Baku-Ceyhan: BP to answer its critics
The proposed Baku to Ceyhan pipeline is a multi-billion dollar project that would open up a whole new oil province to world markets and directly affect the lives of millions of people. It has been criticised in strong terms by some voluntary groups concerned at its potential impact on human rights and the environment (see Globolog The dog of Alcibiades). Globolog has received a detailed response to these concerns from BP, the giant multi-national that leads the consortium promoting the project, and will publish their response early next week following a legal check.
Global grey goo and the Faustus Road
Lima, Peru. Nothing was moving in the huge, congealed mass of traffic. Stuck in the back of a taxi, I had mentally glazed over, and didnt register what the hawker was selling until he had walked by: a Spanish edition of the US blockbuster Who Moved My Cheese?
In the teeming chaos of this third-world mega-city, where millions live desperately, a little bit of positive thinking from a self-help expert 5,000 kilometres away is all you need. The national exchequer has been looted by a tiny clique, impoverishing the entire nation? Someone has destroyed your valley, your community and your livelihood? Get with the program! Look inside yourself and learn to adapt.
Book publishing is not yet a completely globalised industry. US-based players have not achieved full spectrum dominance, but the leaders do seem to have their own version of the Powell doctrine of overwhelming force.
New York-based publishers Simon and Schuster Inc. is surely First Among Equals. Close on the heels of Bush at War(Bob Woodwards hagiography of CIA Chief George Tenet thinly disguised as a hagiography of George W. Bush) comes Michael Crichtons new book Prey, published on 25 November. The marketing campaign is military in its precision and pre-emptive in its boldness: a continent-wide, multi-pronged initiative designed to extract the fastest possible return on the reported $30m payment for world English-language rights.
Not all weird science is fictionPrey is a science thriller about a predatory swarm of nanoparticles that threaten the world. It sensationalises the grey goo scenario in which a tide of microscopic artificial self-replicating devices turn everything they come across into more copies of themselves. Think Midas only grey and gooey.
So much for publishers. Is there an analogue in scientific reality? A little while ago Bill Joy, an eminent computer scientist, made what looks like a case as to Why the Future Doesnt Need Us. Joys arguments - surely one of Crichtons inspirations - are compelling to read, but should be taken in a wider context.
Even if Joys nano-horror scenario starts to look fanciful, the awesome power of technology in some form remains a real concern. If it isnt nanotechnology that gets us, what about computers that out-think humanity and enslave it? Cyber engineer Ray Kurzweil explored this possibility in The Age of Spiritual Machines(published four years ago, and still one of the best guides to the topic).
But the top candidate for techno-terror of the month is surely biotechnology. Recent advances (many of them harmless in themselves in that they are not being undertaken with weaponisation in mind), stir deep unease among many people. The dreams of reason spark fearful imaginings. And there is no shortage of developments for the imagination to grip onto.
If you believe Dr Severino Antinori and the Realians, the birth of the first cloned human being is imminent - January 2003. Of course, if you believe that youll believe anything. But back on Planet Earth scientists really are engaging in the most extraordinary acts of metamorphosis. Earlier this summer a team led by a man from Fausts old university created a polio virus from scratch arguably the first artificial creation of life. This week another team said it plans to merge stem cells to brew a viable product that is part man, part mouse. And a few days ago Craig Venter (the man who wanted to patent the human genome) announced plans to create artificial microbes that will save the world by gobbling up greenhouse gases and producing endless hydrogen - the ultimate clean fuel.
The proposal by Dr Venter and his colleagues is at the outer bounds of credibility. Their new life form would rest on a series of extraordinary breakthroughs. First, they would have to create a single-celled organism with the minimum number of genes necessary for replication (it is likely to resemble a naturally existing organism named M. genitalium- just dont make any comments about the size, OK?). Then, once this entity existed, its genome would have to be manipulated to break down carbon dioxide or produce hydrogen at rates unseen over billions of years of natural evolution.
The idea of using munching and belching microbes to prevent global warming has been around for quite some time. Unless the Venter team can speed up the metabolism of such micro-organisms to a quite amazing degree, it would take prodigious quantities, occupying vast areas, to absorb a small fraction of man-made greenhouse gases emissions. Then there is the wider question of planetary engineering tinkering with the vast, highly complex and interlocking feedbacks in Earth systems such as the atmosphere. This would be a brave venture, probably best undertaken when you have several other planets to use as controls and to fall back on in case things go wrong with your experiment.
Nevertheless, the proposal was enough to land Venter and his colleagues (who include Dr Hamilton Smith, a Nobel Laureate for his work in genetics) $3m in research funds from the US government. There may be unexpected benefits arising from what they do. The industrial world is already performing a huge experiment with the Earths climate, altering atmospheric chemistry at a rate unprecedented in millions of years. The sheer enormity of the possible consequences suggests that no options in dealing with climate change should be foreclosed so long as experiments proceed with extreme precaution, have a less than vanishingly small risk of having any irreversible effects, and are accountable to the worlds peoples.
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