Al Hammond - Chestertown Spy

The Transportation Revolution by Al Hammond

June 8, 2020 by Al Hammond

If you are thinking of buying a new car or light truck anytime soon, you may want to reconsider. That’s because conventional gasoline-powered vehicles are about to become technologically obsolete and economically uncompetitive—which means it will become progressively harder to find gas stations to refuel them, mechanics to repair them, or buyers for used vehicles when you want to sell.

One cause of this transformation is the impending surge in the production of electric cars and trucks by every major manufacturer. These electric models—apart from the cost of the batteries that power them—are already cheaper to produce (many fewer parts) and maintain than those with internal combustion engines. The batteries themselves are about to see dramatic improvements that will increase their driving range on a single charge to 600 miles or more, reduce the time required to recharge them, increase their lifetime, and lower their cost—which in turn will make electric vehicles less expensive to buy and far less expensive to operate than comparable gasoline-powered models. Indeed, Tony Seba, a Stanford University economist, has published estimates that electric vehicles will soon be 90% cheaper to operate than gas-powered cars, taking into account the cost of fuel and repairs over the lifetime of the vehicle. All these changes add up to one thing: gas-powered vehicles may no longer make economic sense.

A second major technology-driven shift is the coming scale-up of autonomous or “self-driving” vehicles that use multiple sensors to detect roads, traffic signals, driving conditions, and other vehicles, combined with artificial intelligence tools to interpret this data instantaneously and guide the vehicle accordingly. That will save lives: human drivers make mistakes that cause nearly 40,000 fatalities and 4 million injuries per year in the U.S. alone. The proliferation of self-driving vehicles will also mean that people can potentially use their travel time to do other things.

More importantly, many people won’t need or want to buy a car at all—they will summon a self-driving vehicle to take them where they want to go. This revolution—often called Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS)—will happen in urban areas first, reducing traffic congestion and air pollution. Already Waymo (owned by Google) has driven autonomous vehicles over 20 million miles without any accidents and has completed 100,000 self-driving rides in its test city, Phoenix, Arizona; it is buying another 60,000 self-driving vehicles to use there, which may enable it to provide half of all the local travel needs for that city. Waymo is not alone: a company called Aptiv has also completed 100,000 self-driving rides in Las Vegas and is starting service in several other U.S. cities.

For those of us that live in small towns or rural areas and can’t imagine not having a vehicle in the driveway or carport, the TaaS transformation may seem irrelevant, but we will nonetheless be affected by it. Among other changes, TaaS combined with electric vehicles will disrupt the car insurance business, lower the revenue that governments get from gasoline taxes, save families that can avoid buying a car lots of money, and lower the cost of shipping goods (because of self-driving trucks). TaaS will change the value of homes and other real estate (imagine what can be built on all those soon-to-be-empty parking lots, which in cities like Los Angeles take up nearly one-third of the space, or how much less attractive a house outside the range of a TaaS service might be to a potential buyer). It will also enable expanded home delivery services for packages or food by self-driving electric vehicles or battery-powered drones.

If all this seems too abstract, consider the following: Consumer Reports estimates it costs about $15,000 to fill up a Jeep Liberty over five years, if you drive 12,000 miles per year; the electricity to power an electric Jeep Liberty is estimated to cost less than $1,600 over the same period. And fuel savings are just the beginning. The drivetrain in a conventional car has as many as 2,000 moving parts, compared to as few as 20 in an electric car. Electric vehicles have motors, not engines, so they don’t need to shift gears… and they don’t need oil, spark plugs, air filters, coolant, or transmission fluid. A conventional car’s engine might last 150,000 miles before it needs rebuilding, but electric car motors can last 600,000 miles or more. That’s why some electric car makers warranty the drive unit for up to 8 years, with unlimited miles—something no gas-powered car can offer.

So if you could buy essentially the same car, except cheaper and 90 percent less costly to use and maintain, quieter to drive, capable of much more rapid acceleration and greater pulling power, as well as likely to last several times as long, which would you buy? That’s why many experts think that electric vehicles will account for more than half of all new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. within 5 years. And because of TaaS, the total number of cars sold is likely to be far lower—and most cities are likely to have fleets of electric, self-driving cars that can each deliver 100,000 miles of rides a year with little maintenance.

While all that’s good for us as transportation users, it means disruptive change for quite a few segments of the economy. Professional drivers—chauffeurs, cab drivers, truckers—may simply disappear. Demand for mechanics and replacement auto parts will drop. Insurance companies will have fewer accidents to pay for and will have to lower premiums, losing revenue. We won’t need as many gas stations and truck stops—electric cars will mostly recharge overnight at home and self-driving trucks don’t need to stop for food and rest. Oil companies will suffer. With less traffic on the roads, driving (or being driven by your car) may replace short-haul air traffic and the hassles of airports, to the detriment of the airline industry. On longer trips, you could simply sleep in your car’s fully reclining seats while it drives you, so roadside hotels and motels may face problems as well. And as TaaS scales up, the sales of auto manufacturers will drop; many may not survive.

That’s what disruptive technological change looks like. It happened before when cars replaced horses; now it’s happening again as electric vehicles with self-driving capabilities replace conventional cars and trucks.

Al Hammond was trained as a scientist (Stanford, Harvard) but became a distinguished science journalist, reporting for Science (a leading scientific journal) and many other technical and popular magazines and on a daily radio program for CBS. He subsequently founded and served as editor-in-chief for 4 national science-related publications as well as editor-in-chief for the United Nation’s bi-annual environmental report. More recently, he has written, edited, or contributed to many national assessments of scientific research for federal science agencies. Dr. Hammond makes his home in Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Saving the Choptank…and the Bay? By Al Hammond

May 18, 2020 by Al Hammond

It’s no secret that the health of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem and its valuable blue crab and striped bass fisheries have been under threat from the region’s growing population and expanding economic activity. But a recent ShoreRivers report on improving water quality in some parts of the Eastern Shore of Maryland seems to suggest a positive trend. This is a story about actions leading to that trend, in which a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) laboratory located in Oxford, Maryland, has played a key role.

Agricultural land use dominates some parts of the Choptank watershed and is a major source of sediment and fertilizer runoff that contributes to poor water quality which may harm economically important fisheries. Source: NOAA

The seriousness of the environmental threat to the Bay’s fisheries was confirmed by a 2015 NOAA scientific study and a number of earlier studies that documented impaired water quality and poor biological health. A primary cause of the degradation, the studies found, was transformation of the natural landscape by agricultural activity and urbanization in ways that increased runoff into streams and rivers: runoff of sediment, nutrients such as fertilizers, and chemical and bacterial pollutants. The result is murky water, reduced underwater vegetation, and declining numbers of fish, crabs, and oysters coupled with increased levels of bacteria, fish disease, and fish parasites. The pattern of degradation seemed to track the types of predominant local land use, whether urban, agricultural, or forest.

NOAA scientists from Cooperative Oxford Laboratory pull a seine net in fish community composition sampling for the Tred Avon River ecological assessment. Source: NOAA

Since 1983, the Chesapeake Bay Program has been working to improve the Bay. The latest agreement, signed in 2014 by six states, the District of Columbia and the EPA on behalf of seven federal agencies, committed to achieving a long list of measurable outcomes and improvements. Included in these are water quality targets to reduce sediment and nutrient runoff and to restore native oyster habitat and populations in 10 tributaries, 5 in Maryland and 5 in Virginia, by 2025. (Oysters filter and thus help clean the water).

Also in 2014, NOAA designated the Choptank River—the longest and largest river that empties into the bay and a key blue crab producer—a habitat focus area. As part of the overall Choptank effort, NOAA initiated a detailed scientific assessment of one of the river’s tributaries—the Tred Avon River that flows from Easton to where it empties into the larger Choptank near Oxford.

The study—conducted by NOAA’s Cooperative Oxford Laboratory—was a massive effort. Dr. Shawn McLaughlin, who directed the research, says it involved repeated sampling and data collection: “For three years we conducted daily, weekly, or monthly field trips to river sites in eight Tred Avon sub-watersheds spanning forested areas, agricultural lands, and urban areas.” The scientists measured water clarity and dissolved oxygen levels, concentrations of nitrogen and other nutrients, the presence of underwater vegetation, and numbers and types of fish and their health—including seasonal patterns. The resulting 2018 report documents the impacts of different land use patterns on water quality and fisheries health and suggests management practices that could help mitigate damage and restore ecological condition. The findings include:

Urban areas such as Easton, with their abundance of paved surfaces, are a major source of runoff, leading to higher levels of chemical contaminants, nutrients, and fecal bacteria as well as low dissolved oxygen levels in nearby bottom waters and the absence of many fish species during high summer temperatures.
Agricultural areas also showed high levels of nutrients and poor water clarity (which affects underwater vegetation that provides shelter and food for fish).
Watersheds dominated by forests had relatively good water quality and abundant fish and shellfish species.

The report pointed out the need for continuing efforts to reduce nutrient and sediment runoff across the entire ecosystem and the importance of preserving critical habitats for fish and shellfish, especially in spawning areas such as the Choptank. It also calls for innovative management approaches such as planting or restoring oyster beds and setting thresholds for land development.

Concurrent with the research, as part of the overall Choptank effort, NOAA’s Chesapeake Bay Office initiated an effort to coordinate local organizations with similar goals to achieve more than would be feasible if they acted alone. While this “collective impact” strategy had proven itself at community-scale, attempting it on a much larger scale was a novel approach for NOAA. An experienced environmental consultant was hired to stimulate and coordinate local action by working with local governments, non-profit organizations, philanthropic donors, and other stakeholders such as ShoreRivers.

Sampling water quality as part of the Tred Avon Assessment. Source: NOAA

The consultant, Joanna Ogburn, brought many groups together and created Envision The Choptank (envisionthechoptank.org), a partnership focused on pairing the scientific findings with local knowledge and local actors to find collaborative solutions. It used preliminary data from the NOAA Tred Avon study along with other Chesapeake Bay Program studies and data to guide pilot projects, get people excited about what was happening, and promote best practices among county officials, farmers and individual homeowners. The organization also hired coordinators to work with landowners 1-to-1, raised funds to provide incentives, and linked landowners to technical assistance. The Envision partner organizations have helped to engage many different entities, share tools and information and ideas, and coordinate strategies and funding efforts.

The effort has paid off. It enabled McLaughlin and her research team to meet with local, state and federal officials to share the evidence connecting land use to the condition of the aquatic ecosystem. It brought the laboratory together with Easton officials, Talbot county government and public works representatives, and ShoreRivers to discuss ways to “green” the proposed Port Street development in Easton by minimizing additional impervious surfaces that would intensify runoff. Envision partners also identified two stream restoration projects within the urban area and provided the Town of Easton with a small grant to design the projects, which led to a larger state grant to fully fund the work.

In another example, Envision partners engaged residential landowners to reduce storm water drainage. Using locations in the lower Choptank that the Oxford data showed regularly had low water quality, they got the Nature Conservancy to do digital map studies to determine the lands draining to those locations, then invited all the relevant landowners to workshops. There they taught residential homeowners how to build rain gardens and other techniques that improve water quality and the attractiveness of their properties. Envision partners have used the same strategy to identify agricultural landowners that are significant sources of runoff, so that they can reach out to them.

More than 35 organizations are now involved with Envision the Choptank, which is now expanding its efforts across the entire Choptank ecosystem. It organized a $1 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to engage, incentivize, and work with farmers in creating buffers and other strategies to manage runoff. Joanna Ogburn comments that “This grant is helping us launch a new wave of interventions. We’ve been able to build financial incentive programs to overcome the challenges landowners and farmers face in implementing restoration practices. We’re hoping to engage landowners in the Choptank watershed in creating buffers, wetland restoration, and drainage ditch management practices, ultimately restoring 230 acres.” And, as the latest ShoreRivers report suggests, these actions—at state and county and local levels—are beginning to show results.

It’s clear that the research and the scientific data it produced were critical in persuading both public officials and individual farmers and homeowners to get involved and take action. But it’s also clear that communication efforts and coalition building to find and implement local solutions were equally important—and that the Cooperative Oxford Laboratory played a central role in both. Suzanne Skelley, director of the lab, noted “Using research results to inform decision-making, especially to improve ecosystem condition while enhancing community resilience, is a core mission of the Lab and of NOAA.” The winning formula for saving the Choptank, and perhaps the broader Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, seems to be: science + communication/engagement + local action.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Why COVID-19 is Far From Over for the Mid-Shore by Al Hammond

April 13, 2020 by Al Hammond

At the start of the second week of April, hospitalizations are peaking in New York, the largest epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. Meanwhile, there are just 9 known cases of the virus in Kent County, 10 in Talbot, and 16 in each of Queen Anne and Caroline counties. President Trump is talking about “reopening” the U.S. economy and sending people back to work. But don’t be misled. Many more people will get seriously ill in the months to come, and even if the virus seems to retreat in the warm summer months, it is likely to resurge in the fall and winter.

We don’t really know how widespread the virus is, because many of those infected show no symptoms, even though they can infect others. The only careful survey took place in Iceland, which tested 5 percent of its population and found that about 50 percent of those infected showed no symptoms. Applied to the U.S., that would mean at least 800,000 people have been infected, half of whom don’t know it and are likely infecting those around them. Consider also that in the period from December through February, when the virus was actively spreading in China, more than 750,000 people entered the U.S. from that country. So it is likely that the virus is far more widespread than we know.

Just consider what it means if an infected person spreads it to 2 others—then the next day those 2 infect 4 others, and so on—the definition of exponential growth. The math works out such that a single case could grow to over 200 million infected Americans within a single month. It’s easy to see how big cities such as New York quickly became hot spots of infection.

But cases are rising rapidly now even in small towns and remote rural communities—where a quarter of all hospitals have fragile finances even before the pandemic and are largely unprepared clinically for a surge of cases requiring ventilators. Testing is not widespread in rural areas, meaning we don’t really know the extent of the threat. And the virus has hardly been eliminated even in urban areas past their peak. So “opening up” the economy and sending people back to work anytime soon will simply launch a second wave of infections.

To open up safely will require massive testing—so we know who had already had the virus and is therefore immune and can’t affect others, so can be allowed to work—or waiting until 50 or 60 percent of the population becomes immune, enabling what is called “herd immunity.” That means it’s hard for the virus to spread, because those who are immune can’t pass it on. But letting the virus run free could still take several seasons of the virus to build up a herd immunity, and in the meantime would kill many of those who are most vulnerable—those over 70 or who have underlying health problems.

The current wave of testing identifies who is ill with the virus. To find those who have already had it and recovered requires a different kind of test—a so-called antibody test that identifies a specific protein in a person’s blood created by their immune system to fight the virus. The test requires only a finger prick of blood, results are available within a few minutes, and mass manufacture of the tests has begun. Still, it will likely take months and a coordinated national strategy to test every person working or who wants to go back to work, so that even a partial reopening of the economy safely is possible. Development of an effective vaccine will very likely happen within a year—but that means after the likely fall-winter resurgence of the virus. Until then, social distancing, working from home, and continued closure of non-essential businesses are the only effective tools.

Meanwhile, there is some good news on the vaccine front. The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPMC) just announced a potential vaccine for COVID-19. The team of scientists there did extensive research on earlier pandemic viruses: MERS in 2014 and SARS back in 2003. Both of those were also coronaviruses similar in the molecular structure to COVID-19. Their new vaccine research was just published in The Lancet, a leading medical journal. What’s unique about this vaccine is the delivery mechanism, which uses a small patch the size of a fingertip—like a small bandage—that has 400 very tiny micro-needles that painlessly deliver the vaccine over time, teaching the body how to produce antibodies to fight COVID-19.

This ease of use will help speed up adoption tremendously if the vaccine makes it to market. But clinical trials to confirm that the vaccine does no harm, even to vulnerable patients, and then to show that it really does protect people against infection, will take many months. For now, staying at home is the only “vaccine” that we have.

Al Hammond was trained as a scientist (Stanford, Harvard) but became a distinguished science journalist, reporting for Science and many other magazines and on a daily radio program for CBS. He subsequently founded and served as editor-in-chief for four national science-related publications as well as editor-in-chief for the United Nation’s bi-annual environmental report. Dr. Hammond makes his home in Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

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