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Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed

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• Notes From California Wildland Fires Past
• Super-Exponentials in CO2 Production
• Edge Question About Shorthand Abstractions: Shifting Baseline Syndrome

Notes From California Wildland Fires Past Posted: 17 Jan 2011 01:34 PM PST A classic piece of wildland fire research from 1974 resurfaces: Title: Can Southern California Wildland Conflagrations be Stopped? Description: In southern California, many fires start and burn under conditions that permit their control with little burned acreage and fire damage. In contrast, under other conditions of weather and topography, on a small group of fires, control effort is relatively ineffective; they become large and destructive. A major reason for these "conflagration fires" is the extreme difficulty of stopping the head of a hot, fast-running fire in dry fuels and strong winds. No radically new concept of suppression can be anticipated. The best prospect for alleviation of the problem is modification of the vegetation to reduce fuel energy output. In a fuel-type mosaic containing large areas of light fuels, where conventional suppression will be effective, potential conflagrations could be brought under control while relatively small. Creation of the fuel-type mosaic will require coordinated area-by-area planning and a variety of techniques. Source: Countryman, C.M. 1974. Can southern California wildland conflagrations be stopped? U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, Berkeley, California. General Technical Report PSW-7. 11 pp.

Super-Exponentials in CO2 Production Posted: 17 Jan 2011 09:57 AM PST Didier Sornette, et al., in a new paper cite evidence of super-exponentials in atmospheric CO2 production: Evidence for super-exponentially accelerating atmospheric carbon dioxide growth Abstract We analyze the growth rates of atmospheric carbon dioxide and human population, by comparing the relative merits of two benchmark models, the exponential law and the finite-time-singular (FTS) power law. The later results from positive feedbacks, either direct or mediated by other dynamical variables, as shown in our presentation of a simple endogenous macroeconomic dynamical growth model. Our empirical calibrations confirm that human population has decelerated from its previous super-exponential growth until 1960 to "just" an exponential growth, but with no sign of more deceleration. As for atmospheric CO2 content, we find that it is at least exponentially increasing and most likely characterized by an accelerating growth rate as off 2009, consistent with an unsustainable FTS power law regime announcing a drastic change of regime. The coexistence of a quasi-exponential growth of human population with a super-exponential growth of car- bon dioxide content in the atmosphere is a diagnostic that, until now, improvements in carbon efficiency per unit of production worldwide has been dramatically insufficient.

Edge Question About Shorthand Abstractions: Shifting Baseline Syndrome Posted: 17 Jan 2011 08:59 AM PST This year's Edge Question was about shorthand abstractions (e.g., evolution, placebos, etc.). John Brockman asked us which ones, if more widely understood, would improve people's cognitive toolkit. My answer was Shifting Baseline Syndrome, but there are plenty of other contributions worth reading too.

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