The climate solution actually adding millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere

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The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology A problematic solution 04.29.21

Good morning! Today: California's climate "solution" is actually adding millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, the US will have to rebuild trust in the Johnson & Johnson covid-19 vaccine, how technology gave Los Angeles purpose and possibility, and a new podcast episode on how AI is finding its voice. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. The climate solution actually adding millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere   Along the coast of Northern California near the Oregon border, the cool, moist air off the Pacific sustains a strip of temperate rainforests. Soaring redwoods and Douglas firs dominate these thick, wet woodlands, creating a canopy hundreds of feet high. But if you travel inland the mix of trees gradually shifts. Beyond the crest of the Klamath Mountains, you descend into an evergreen medley of sugar pines, incense cedars, and still more Douglas firs. As you continue into the Cascade Range, you pass through sparser forests dominated by Ponderosa pines. These tall, slender trees with prickly cones thrive in the hotter, drier conditions on the eastern side of the state.  All trees consume carbon dioxide, releasing the oxygen and storing the carbon in their trunks, branches, and roots. Every ton of carbon sequestered in a living tree is a ton that isn’t contributing to climate change. And that thick coastal forest can easily store twice as much carbon per acre as the trees deeper inland. This math is crucial to determining the success of California’s forest offset program, which seeks to reduce carbon emissions by preserving trees. The state established the program a decade ago as part of its efforts to combat climate change. But ecology is messy. The boundaries between forest types are nebulous, and the actual amount of carbon on any given acre depends on local climate conditions, conservation efforts, logging history, and more. California’s top climate regulator, the Air Resources Board, glossed over much of this complexity in implementing the state’s program. The agency established fixed boundaries around giant regions, boiling down the carbon stored in a wide mix of tree species into simplified, regional averages.  That decision has generated tens of millions of carbon credits with dubious climate value, according to a new analysis by CarbonPlan, a San Francisco nonprofit that analyzes the scientific integrity of carbon removal efforts. Read the full story.  —James Temple and Lisa Song The J&J vaccine is back. Next comes trust.  What’s happening: Last week US regulators recommended resuming use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, after deciding that a side effect involving blood clots was too rare to justify continuing the suspension. But even though the pause lasted just 11 days, it raised new concerns about whether Americans will trust vaccinations. Recent polling shows that confidence in the Johnson & Johnson shot in particular is very low, with 73% of unvaccinated people saying they wouldn’t accept a dose if offered. The challenge: The hiatus could pose new challenges for health-care providers, public health departments, and other government officials working to get everyone vaccinated. Restoring lost confidence is going to take time and effort. However, some point out that the pause could in fact make people feel even more secure—if government officials can communicate the message effectively. Read the full story. —Mia Sato Three visitors on why they see Los Angeles as a machine Los Angeles is vast and practically formless, a city so unlike any other that it can hardly be called a city at all. That, at least, is the impression the past few decades of writing on the Southern California metropolis has tended to offer. Hardened into received wisdom, this presumption is now repeated even by astute contemporary observers. But there’s more to LA than that tired critique suggests. To see Los Angeles clearly, one needs to go half a century into the past, when three writers came to take the measure of what was then the fastest-growing city in the rich world. Though each brought a distinctive and formidable stock of world experience and historical knowledge, all came to understand postwar Los Angeles by recognizing how technology gave the city both purpose and possibility. Read the full story. —Colin Marshall This story is from the latest edition of MIT Technology Review, all about cities. Check out the full magazine, and if you haven't yet, subscribe! Podcast: AI finds its voice Today’s voice assistants are still a far cry from the hyper-intelligent thinking machines we’ve been musing about for decades. And it’s because that technology is actually the combination of three different skills: speech recognition, natural language processing and voice generation.  Each of these skills already presents huge challenges. And because most AI models train their skillset on thousands or millions of existing examples, they end up replicating patterns within historical data—including our biases. In this latest episode of our award-winning podcast, In Machines We Trust, we explore how machines learn to communicate—and what it means for the humans on the other end of the conversation. I’m in it towards the end, exploring how we’re starting to be able to capture the voices of our loved ones so we can continue talking to them after they pass away. Freaky. Check it out! We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + Dolphins recognize each other by their whistles, much like how we use names.   + When a cat says it's playtime, it's playtime.    + A Russian man who ended up "trapped" on a Chinese reality TV show has finally been voted off.   + Sweden is a stunning country all year round. Take a virtual trip. (NYT $)   + A German bomb squad was called in to investigate a grenade that turned out to not quite be all it seemed.   + Martin Scorsese's latest work. SPONSOR MESSAGE Defend against cyber-threats with AI Darktrace AI identifies malicious activity hiding in your digital ecosystem and acts autonomously to neutralize the threat. Find out why McLaren relies on self-learning AI to detect and disrupt cyber-attacks at machine-speed. Learn more > TAKE A STAND The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 India recorded almost 380,000 new covid-19 cases today Experts predict it could top 500,000 a day before the worst of the current crisis passes. (The Hindustan Times)   + India passed the 18 million covid-19 cases mark. (Reuters $)   + Facebook blocked, then restored, posts calling for India's prime minister to resign. (WSJ $)   + Scientists say there is not enough data yet to blame variants. (NYT $)   + How to end India's nightmare. (UnHerd)   + The US has advised its citizens to leave India "as soon as it is safe." (The Guardian)  2 How Pfizer makes its vaccine This walks you through every step, all the way through to getting it into people's arms. (NYT $)   + Brazilian health regulators issued a scathing rejection of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine. (WP $)   + A CDC study found the mRNA vaccines are 94% effective in keeping the over-65s out of hospital. (Axios)  3 Will the pandemic push us to tackle inequality? Vast, and growing, inequality has made the covid-19 crisis much worse than it needed to be. (Nature)   + Air pollution disproportionately kills people of color. (Axios)  4 Elon Musk vs the regulators Rules and laws are for the little people. (NYT $)   5 Beefing over beef is a big climate change distraction 🐄 Focusing on individual responsibility lets us dodge the actual systemic change we need. (The Verge)   + Simply telling people to stop eating meat is not going to work. (TR)   + Renewable energy is suddenly startlingly cheap. (New Yorker $)   + The Senate has reinstated Obama-era controls on methane. (NYT $)  6 Schools use software that blocks LGBTQ+ content, but not racism These algorithms simply don’t work—and offer a false sense of security. (Motherboard)   7 How long can humans live? We’re living longer, but remarkably few ever make it beyond 115. Have we hit a ceiling? (NYT $)   8 How the brain monitors the immune system 🧠 Immune cells patrol the sidelines until they detect a threat. (Quanta)   9 The Olympics is launching a virtual series  Dust off your rowing machines. (The Guardian)   10 RIP Michael Collins, the "third man" of the moon landing 🧑‍🚀 He stayed up in lunar orbit as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their famous walk below. (NYT $) Are you intellectually curious? Tech-obsessed? We are too.   Get an insightful look into the technology of the future without getting bogged down by the jargon. Subscribe to MIT Technology Review today (subscriptions start at just $50 per year). QUOTE OF THE DAY "What we are witnessing is not criminal negligence, but an outright crime against humanity." —Novelist Arundhati Roy pins the blame for India's covid-19 crisis squarely on the government in a piece for The Guardian. Top image credit: Jon Han Please send dolphins' whistles to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up today Leading a forever-changed workforce Join us virtually | June 8-10, 2021 Register now

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