Drone Makers: "What's A Little Risk For A Jumbo Jet Getting A Drone Into An Engine?"

To read the evident caterwauling of the drone makers and their delirious aficionados ('Drone Makers Fight Back Against Rules,  WSJ,  June 12, p. B5) one would think there's absolutely no big deal in terms of the risk the little mechanical beasties pose to planes.  Indeed, it now appears, the drone maker lobbies have even gotten to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to carry their  PR 'water' for them.  This is in a new report which takes the FAA to task  for its "near zero tolerance for risk involving airlines".  That is, with potential for collision with small drones flying at low altitudes near airports.   (The report insists most small drones fly away from airports, but the existing stats refute that).

A  Denver Post, piece: 'Drone Close Calls'(June 25th, 2014,  p. 17A)   referenced dozens of perilous close calls, e.g.(p. 22A):

"The close calls were the latest in a rash of dangerous encounters between civilian aircraft and drones flown in contravention of FAA rules intended to safeguard U.S. airspace.."

The accumulating incidents (which btw,  have continued)  so spooked one commercial pilot (Greg Cromer) that he actually wrote a letter to the FAA opposing the whole insane idea of opening U.S. airspace to these pestiferous interlopers, writing (ibid.):

 "I can see no way to prevent a collision with something that could be as small as a bird or a plane or kitchen appliance."

Even then, Michael Kratsios - the  then White House deputy chief technology adviser- bloviated to a federal- industry drone conference:

"The U.S. cannot allow the promise of tomorrow to be hamstrung by the bureaucracy of the past"

Oh, righto, the "promise" of catastrophic new commercial jet crashes. Forgetting or ignoring that part of that "bureaucracy" - ensconced in the FAA - has also been to ensure the safety of the flying public.

So now the 'chickens' of disputed risk are coming back to roost with ever increasing pressure for the FAA to give in, and then - when the first big drone- airliner collision results in hundreds killed- there will be the usual bullshit response, "Well, we never knew that could occur!"

But as with the case of mass shooting massacres (like in Vegas and Parkland) - which often surpass terror attacks in death tolls, we seem to pick and choose which modes of loss of life are acceptable (say for the sake of profits) and which aren't.  In the case of mass shootings using AR-15s or a possible drone-airline collision,  it is the profits of gun and drone makers that need protection. In the case of the standard 'Muslim radical" attack that takes lives, we're all hands on deck and man the barricades and everything else.  After all, it's just a brown guy (usually) with a bomb or rifle that needs taking down, so ...no big loss. Right?

The recent report is also at odds with an earlier report released June 5, 2014  by the National Academy of Sciences, which concluded that "there were serious unanswered questions” about how to safely integrate civilian drones into the national airspace, calling it a “critical, crosscutting challenge." 

In addition, a NASA report from the same year notes:  "the NASA database confirms that dangerous brushes between drones and passenger aircraft are more common than the FAA acknowledges." According to the database, there were 50 incidents from 2005- 2014.  That number of incidents has quadrupled since, including potential disasters.   Meanwhile, drone sightings alone by pilots have increased ten times over since 2005. 

All of this shows the risks are real and not to be minimized by greedy lobbyists,  cockeyed hobbyists, poltroons, or bought- out agencies.    Nevertheless, the ongoing efforts in many venues is to do just that including one hub of  academic minimizers at a site called 'The Conversation' who blabbed:

"The FAA has raised the alarm about drones in the airspace, and now receives over 100 reports of unmanned aircraft flying near other manned aircraft or airports per month. However, as the Academy of Model Aeronautics has noted, many of these sightings do not reflect any danger to passengers. Analyzing 921 reported incidents, a study at Bard College found that in only 158 of them did a drone come within 200 feet of a manned aircraft. In only 28 incidents did pilots even decide to take evasive action."

Well, excuse me, Ivory tower Sparkies - but within 200' qualifies as a near collision!   And "only 28 instances of evasive action" could have been 28 collisions had such action not been taken!  Also it is foolish to compare a bird strike to a drone colliding with an engine. A bird is mostly feathers and with no hard, mechanical parts. While such strikes can indeed be nasty - as Capt. Sully Sullenberger learned, they need not be deadly like a hard metal contraption sucked into a jet engine would be!

This same sort of inane, deranged thinking - driven by greed and expedient myopia- was reflected in a remark by George Ligler, chairman of the committee that drafted the latest document (ibid.):

"We do not ground airplanes because birds fly in the airspace although birds can and do bring down aircraft"

True, but again,  birds are natural creatures to this world not invented monstrosities that can be set alight with an infernal capacity for deliberate nuisance effect and calamity! Also, the level of catastrophic incident would be much much greater if a metallic drone flies into a jet engine, fragmenting its lethal blades. Birds are one thing and part of the natural order, but as I pointed out before, millions of mechanical, man-made drones should not be allowed to fly ANYWHERE  near a commercial airspace- until ironclad regs are in place to control them. 

And those regulations ought to demand that drones and drone operators obey the same rules as commercial aircraft. Yes, it is indeed a steep demand - but it is consistent with the peril and calamity of a drone-commercial aircraft collision. The precautionary principle itself demands drone operators prove their craft are safe - before they can fly at altitudes that imperil commercial craft.

Let the drone makers, Wall Street and others bark, whine and yap about too slow a pace for  "accelerating" the flying of millions more drones, the FAA needs to sustain a backbone, stand firm and tell them 'NO!'

Retiring NAS President Livid Over Climate Deniers & The Political Polarization Spawned

Retiring National Academy of Sciences President Ralph Cicerone expressed anger regarding partisanship associated with climate change.

In an interview in Eos: Earth & Space Science News (12 August, p. 5) retiring President of the National Academy of Sciences Ralph Cicerone  denounced the continued political polarization associated with climate change as "a threat to science".  Indeed it is, because if uninformed people are just allowed to pick and choose their own versions of science, totally rejecting the scientific method and current foundations, then what we get is a free for all. And in that case, the very survival of our science not to mention the human and other inhabitants of the planet,  may be at stake. Cicerone's point is that rapidly changing climatic conditions from melting glaciers to rising sea levels are nothing to be toyed with, or used for exercises in phony rhetoric.

Cicerone, in a brief published interview with Eos, asserted he was especially disappointed with the ongoing "rabid partisanship surrounding climate change". A lot of that disappointment has to single out his fellow citizens who remain proudly defiant in their scientific ignorance and repeatedly display confounding chutzpah. This is in respect to invoking a specious brand of economics (market fundamentalism)   to attempt to overturn sound climate science and replace it with pseudo science.

Cicerone's disgust extends to the recent congressional  "show trial" grilling of climate experts and officials, as well as moves to limit geoscience funding at the National Science Foundation and elsewhere.  He observed:

"The most frustrating thing has been these political developments around climate change. We are trashing our institutions.. For example, the antigovernment feelings that anything the federal government touches is somehow dirty and wasteful and somehow morally wrong. That drive me crazy."

Well, it drives me crazy too, especially when I see a lot of it emanating from putative high I.Q. societies like Mensa and Intertel wherein you'd expect the members to have more than air between the ears. A case in point has been how some of these denizens use their political ideology (Libertarianism) as a cudgel to try to undermine the value of any governmental investigations of anthropogenic climate change.

I noted one of these supposed high I.Q. characters, Kort Patterson of Intertel, who actually wrote in his  Region 7 Newsletter (Port of Call, June/July 2016, p. 6)

"Many people continue to believe the lies and demand that Western Industrial Civilization commit cultural suicide by adopting the crippling constraints sought by the global warming conspirators."

This foolish curmudgeon actually attempts to turn the tables on the real scientists, painting them as the liars when it is his politically brainwashed  (and scientifically illiterate) lot who are sowing the disinformation and  half-baked conspiracy theories about "global warming alarmism".  See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/06/intertels-kort-patterson-conjures-wacko.html

With belligerent nuts like Patterson slamming the science it's no wonder many of the more uninformed and weaker -minded will tag along, believing him to be some kind of voice "crying in the wilderness". This, as opposed to seeing he's more a semi-educated poppet with too much time on his hands from his computer tech job.

The most damnable and irritating aspect of these "high I.Q." Libbie looneytunes is their penchant for misusing their own intelligence to condemn legitimate scientific research instead of making a fair effort to understand it. As I noted in a previous blog post (on the "Intelligent Irrationalists") this lot finds it more to their liking to simply avoid doing the hard research into climate change. They evidently lack the time (or inclination) to evaluate every piece of relevant evidence that comes before them (say ice cores containing CO2) so basically punt. Instead of rationally and objectively evaluating the evidence they side with the top bananas in their political group in using a dime store grasp of economics to lambaste standard science.

None of them, I warrant, could pass even a basic 1st year college test on thermal physics the foundation for understanding basic climate change and global warming, see e.g. this test:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2009/12/thermal-physics-test-for-skeptics.html

At the same time, they have outsized influence on others thinking, especially those ensconced in the high I.Q. organizations. For some reason, probably the lure of the "individualist" or "liberty" cachet, they draw many of like mind too line up behind their ignorance. 

But it's maddening to those of us who understand the actual science, and even more infuriating to be called "frauds" and "alarmists" by these semi-literate nincompoops who don't know an atmospheric forcing component from a Btu.

Cicerone himself was just as livid as he responded to one question (ibid.):

"I did not see the severity of the attacks on science coming. I'm still hoping it's going to go away quickly, but it's been hard to deal with because it has raised a whole set of questions. When do we have to stand up and say that all of science is being tarred with the same brush."

The problem, of course, is that arguing logically or rationally with climate change deniers is as fruitless and futile as arguing with evolution deniers. In each case, a firm commitment to personal beliefs trumps the science and assumes priority in the denier's mind. This is exactly what we mean by false belief syndrome: a person so threatened by the indisputable facts of the science (whether Darwinian evolution or climate science) that he feels compelled to erect an elaborate psychological defense for security. Within this defensive psychological perimeter he will use fake science (and assorted contrarian clowns)  to defend his beliefs to the bitter end. Given this, no amount of factual appeal will change his mind.

"You'll have to pry these beliefs from my cold, dead brain!"

If this is the case, and I believe that it is,  then the political polarization and antagonism to science will not end quickly.  We can stand up to the nonsense and ignorance, of course, and even try to be patient with the more rational  elements of  the denier contingent. But ultimately it boils down to a choice:  the preservation of science or elevating the ignorance inherent in denialism to an art form. In that case, I stand with the preservation of science and take out my verbal sword to use on the deniers every chance I get.

Why The Increased Deaths For Middle-Aged White Americans?

Graph showing trend of U.S. death rate for middle-aged whites vs. those in other nations.

What's going on with middle-aged, poorly-educated whites in the US of A, dying at a yearly rate (from 1999 - 2013) now rivaling that of HIV/AIDS?  (Before 1999, this demographic had enjoyed 2 percent per yr. lowered death rates.) Sociologists have to inquire - as do curious inquiring citizens - given that unlike every other age group, or every other racial and ethnic group - and most notably - unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, the death rates in this group have been rising, not falling.

That disturbing mortality finding was reported Monday by two Princeton economists, Angus Deaton, who last month won the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, and Anne Case. Analyzing health and mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from other sources, they concluded that rising annual death rates among this group are being driven not by the big killers like heart disease and diabetes but by an epidemic of suicides and afflictions stemming from substance abuse: alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids.

What the hell gives? Why are Americans perishing so much more than Europeans in the same age range? Is it that life is much harder, wages and benefits too low? Addictions too great?

The analysis by Drs. Deaton and Case offers the most rigorous evidence to date of both the causes and implications of a development that has been puzzling demographers in recent years: the declining health and fortunes of poorly educated , middle-aged American whites.  Note they are now dying at such a high rate that they are increasing the death rate for the entire group of middle-aged white Americans, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case found.

The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014. In a commentary on the Deaton-Case analysis that was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, two Dartmouth economists, Ellen Meara and Jonathan S. Skinner, wrote:

“It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude,”

Samuel Preston, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on mortality trends, not involved in the research, exclaimed:

“Wow.  This is a vivid indication that something is awry in these American households.”

The parallel invoked bv Dr. Deaton was H.I.V./AIDS  the only thing in contemporary times " that has done anything like this,” he said.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

In contrast, the death rate for middle-aged blacks and Hispanics continued to decline during the same period, as did death rates for younger and older people of all races and ethnic groups.

Drs. Deaton and Case (husband and wife) said they stumbled on their finding by accident, looking at a variety of national data sets on mortality rates and federal surveys that asked people about their levels of pain, disability and general ill health.

Dr. Deaton was looking at statistics on suicide and happiness, skeptical about whether states with a high happiness level have a low suicide rate. (They do not, he discovered; in fact, the opposite is true.) Dr. Case was interested in poor health, including chronic pain because she has suffered for 12 years from disabling and untreatable lower back pain.

Dr. Deaton noticed in national data sets that middle-aged whites were committing suicide at an unprecedented rate and that the all-cause mortality in this group was rising. But suicides alone, he and Dr. Case realized, were not enough to push up overall death rates, so they began looking at other causes of death. That led them to the discovery that deaths from drug and alcohol poisoning also increased in this group.

Dr. Case, investigating indicators of poor health, found that middle-aged people, unlike the young and unlike the elderly, were reporting more pain in recent years than in the past. A third in this group reported they had chronic joint pain over the years 2011 to 2013, and one in seven said they had sciatica. Those with the least education reported the most pain and the worst general health.

Also, not too surprising, the least educated also had the most financial distress, Dr. Meara and Dr. Skinner noted in their commentary. In the period examined by Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case, the inflation-adjusted income for households headed by a high school graduate fell by 19 percent.

Dr. Case found that the number of whites with mental illnesses and the number reporting they had difficulty socializing increased in tandem. Along with that, increasing numbers of middle-aged whites said they were unable to work. She also saw matching increases in the numbers reporting pain and the numbers reporting difficulty socializing, difficulty shopping, difficulty walking for two blocks.

In the WSJ today, the connection of this group of Americans has also now been tied to the proportion no longer participating in the labor force. In other words, these pain-plagued, lower educated 45-54 year olds are contributing to the lower labor participation rate in that age group.

With the pain and mental distress data, Dr. Deaton said, “we had the two halves of the story.” Increases in mortality rates in middle-aged whites rose in parallel with their increasing reports of pain, poor health and distress, he explained. They provided a rationale for the increase in deaths from substance abuse and suicides.

Dr. Preston of the University of Pennsylvania noted that the National Academy of Sciences had published two monographs reporting that the United States had fallen behind other rich countries in improvements in life expectancy. One was on mortality below age 50 and the other on mortality above age 50. He coedited one of those reports. But, he said, because of the age divisions, the researchers analyzing the data missed what Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case found hiding in plain sight.

Ronald D. Lee, professor of economics, professor of demography and director of the Center on Economics and Demography of Aging at the University of California, Berkeley, was among those taken aback by what Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case discovered.

“Seldom have I felt as affected by a paper. It seems so sad.”

Sad indeed that a half million more people died in the 14-year time interval that shouldn't have, according to one economist.

My own take is that this group is one that has been majorly left behind in the Neoliberal economy so that the one percenters can grab more of the national 'cake'. This is yet another reason to vote for Bernie Sanders, without whom the death rate for these middle-aged folks will likely triple.  Bear in mind that to make ends meet many have had to hold two or more jobs to get a living wage - especially to pay for housing. Years of that kind of labor are bound to wear out their backs, lead to addictive behavior and even serious medical problems. And now, they've been warned by the repukes that Medicare eligibility is "on the block" and ought to be delayed until 68 or 70. No wonder they see little hope for life quality betterment.