Science and Technology

The zoonotic transfer risk

Matt Sanderson’s article, “The risks from bird flu” ( Solidarity 675 ) is right to raise the alarm, and the limitations of current precautions. Since this highly pathogenic strain of the H5N1 subtype of bird flu emerged two years ago, it spread far and wide across bird populations. A particular concern the last half year, beyond the economic impact, and the very small number of humans knowingly infected, is the large number of mammals infected. Thousands or tens of thousands of sea lions seem to have been killed by bird flu in south America this year. Many mink were found infected prior to the...

The risks from bird flu

For the past two years a variant of H5N1 avian influenza (bird flu) has been circulating in wild and domestic bird populations. This strain, particularly transmissible and deadly to birds, started in unaffected geese and ducks (migratory birds). The flu variant has not yet spread in humans; measures to guard against that have included six months where farmed birds have been kept inside and a number of other measures affecting animal welfare. A select few strains of influenza (H1 and H3) can infect humans (and pigs), whilst birds are affected by H5 and H7 influenza. Humans can become ill with...

Getting thermodynamics wrong

Zack Muddle takes up the debate on ecology and entropy after Stuart Jordan’s contribution in Solidarity 672 Thermodynamics is integral to modern science. Devised before atomic theory or relativity, it remains consistent with both, has wide-ranging practical and theoretical uses, and has been applied far beyond its initial domain; from quantum refrigerators to black holes and beyond. Many are tempted to try to wield fundamental and universal scientific laws in service of a particular social theory; to draw a straight line from a seemingly simple physical fact to argued conclusions about complex...

Ecology document (discussed at AWL Conference 2023)

Two years ago we said that we would write a pamphlet on the ecological crises. In the course of attempting that we realised there was a need for further study and discussion. We should use the conference period to discuss the controversial issues that have arisen from this study in more detail, clarify the lines of agreement and disagreement. This document is not intended as a comprehensive statement but simply an attempt to move these discussions forward. I think for a long time we only really thought about climate change as the big ecological problem. More recently we have come to see...

Discussing ecology and entropy

Expanded from the version in the printed paper. Workers’ Liberty organises a monthly Marxist ecology reading group. This month we discussed a chapter on “Entropy and ecological economics” from Marxism and Ecological Economics by Paul Burkett. Over the last three decades, Burkett and his co-thinkers have developed metabolic rift theory and played a significant role in restoring Marx as an important ecological thinker. As part of that project Burkett has engaged in critical dialogue with the ecological economists. The ecological economists emerged in the 1970s but trace their roots back to...

US script writers face long strike

The Writers’ Guild of America, which represents writers for film and TV studios, struck for a new contract from 2 May after 98% of members voted in favour. The WGA strike is the first time unions have raised the issue of generative artificial intelligence (AI), new programs such as Chat-GPT that writers fear could be used to de-skill or downgrade their work by generating plot outlines or possibly even scripts. While discussion still swirls about how exactly they will or should be used, possibly for strike-breaking, the union is insisting that its use should be subject to negotiation with them...

AI’s hidden moderators unionise

On International Workers’ Day, 150 workers, whose labour underpins the AI content moderation systems for some of tech’s biggest players, met in Nairobi to form Africa’s first content moderators’ union. The decision by the workers, employed by third parties variously for Meta, Tiktok, Bytedance and OpenAi, is the culmination of a struggle beginning in 2019 after Daniel Motaung, then working for Sama and contracted to Facebook, was fired for his attempts at unionising the workforce. Motaung, who travelled from South Africa, said: “I never thought, when I started the Alliance in 2019, we would be...

Vaping, smoking, and children

Tobacco smoking causes cancers and a whole range of life-limiting diseases. The active ingredient of tobacco, nicotine [1], is one of the most addictive substances known. As well as denying or suppressing the evidence of smoking harm, tobacco companies have also researched safer ways to deliver nicotine. The problems with smoking are mainly tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide (CO). The invention 20 years ago of the e-cigarette enabled nicotine to be delivered without the tar and CO. In order to deliver nicotine efficiently into the user’s bloodstream (and thence to the brain), e-cigarettes...

Fusion energy: moonshine or sunshine?

A worker explains an imagine showing construction of the interior plasma chamber of an experimental fusion reactor Since the formation of the first stars, fusion of hydrogen into helium has provided abundant energy, with nearly all our energy coming to us as sunshine. Further fusion reactions in exploding stars have produced all the naturally occurring elements making up the planets. Some of the Earth’s internal energy comes from the natural nuclear fission of unstable radioactive elements in the core. Despite Ernest Rutherford’s dismissive comment in 1933, “Anyone who expects a source of...

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