion was a sustainability focused one. In addition to education, a sustainable alternative was researched, vetted, and promoted.

With the revelation that Exxon knew about climate change since the late seventies, we know that such a response is unlikely to come from the industry heavyweights. Much like the railroad companies thinking of themselves as rail not transportation companies, energy-industry heavyweights think of themselves as fossil-fuel companies, not energy companies–and devote their significant resources to propaganda to prop up their fatally flawed product, not R&D into sustainable energy (despite having all of the needed basic scientific knowledge about solar, wind, and nuclear power to be successful). It’s an opportunity.

Ebola Thrives on Poverty and Disparity Oct 1st, 2014 | By | Category: Featured Articles, Lead Article, Public Health

Ebola
With the first confirmed case of Ebola in the United States, I suspect at least a few of you are freaking out.

Ebola–like many viruses, including the recently popular enterovirus 68–is spread by filth. You need exposure to infected body fluids (blood, tears, sweat, vomit, diarrhea) to get it.

Ebola thrives on poverty and disparity: Places were the people at the bottom of the ladder have no access to clean water to drink and wash with, no access to decent healthcare, no public health providers to track and contain outbreaks. West Africa is nearly ideal for Ebola. Increasingly, so is Central Texas and the rest of the United States.

To protect yourself, your household, your community from communicable diseases like Ebola requires decency for the poorest, the most marginalized in your community–the people who pick your produce, make your food, clean your streets and workplace, working the myriad of minimum-wage service jobs that make most of our lives possible.

Decency for the poorest is what makes a developed country a developed country: a place where one does not die from easily prevented diseases (among other things). Decency isn’t our long suit.

***

You’d be correct to be exasperated with the emergency room in Dallas, sending home with a handful of antibiotics a man recently arrived from West African, with classic symptoms of Ebola. How could this happen? Why weren’t we better prepared?

The CDC has actually been a leader in responding to the crisis. It’s helped that so many American doctors and experts, at significant personal peril, have been involved in the response in Africa. Reams of guidelines are available.

Still, there needs to be local public health experts–someone to translate the guidelines into concrete steps and plans for a given community–before a plan can work. It’s tough work. How do you get a patient from an outlying clinic to an isolation room in a proper hospital without exposing ambulance crews? To which hospital should the patient be taken? Who is going to clean up the vomit, blood, other bodily fluids, and medical waste? How will those people be protected from exposure. Where will the waste be taken? Who will incinerate it? Who will track down others who might have been exposed, and watch them for symptoms? Who will check arriving airline passengers for symptoms? Which symptoms should be looked for?

Even in King County (still a high-water mark for public health in the United States), years of cutbacks–cheered on by the likes of the Seattle Times editorial board and Tim Eyman–have degraded the infrastructure to answer these questions and implement the answers.

It’s not time to panic. Honestly, the biggest risk for most people in the US remains the flu (get vaccinated!). For new things floating around, Enterovirus 68 is probably a bigger risk than Ebola. If you want to sleep better at night, vote for better public health funding.

The American Health Care Market Just Became Less Opaque May 8th, 2013 | By | Category: Featured Articles, Lead Article, Medicine

How much a plate of spaghetti is going to cost you isn’t usually a mystery. Sure, the price can vary quite a bit–from a few cents if you’re making the plate yourself from groceries, to dozens of dollars at a fancy restaurant. You shouldn’t be too surprised by the bill at the end; the price is right there on the menu, or on the box–same for you as anyone else.

The American healthcare system remains remarkably opaque–particularly if you are among the uninsured. The cost of a hospitalization for a heart attack varies tremendously depending upon the hospital giving the treatment. And, unlike a restaurant, hospitals generally refuse to state the price up front.

To reduce healthcare costs, the plan for the past few decades has been to pass on costs to the consumer. The idea here is to use the market (in the Adam Smith sense of the word) to force down prices–expecting patients to find the most efficient, cheapest, hospital for a given problem. (Spoiler: It hasn’t worked.)

But, how can you decide which hospital is most efficient, if you have no idea what they’re charging? The net result is most Americans understand that getting sick–thanks to a lack of insurance, or tremendous copayments–is a good way to end up bankrupt, without any real sense of how to pick a more efficient provider.

Something exciting has happened this week, possibly changing this dynamic: The Center for Medicare Services, for the first time, has published the list prices charged by hospitals around the country (to Medicare) for the top one hundred reasons patients end up in the hospital.

Let’s look at what hospitals are charging, and receiving, in the Seattle area. In each of these charts, the blue bars is the bill charged to Medicare by the hospital, the red the payment the hospital actually received from Medicare as well as all copayments or deductibles paid by the patient. You’ll note, like almost all insurers in the US, Medicare pays a significant discount from the billed cost. A patient without insurance can expect the full, undiscounted rate.

First up, the charge for a pneumonia admission:
Pneumonia

For a COPD (rotten lungs, usually after a lifetime of smoking) flare:
COPD

Coronary artery disease, requiring a stent (either a heart attack or a heart-attack-to-be):
CAD-DES

The overbilling is (in part) a negotiation tactic between the hospitals and the insurers–a way of amplifying the percentage discount to a prospective insurer while maintaining revenues. The side effect is to leave the uninsured or underinsured as road-kill–charged two or three times the total bill payed from an insured person.

If nothing else, the Affordable Care Act (i.g. Obamacare) will make this better by shifting a majority of people from the uninsured into the insured group–paying the discounted rate, with insurance picking up most of the total tab.

The Fukushima Disaster Mar 17th, 2011 | By | Category: Featured Articles, Lead Article, Nukes

Like many of you, I’ve been closely following the developments at the Fukushima reactor complex. Below is a set of links to articles I’ve written for the Stranger, as the events have unfolded.

3/12/2011
Explosion at Fukushima Nuclear Plant, Cesium Detected

3/14/2011
Don’t Panic

Geiger Counter Readings Rise in Tokyo

3/15/2011
What’s on Fire at the Fukushima Reactor?

Will Radioactive Particles from the Leaking Reactor Reach Washington State?

The Fukushima Fifty

3/16/2011
“We believe that radiation levels are extremely high” (A discussion of acute radiation injury)

3/17/2011
Video from a Helicopter Flyover of the Fukushima Plant

The Health Effects of Radioactive Isotopes from Fukushima

3/20/2011:
Radiation from Fukushima, in Seattle

3/24/2011:
How Radiation Is Measured

3/27/2011:
Radiation From Fukushima, in Seattle, Tells the Story

Featured Articles

Sustainability, Not Fear: What CFCs Can Teach Us About Beating Climate Change

Cliff Mass (meterologist, and a smart man with a consistently different take on global warming issues), makes an interesting point in a recent post: By focusing on global warming as a moral issue (and from his perspective, using scare tactics about the weather to promote concern) environmental activists are failing to convince the public to […]

featuredimage Ebola Thrives on Poverty and Disparity

Ebola–like many viruses, including the recently popular enterovirus 68–is spread by filth. Ebola thrives on poverty and disparity. Decency for the poorest is what makes a developed country a developed country: a place where one does not die from easily prevented diseases (among other things). Decency isn’t our long suit.

The American Health Care Market Just Became Less Opaque

How much a plate of spaghetti is going to cost you isn’t usually a mystery. Sure, the price can vary quite a bit–from a few cents if you’re making the plate yourself from groceries, to dozens of dollars at a fancy restaurant. You shouldn’t be too surprised by the bill at the end; the price […]

The Fukushima Disaster

Like many of you, I’ve been closely following the developments at the Fukushima reactor complex. Below is a set of links to articles I’ve written for the Stranger, as the events have unfolded. 3/12/2011 Explosion at Fukushima Nuclear Plant, Cesium Detected 3/14/2011 Don’t Panic Geiger Counter Readings Rise in Tokyo 3/15/2011 What’s on Fire at […]

The Gold Standard: Inflation, Wealth and Economic Growth

Conservative commentators have been riling up their audiences recently with lots of talk about America ‘devaluing our money’ and expressing the horrors that befell us after the United States left the Gold Standard in 1972.

Let’s talk macroeconomic theory, and see why they’re wrong.

featuredimage The Health Care Debate

The US healthcare system, in its present state, is a failure. It fails those with and without coverage. We spend more, care for fewer and are sicker than the citizens of any other industrialized nation.

Drugs and Devices

Why are prescription drugs so damn expensive? Or that test your doctor ordered–requiring you to be contorted into some ornate machine–that costs thousands of dollars?

Why Are American Doctors So Damn Expensive?

The salaries of American doctors are huge, terrifying, for anyone trying to bring down health care costs in the United States. Why are American doctors so damn expensive? Medical school is a big part of the answer.

Extraterrestrial Saltwater Ocean on Saturn Moon

Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, probably has a saltwater ocean under it’s surface, at least per an analysis of data from the Cassini probe. Take it away NASA and JPL: For the first time, scientists working on NASA’s Cassini mission have detected sodium salts in ice grains of Saturn’s outermost ring. Detecting salty ice indicates […]

Good Work Dendreon

Dendreon, a Seattle-based biotech startup, just completed a successful phase III trial on an entirely new kind of cancer treatment.

It’s Difficult to Say Nice Things About NDs

A recent column of mine responded to a question/rant about naturopathic medicine: A dear friend of mine is about to enter a prestigious program of naturopathic medicine. There—in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars and five years of his life—he will study homeopathy, osteopathy, water therapy, etc. Apparently, after gaining his ND credential, he […]

Sustainability, Not Fear: What CFCs Can Teach Us About Beating Climate Change

Cliff Mass (meterologist, and a smart man with a consistently different take on global warming issues), makes an interesting point in a recent post: By focusing on global warming as a moral issue (and from his perspective, using scare tactics about the weather to promote concern) environmental activists are failing to convince the public to […]

The American Health Care Market Just Became Less Opaque

How much a plate of spaghetti is going to cost you isn’t usually a mystery. Sure, the price can vary quite a bit–from a few cents if you’re making the plate yourself from groceries, to dozens of dollars at a fancy restaurant. You shouldn’t be too surprised by the bill at the end; the price […]

Bright, Hot, then Cold: The City After Nuclear Blast

Nuclear war offers a multitude of bad ways to die. The bulk of the initial deaths from a nuclear bomb come from the intense heat from the detonation itself, followed by the firestorms triggered by the blast. Extrapolating from the incendiary bomb attacks in World War II (Tokyo and Dresden being among the more infamous), […]

Sustainability, Not Fear: What CFCs Can Teach Us About Beating Climate Change

Cliff Mass (meterologist, and a smart man with a consistently different take on global warming issues), makes an interesting point in a recent post: By focusing on global warming as a moral issue (and from his perspective, using scare tactics about the weather to promote concern) environmental activists are failing to convince the public to […]

Take Your Generosity and Shove It, Buddy

Who would you vote off the island: the selfish ass or the generous spirit? The selfish ass, right? Rational. WSU scientist Craig Parks along with Asako Stone set out to figure out exactly how much loutish behavior a group will tolerate before throwing the selfish out. What they discovered is far more interesting: …we also […]

The Gold Standard: Inflation, Wealth and Economic Growth

Conservative commentators have been riling up their audiences recently with lots of talk about America ‘devaluing our money’ and expressing the horrors that befell us after the United States left the Gold Standard in 1972.

Let’s talk macroeconomic theory, and see why they’re wrong.

The Apollo Guidance Computer

Let’s say you’re a NASA engineer in the 1960s, wearing your snazzy black plastic glasses, thinking of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. You start thinking navigation. Getting into the right orbits is going to take a fair bit of computation–plus some fine control of rocket engines and […]

Every Visit to the Seattle Central Library Reminds Me of the Cheese Shop Sketch

“Customer: It’s not much of a cheese shop, is it? Owner: Finest in the district! Customer: (annoyed) Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please. Owner: Well, it’s so clean, sir! Customer: It’s certainly uncontaminated by cheese….”