The UK’s last coal-fired power station closed down forever on Monday night, part of the transformation of its power system towards non-fossil sources. CC-licensed photo by Arran Bee on Flickr.
You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.
There’s another post coming this week at the Social Warming Substack on Friday at 0845 UK time. Free signup.
A selection of 9 links for you. Cleaner. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Coal generation in OECD countries falls below half of its peak • Ember
Dave Jones:
»
Ratcliffe-on-Soar, the UK’s last coal power plant, closes at midnight on the 30th September 2024. And with it, a long chapter of coal power in the UK comes to a rapid close. It’s not just the UK though: many countries around the world expanded coal power and are now in the process of moving away from it.
Among the world’s richest countries, who were the first to embrace coal and will be the first to move away from it, the decline in coal power is rapidly accelerating.
OECD coal generation peaked in 2007, and last year reached half that level for the first time (-52%). Rapid growth in solar and wind was responsible for 87% of the fall in coal during this period. Consequently, coal generation fell to just 17% of the OECD total electricity generation in 2023, down from 36% at its peak in 2007.
The UK is the 14th of 38 OECD countries to achieve a coal-free power system. Among the remaining 24 OECD countries that still have coal-fired electricity, 19 have seen coal power generation fall by at least 30% from its peak in 2007. Only four OECD countries have seen less than a 30% fall in coal from their peak, including South Korea and Japan. Türkiye was the only OECD country to set a new coal power record in 2023.
Of the 38 OECD countries, 13 are targeting a Paris-aligned coal phase-out by 2030, on top of the 14 countries that are already coal-free. Most countries have good plans for expanding wind and solar which means coal power will continue to collapse this decade, even in the 11 countries that have not explicitly committed to a phase-out by 2030.
«
It’s a start!
unique link to this extract
Essential node in global semiconductor supply chain hit by Hurricane Helene • HUNTERBROOK
Sam Koppelman:
»
“The modern economy rests on a single road in Spruce Pine, North Carolina,” wrote Ethan Mollick, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and codirector of its Generative AI Labs, on March 9, 2024.
At the end of this inconspicuous road sit two mines that produce the vast majority of high-purity quartz (HPQ) that is indispensable to the global semiconductor industry. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the horrific damage to the community appears to have extended to the roads and freight rail line connecting the mining operations to the outside world — according to images reviewed and geolocated by Hunterbrook Media.
One video posted to TikTok appeared to show the entrance to one of the structures of the mine — owned by SCR Sibelco NV — underwater, with a text overlay praying for the community. A truck is seen underwater at the entrance to Sibelco’s facility.
In the Appalachian Mountains, the facilities in Spruce Pine supply between an estimated 70% and 90% of the mined and processed HPQ used in the electronics industry. Although it is one of Earth’s most common minerals, quartz in its purest form — such as the white quartz in North Carolina — is much rarer. And pure quartz is a critical component for the production of the silicon wafers necessary for everything from your phone and computer to large language models and solar panels.
If the operations of the two major quartz miners in the region — Sibelco and The Quartz Corp. — are interrupted, experts have said, the consequences could be catastrophic. “If you flew over the two mines in Spruce Pine with a crop duster loaded with a very particular powder, you could end the world’s production of semiconductors and solar panels within six months,” said an industry expert in the acclaimed book Material World by economist Ed Conway.
Conway claims this is because, “no high-purity quartz means no Czochralski crucibles, which means no monocrystalline silicon wafers, which means, well, the end of computer chip manufacture as we know it.”
A Hunterbrook reporter in North Carolina was unable to reach the government in Spruce Pine for comment because the cell signal is still down.
«
Following up on yesterday’s piece. Hedge funds (including Hunterbrook Capital, “attached” to Hunterbrook Media here) are now wondering what the effect will be on, well, everything. But especially the stock market.
unique link to this extract
Google could use small nuclear reactors to power data centres • Power Magazine
Darrell Proctor:
»
[Google CEO Sundar] Pichai said that Google’s goal of being a carbon-neutral company by 2030 will be challenged by the need to develop data centers amid the boom in artificial intelligence (AI). He said that does not mean the group will miss its goal. Google reportedly is putting together a team looking at carbon-free energy alternatives to serve its growing power demand worldwide.
“We are now working on over 1-GW data centers, which I didn’t think we would be thinking about just maybe even two years earlier, and all of this needs energy, ” Pichai said during a talk in Carnegie Mellon’s Highmark Center as part of the university’s 2024-25 President’s Lecture Series. Pichai spoke on “The AI Platform Shift and the Opportunity Ahead,” as he focused his company’s advancements in AI and his vision for a future driven by AI.
“I think in the short term it is challenging,” said Pichai. “In the medium to long term I’m optimistic, because I think it’s also bringing a lot of capital investment to developing new sources of energy. We invested very early in wind and solar because we saw the opportunity there. And today, many of our data centers operate at around 90% carbon-free basis.”
Pichai did not say Google would use SMRs to power its data centers, but noted, “I see the amount of money going into SMRs … for nuclear energy. And so when I look at the capital and innovation going in, I’m optimistic in the medium to long term.”
Those new energy sources include geothermal.
«
I like how the writer’s great enthusiasm for nuclear (you should see the sidebar on the website: if headlines were radioactive, it would achieve fission) means that when Pichai didn’t rule out nuclear, he ruled it in.
unique link to this extract
Griefbots and the perils of digital immortality • The Garden of Forking Paths
Brian Klaas:
»
In late 2012, shortly before Christmas, an old woman sat down in London’s Embankment station. Unlike the other passengers, she wasn’t there to travel. While everyone else ignored the pre-recorded safety announcement, she was eagerly awaiting it. When it came, she was dismayed. Then, she began to cry.
As Tube trains whizzed past, commuters swirling around her, Margaret McCollum wiped tears from her eyes. It had been five years since her husband, Oswald Laurence, had died. But this was the day Margaret felt like he was truly gone forever.
When staff at the station came over to comfort Margaret, they asked her what was wrong. What she told them moved them to tears, too.
She explained that her late husband, Oswald, was an actor. In the late 1960s, he had recorded the “Mind the Gap” announcement for the Northern Line on London’s sprawling underground network. Even after he died in 2007, McCollum could always come to the station, sit on the platform, and listen as her husband’s distinctive, sonorous voice boomed a safety warning to passengers, reminding them about the gap between the train doorway and the platform. It was a ritualized comfort, a tiny audio link to the man she loved and deeply missed.
This time, though, Oswald’s voice had disappeared, replaced in a fresh digital upgrade of the Tube announcements. McCollum’s visceral connection with her husband was gone.
«
This is a paywalled post, but the three examples that are above the wall – including this one – are thought-provoking about our relationship with the dead in the digital world.
unique link to this extract
Epic Games accuses Samsung and Google of scheme to block rivals • Reuters via The Guardian
»
Fortnite video game maker Epic Games on Monday accused Alphabet’s Google and Samsung, the world’s largest Android phone manufacturer, of conspiring to protect Google’s Play store from competition.
Epic filed a lawsuit in US federal court in California alleging that a Samsung mobile security feature called Auto Blocker was intended to deter users from downloading apps from sources other than the Play store or Samsung’s Galaxy store. It’s Epic’s second antitrust suit against Google.
Samsung and Google are violating US antitrust law by reducing consumer choice and preventing competition that would make apps less expensive, said US-based Epic, which is backed by China’s Tencent.
“It’s about unfair competition by misleading users into thinking competitors’ products are inferior to the company’s products themselves,” Tim Sweeney, Epic’s chief executive, told reporters.
“Google is pretending to keep the user safe saying you’re not allowed to install apps from unknown sources. Well, Google knows what Fortnite is as they have distributed it in the past.”
Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Samsung said it planned to “vigorously contest Epic Games’ baseless claims”.
“The features integrated into its devices are designed in accordance with Samsung’s core principles of security, privacy, and user control, and we remain fully committed to safeguarding users’ personal data,” Samsung said in the statement, adding that users have choices to disable Auto Blocker at any time.
«
Reminder that Epic mostly lost to Apple, but mostly won against Google, in an antitrust case because Google favoured some app makers over others in how they were treated in the Google Play store, whereas Apple was brutal to everyone. If Samsung has shown any favouritism, it’s cooked. (In about three years.)
unique link to this extract
AI-assisted reporter • Journalism.co.uk Media jobs
A chance to work for the Hereford Gazette:
»
This is an exciting opportunity for someone passionate about journalism and the potential for AI to contribute to the way we produce and consume news, without losing sight of the importance of quality reporting and writing.
As an AI-assisted reporter, you will have the opportunity to develop your news and technical skills, including learning how to manage and utilise AI technology effectively.
You will play a key role in ensuring that our articles meet the highest standards of accuracy, information, and compliance with media law, plagiarism, and privacy, utilising your journalistic expertise alongside AI tools.
Key responsibilities:
• Check factual accuracy
• Work with an AI system to help write news articles, while also utilising your journalism skills to maintain the quality and authenticity of the content
• Ensure that all content produced meets legal and ethical standards, including those related to media law, plagiarism, privacy, and accuracy
• Efficiently upload and manage stories, using time-saving AI tools and techniques to ensure a seamless process without compromising the quality of the content
• Contribute to the development of AI technology by monitoring the performance of AI-generated content and identifying areas for improvement
• Work closely with our existing editorial teams to help integrate selected AI-generated content into a variety of newsrooms
• Train other reporters in the use of AI technology«
One little note: the advert says this is “part-time (three days a week), home-based”. If it’s home-based how are you going to train those other reporters? I suppose you could do it webcast-style but it seems a pretty grisly way to go about it. The times, they are a-changing.
unique link to this extract
A Logic Named Joe
Murray Leinster:
»
It was on the third day of August that Joe come off the assembly line, and on the fifth Laurine come into town, an’ that afternoon I saved civilization.
«
That’s the opening line of this science fiction short story told by Leinster – real name William F Jenkins, who, it turns out, was Benedict Evans’s grandfather. This story is referenced in a 2017 piece by Evans about how we get predictions about the future wrong because we can’t see how the subtle things will change, so we tend to write about our existing society but with nuclear knobs on.
Yet reading A Logic Named Joe now, seven years after Evans’s original reference to it, I got the feeling that it was describing how people use – or would like to use – LLMs, which of course were not a thing at all seven years ago. (It’s quite an entertaining little story.)
But that might just be our human tendency to retrofit what we think we see in old writing.
unique link to this extract
Mapping time: the surprising overlaps of history’s most influential minds • Big Think
Frank Jacobs:
»
We look back on famous past lives through the prism of those mostly fictitious compartments — labelling one as a scientist, another as a pirate — as if they were as neatly separated from life’s complexities as they are from us by time.
This graph [in the article] perforates that temporal prejudice. Called “The Big Map of Who Lived When,” it shows us which historical figures were contemporaries. The co-aliveness of some of these figures may boggle your mind.
The most satisfying way to use this map is to look for long lives with short overlaps. Like a picture of a great-grandparent holding their great-grandchild, there is something poetic about two lives lived so far apart yet intertwining for a brief period.
The map [in the article] focuses mainly on western luminaries, in seven categories: artists (blue), business & industry (yellow), thinkers (green), entertainers (red), athletes (purple), writers (magenta), and leaders & baddies (black). (Credit: profound_whatever via Reddit/DataIsBeautiful)
Take, for example, current US president Joe Biden (°1942), the oldest serving president to date, who for about a year was alive at the same time as Nikola Tesla (1854-1943), the Serbian-American inventor who developed the alternating current (AC) system that is used for distributing electricity.
Here’s another, more recent (and more baffling) overlap: The life of JRR Tolkien (1892-1973), who wrote The Lord of the Rings, coincided ever so slightly with that of Eminem (°1972), voted in 2015 the third-best rapper of all time.
«
Via Sophie Warnes’s Fair Warning newsletter (like everything, it’s on Substack now): she, like me, can’t believe that Tolkien/Eminem overlap. A terrible prose composer and a great one! You choose which is which.
unique link to this extract
Possible cluster of human bird-flu infections expands in Missouri • The New York Times
Apoorva Mandavilli and Emily Anthes:
»
A possible cluster of bird-flu infections in Missouri has grown to include eight people, in what may be the first examples of person-to-person transmission in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday.
If confirmed, the cases in Missouri could indicate that the virus may have acquired the ability to infect people more easily. Worldwide, clusters of bird flu among people are extremely rare. Most cases have resulted from close contact with infected birds.
Health officials in Missouri initially identified a patient with bird flu who was hospitalized last month with unusual symptoms. The patient may have infected one household member and six health care workers, all of whom developed symptoms, according to the C.D.C.
Investigators have not yet confirmed whether any of those seven individuals were infected with the virus, called H5N1, leaving open the possibility that they had Covid or some other illness with flulike symptoms.
Still, the news alarmed experts.
“We should be very concerned at this point,” said Dr. James Lawler, co-director of the University of Nebraska’s Global Center for Health Security.
“Nobody should be hitting the panic button yet, but we should really be devoting a lot of resources into figuring out what’s going on.”
«
Watching brief, nothing more. (Thanks Joe S for the link.)
unique link to this extract
| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 