Sunday, April 29, 2012
Fukushima: Hanging by a Thread
After writing my essay “Radioactive Hell on Earth”—actually I wanted to change that title to “Fukushima on Steroids”—I see Christina Consolo’s essay “Fukushima is Falling Apart”:
Are you ready—it is becoming clear that we, our children and our entire civilization is hanging by a thread. It is a very sorry thing to report that we have literally shot ourselves in the foot with a big nuclear shotgun full of radioactive particles of the worst conceivable kind.
It has taken a year but finally “a U.S. Senator finally got off his ass and went to Japan to see what is going on over there. What he saw was horrific. Reactor No. 4 building is on the verge of collapsing.
Seismicity standards rate the building at a zero, meaning even a small earthquake could send it into a heap of rubble. And sitting at the top of the building, in a pool that is cracked, leaking, and precarious even without an earthquake, are 1,565 fuel rods.”
If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain, this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire that could wipe out most of the northern hemisphere; certainly it would be a massive civilization-breaking event.
After an onsite tour of what remains of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear facilities, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a senior member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, sent a letter to Japanese Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki saying, “The scope of damage to the plants and to the surrounding area was far beyond what I expected.
The precarious status of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear units and the risk presented by the enormous inventory of radioactive materials and spent fuel in the event of further earthquake threats should be of concern to all and a focus of greater international support and assistance.”
Friday, April 27, 2012
Insanity: CISPA Just Got Way Worse, And Then Passed On Rushed Vote
Up until this afternoon, the final vote on CISPA was supposed to be tomorrow. Then, abruptly, it was moved up today—and the House voted in favor of its passage with a vote of 248-168. But that's not even the worst part.
The vote followed the debate on amendments, several of which were passed. Among them was an absolutely terrible change (pdf and embedded below—scroll to amendment #6) to the definition of what the government can do with shared information, put forth by Rep. Quayle. Astonishingly, it was described as limiting the government's power, even though it in fact expands it by adding more items to the list of acceptable purposes for which shared information can be used. Even more astonishingly, it passed with a near-unanimous vote. The CISPA that was just approved by the House is much worse than the CISPA being discussed as recently as this morning.
Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for "cybersecurity" or "national security" purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA.
Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a "cybersecurity crime". Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. Moreover, the government could do whatever it wants with the data as long as it can claim that someone was in danger of bodily harm, or that children were somehow threatened—again, notwithstanding absolutely any other law that would normally limit the government's power.
Somehow, incredibly, this was described as limiting CISPA, but it accomplishes the exact opposite. This is very, very bad.
There were some good amendments adopted too—clarifying some definitions, including the fact that merely violating a TOS does not constitute unauthorized network access—but frankly none of them matter in the light of this change. CISPA is now a completely unsupportable bill that rewrites (and effectively eliminates) all privacy laws for any situation that involves a computer. Far from the defense against malevolent foreign entities that the bill was described as by its authors, it is now an explicit attack on the freedoms of every American.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
U.S.-backed Internet restrictions could be destroyed in France
François Hollande, the French socialist candidate expected to best President Nicholas Sarkozy following the national runoff election held Sunday, told national media recently that he would replace the country’s harsh Internet restrictions with a wholly different scheme that strengthens the relationship between artists and their fans.
The French Internet law, strongly supported by Sarkozy, bans users from going online for one year after three individual violations of copyright law. U.S. industry played a key role in lobbying for the “Creation and Internet law,” whereas French socialists played a key role in opposing it.
The law created an Internet regulator called the “High Authority of Diffusion of the Art Works and Protection of the Rights on the Internet” (HADOPI), with the aim of detecting up to 150,000 incidents of copyright infringement per day and intercepting individual users with messages about the consequences of piracy, up to and including a year of disconnection for a third offense.
And that’s precisely what Hollande said he wants to end.
Speaking to French film website AlloCiné last month, Hollande said that HADOPI sows “injustice” by disconnecting people from the Internet. “Further, I don’t consider piracy to be a minor problem,” he reportedly said. “That’s why I’m proposing to replace HADOPI by voting on a law based on Act 2 of the Cultural Exception which will guarantee financing of French cinema and protection of authors’ rights. I want to break with destructive simplism that has not solved anything and which has uselessly contributed to separating artists from their audience. There is no simple solution, but a new model to be invented.”
Weather Derivatives: Hedging on Mother Nature
For some industries, the weather plays a significant role in determining revenue. Unexpected weather events can often cause significant financial losses. For instance, a drought can yield a severe impact on an agribusiness’ amount and quality of produce; unseasonably mild winters can similarly diminish the profit margins of utility companies. So, how can companies – particularly those at the mercy of Mother Nature – protect themselves against the elements and limit their exposure to financial risk?
Increasingly, companies have been managing weather risk by using derivatives, which provide the means for businesses to protect themselves against adverse financial affects that are due to variations in climate. According to industry body, the Weather Risk Management Association, trading volume of weather derivatives in 2010-2011 increased by 20 percent on the previous year.
How it Works
Derivative contracts generally represent a contract to trade a specified quantity of an underlying asset, at an agreed price and time. By making a payment to a separate company that will assume the financial weather risk for them, organizations are buying a type of insurance: the company assuming the risk will pay the purchaser a pre-set amount of money that will correspond to the loss or cost increase caused by the disruptive weather. As such, risk exposure can be managed in a wide range of settings.
Weather derivatives derive their value from climatic conditions such as temperature, snowfall, hurricanes or rainfall. An important set of contracts traded at CME Group are temperature-based futures contracts. Contracts are offered for trade based on the temperature across a range of U.S., European and Australian cities such as Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
The most common of these contracts come in the form of either Heating Degree Day (HDD) or Cooling Degree Day (CDD) contracts. The payoff of these contracts is based on the cumulated difference in daily temperatures relative to 18⁰C (about 64⁰F) over a fixed period such as a month. The fixed level of 18⁰C is the temperature at which the energy sector believes little heating or cooling occurs in households. The buyer of a HDD or CDD contract benefits from a positive payoff if cumulative temperature is below or above a specified level. While this nomenclature may seem counter-intuitive, heating (or cooling) occurs when temperatures are lower (higher).
Major participants in this market include utilities and insurance companies, whose costs and or revenues are dependent upon weather conditions. In an Australian setting, an electricity supplier normally provides its customers with electricity at a fixed price irrespective of the wholesale price in the National Electricity Market. However, the wholesale price of electricity can fluctuate wildly with extreme weather conditions. CDD contracts can provide a hedging tool for such fluctuations in electricity prices in the wholesale market during periods of extremely high temperatures. Similar arguments apply in the northern hemisphere, where utilities face risk from increased demand during periods of low temperatures and hence HDD contracts are a natural hedging tool.
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