The Weekly Weird #20

Police Scotland drowns in hate, insurance companies spy on America, the Great San Francisco Sky Salting, Switzerland maybe says no to population growth

Welcome back to your weekly whip-round of the latest dystopian doings!

Episode 111 of the podcast drops this Sunday. Our guest is Professor George Church, Harvard’s genetics expert and one of the founders of the Human Genome Project. We talk about the latest developments in our understanding of human DNA, and the ways genetic innovation might influence society. Make sure you check it out, we had a good chat.

Meanwhile, as is relentlessly the case, things happened over the past seven days. Let’s strap on our spelunking helmets and descend into the dystopian deep…

Police Scotland Drowns In Hate

As you might recall from WW#17, April 1 marked the coming-into-force of Scotland’s new (and much-derided) hate speech law. Police Scotland, the creatively named body that oversees policing the world’s largest national population of gingers, committed itself to investigating every single report of a hate crime.

Well, funny story. In the first 48 hours, around 4,000 complaints were filed with Scottish police. Monday marked the end of the first week of the law and the number of reported hate crimes is now up to 8,000 and climbing, with Police Scotland begging people to stop ratting on each other because they “cannot cope.”

As per The Times:

David Threadgold, chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, said that the scale of calls since the implementation of the hate crime bill was “simply unmanageable”.

About 8,000 complaints were made in the first week of the legislation, which did not include a “small number” of new hate crime reports that were linked to the Rangers vs Celtic Old Firm game on Sunday.

Threadgold told Today on BBC Radio 4: “Police Scotland have gone public and said that on every occasion, reports of hate crimes will be investigated. That creates a situation where we simply cannot cope with demand at the moment.”

The game mentioned above was a derby between two Glasgow teams with a long history of hating each other. Who would have thought that football fans would abuse a hate crime law to try to dob in the opposing side’s fans?

From the linked-to Times article (emphasis mine):

Thomas Ross KC, a barrister, told the Daily Record: ­“Historically there’s a lot of animosity between the supporters of the two clubs and each group of fans reports the other.

“Undoubtedly, there’s the possibility things could be sung or said that could amount to an offence. It is highly likely that, come Monday morning, police will have received many more complaints from fans who have watched the game on TV.”

Of the 8,000 general reports made by Saturday, Police Scotland is understood to be taking 350 forward to be investigated further. Most of the reports were submitted anonymously.

Yes, you read that right. One of the broadest hate crime laws in the world allows people to report anonymously, meaning that the long-upheld right to face one’s accuser doesn’t apply if you support the ‘wrong’ team, or crack the ‘wrong’ joke, or just get on the wrong side of someone.

At least police were well-prepared and adequately informed about the subtleties of free speech so they could treat complaints correctly, right?

From The Telegraph:

Police officers received just two hours of online training which Mr Threadgold said had not been adequate to equip them to make difficult judgements around complex issues such as how to balance freedom of speech.

Scotland gave its cops two hours of online training to get them ready for the sudden requirement that they become the arbiters of what is and isn’t acceptable speech. They knew the law was coming since 2021, but in three years they could only muster two hours, online? Brilliant.

It gets even better. More from The Telegraph:

Meanwhile, a former police officer told the Scottish Daily Mail that her complaint about a Facebook post, which depicts a Nazi swastika within a Star of David, had been dismissed after she was quizzed about her own ethnicity.

She said she had given a statement to police on Saturday but was told that the complaint would not be taken forward because she was not Jewish. Under the legislation, the ethnicity of the complainant does not determine whether a crime had been committed.

The woman said: “They were very much for not taking the complaint at all. One said, ‘We’re snowed under with all these complaints. How are we supposed to get through all these?’ I said, ‘That’s not my problem. The First Minister has said he wants people to report these things; he’s very keen for everything to be reported’.

“The officer called me later that afternoon. He said, ‘Can I ask you, are you Jewish?’ I said no. He said, ‘I’m going to ask you again; it’s just because I need the box ticked. Do you identify as being Jewish?’ I said no, I’m not going to lie to get anybody charged.

“He said, ‘Well, that falls outside the parameters. It won’t be moving forward as a crime. It will be logged as an incident, but it will not be going further criminally’.”

Reporting anonymously? All good. But if you’re reporting in your own name and you’re not from the right background, no soup for you!

The Guardian, with typical objectivity and poise, described the deluge of hate crime reporting with the following headline: Police spammed with complaints by neo-Nazis under new Scottish hate crime law.

The Guardian blames the thousands of complaints on “Neo-Nazi and far-right agitators” organising to “mass report tweets” through a Telegram channel with “284 members” while dropping this chestnut a few paragraphs down:

[Scottish First Minister Humza] Yousaf also warned people against making vexatious complaints. While official figures have not yet been released, Police Scotland reportedly received nearly 4,000 reports in the new law’s first three days. Many are understood to have been lodged against Yousaf himself over comments he made four years ago about a lack of non-white people in top jobs in Scotland.

The first minister said he was not surprised by the deluge and that “when legislation is first introduced there can sometimes be a flurry of vexatious complaints”. But he said he was “very, very concerned” about how many were being made, adding that “people should desist because they are wasting valuable police resources and time”.

This is the same First Minister who was the Justice Minister fighting for the law to be passed and who stood behind the police announcement that they would investigate every report. But now it’s “wasting valuable police resources and time”?

Yousaf was himself reported under the law he presided over because of a controversial speech he gave in Scotland’s Parliament in 2020 decrying how “white” members of the government and major institutions were. The speech, including a j’accuse-style repetitive rundown of “[insert government role here]: WHITE” dripping with contempt and frustration, was an award-winning show of grievance-shilling in a country with the following ethnic demographics as per the Scottish government’s own website:

The 2011 census found that:

• Scotland's population was 96.0% white, a decrease of 2.0% from 2001

• 91.8% of people identified as ‘White: Scottish’ or ‘White: Other British'

• 4.2% of people identified as Polish, Irish, Gypsy/Traveller or ‘White: Other’

• the population in Asian, African, Caribbean or Black, Mixed or Other ethnic groups doubled to 4%

It’s a real shocker that most of the jobs in the country, including in the government, are held by the people that make up 96% of the population. China is only 91% Han, so they must be at least 5% more racist than Scotland if their government is all Han, right? That’s just numbers (and bullshit).

Unsurprisingly, as reported by iNews, “Police Scotland bosses have made clear they will not be investigating Mr Yousaf’s speech on institutional racism.”

Let’s not even get into the horrendous non-journalism of this line in The Guardian: “Many are understood to have been lodged against Yousaf himself…”.

How many is “many” out of 4,000? Who “understood,” and what is it that they “understood”: the number of complaints, or their nature? Passive voice in reporting is often a tell that something is going unsaid or being deliberately implied by omission. The desire to make this all about far-right extremists seems stronger than the evidence permits.

iNews reports that “police chiefs fear the misperception that any remarks found offensive on social media can constitute a hate crime will see the cascade of complaints continue.” Hmm, I wonder where that misperception comes from? Could it be the wording of the law and the cynical intent of some complainants, by any chance, in exactly the way that its critics explained?

iNews also interviewed Tony Lenehan KC, a barrister in Scotland.

“It doesn’t seem hate crime was on the increase in a way that justifies forcing through this bill,” said Mr Lenehan. “It makes you wonder what the point of this new law was. My concern was that it was more of a PR effort than an effort to improve criminal justice.”

As well as the “extraordinary drain” on police time, Mr Lenehan is concerned that “motivated complainers” may “push the police and the prosecution services towards court action”. He added: “I worry it will be hard to avoid an uptick in prosecutions.”

Meanwhile, from The Times again:

David Kennedy, general secretary of the [Scottish Police Federation], said that call operators, who are being bought [sic] in to do overtime shifts to deal with the complaints, are overwhelmed with demand, while “less than 1 per cent of these complaints are translating into actual hate crime investigations”.

Quoted in The Telegraph, Kennedy also said:

“It’s going to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and we don’t have any officers so I don’t care what anybody says there is a detrimental impact on other parts of the force.”

If 96 - 99% of the reports continue to turn out to be spurious, one outcome of the new law may end up being a de-facto publicly-funded police-run Complaints Department for the entire country, where people ring up to moan about what they heard that they didn’t like, while a bored call centre bod tries not to yawn through the description of whatever “non-crime hate incident” is being described. It’s hard to imagine anything more British than that, although the Scots might find it offensive to be lumped in with the rest of the UK.

J.K. Rowling, wizard inventor and Scotland-dweller, has been vocal in opposition to the new law and summed things up pretty elegantly on X:

“I don’t believe in putting people I disagree with in jail. We’ve got a ballot box and that’s where Yousaf will get his richly deserved comeuppance.”

The Guardian should note the effective use of the active voice.

Insurance Companies Spy On America

Meet Geospatial Insurance Consortium, an organisation funded by the insurance industry that takes aerial photographs of houses in the United States to find reasons to deny or cancel homeowner insurance policies.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Nearly every building in the country is being photographed, often without the owner’s knowledge. Companies are deploying drones, manned airplanes and high-altitude balloons to take images of properties. No place is shielded: The industry-funded Geospatial Insurance Consortium has an airplane imagery program it says covers 99% of the U.S. population. 

As reported in the WSJ in 2021, American insurance companies invested heavily in developing their drone and robotics capabilities, all of which was sold to the public using the usual PR guff about safety and efficiency.

“Drone use helps improve the safety for our field claim professionals and our field risk control professionals,” said Jim Wucherpfennig, vice president of property claim at Travelers. “The technology allows us to write damage estimates more quickly for our customers, pay them more quickly, so that they can begin the repairs to their property and get back on their feet.”

Who would have thought that once insurance companies had the ability to fly over houses and monitor their state of repair, they’d start using it pre-emptively to the detriment of their customers?

More from this week’s WSJ’s article:

The array of photos is being sorted by computer models to spy out underwriting no-nos, such as damaged roof shingles, yard debris, overhanging tree branches and undeclared swimming pools or trampolines. The red-flagged images are providing insurers with ammunition for nonrenewal notices nationwide.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase across the country in reports from consumers who’ve been dropped by their insurers on the basis of an aerial image,” said Amy Bach, executive director of consumer group United Policyholders. 

When he was asked about the use of digital imaging, Tom Wilson, the CEO of insurer Allstate, promised that “there’s even more to come.”

Of course, part of the problem with what the WSJ calls the insurance industry’s “enthusiastic embrace of digital surveillance” is that insurance companies are sometimes denying coverage based on images that no longer reflect the state of the property in question, or don’t show things that pose a meaningful risk.

The images facilitating nonrenewals aren’t always up to date or accurately interpreted by insurers, according to industry insiders and consumer advocates.

Nichole Brink quit her job as an agent for Farmers Insurance last year, concerned the insurance giant appeared to be using aerial images as a battering ram to clear out unwanted customers. 

“It’s like they’re using anything as an excuse to get people off their books,” said Brink, who still works in the insurance industry. Farmers appeared to be scrutinizing every property on its books, she said, adding that she saw nonrenewal notices sent for everything from trampolines to moss on the side of a vacation home. 

Brink, who worked for Farmers in Michigan, said some customers were dropped based on aerial images that were two or three years old. One person wasn’t renewed because of a roof, despite its being brand new. In another case, a part of the image that Farmers said showed tree limbs turned out to be just shadows, she said.

The final straw came when Brink saw her own home flagged in a Farmers image because of a tree branch overhanging her barn. She switched insurers and jobs.

As usual, technology is developing faster than the social and legal constraints on using it, and the approach of insurers is to deliberately mask this from customers by avoiding transparency.

“The technology is way ahead of any consumer protections,” said Douglas Heller, director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America. 

Many people would likely object to having their homes and yards watched from above if given a choice, Heller said, citing customers’ relatively slow uptake of discounts for letting auto insurers track their driving.

“Part of the industry strategy is to avoid any situation where consumers get to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to this kind of spyware approach to underwriting and rating,” Heller said.

The endgame of all this is laid out in the coda to the WSJ article, leaving the reader with a rather chilly feeling.

Aerial images are expected to become increasingly detailed and frequent. If satellite launches go as planned, images could be updated daily by 2030, according to Neil Pearson, a consultant who works with imagery companies. 

“It could get interesting from a privacy standpoint as…a property could be monitored daily at high resolution,” he said. “It is a bit Orwellian.”

“It’s a bit Orwellian.” How’s that for understatement?

Chalk one up for the “If it flies, it spies” crowd.

The Great San Francisco Sky Salting

More heavenly horror this week as a pilot programme has launched in San Francisco’s Bay Area, spraying salt crystals into the atmosphere to seed clouds. Is this the fever dream of a basement dweller blogging about space lizards on a website with green text on a black background? Hardly. It’s in Scientific American, titled with gentle disapproval: Geoengineering Test Quietly Launches Salt Crystals into Atmosphere.

If not for the adverb, you’d think that was perfectly normal and science-y, right?

From SciAm:

The experiment, which organizers didn't widely announce to avoid public backlash, marks the acceleration of a contentious field of research known as solar radiation modification. The concept involves shooting substances such as aerosols into the sky to reflect sunlight away from the Earth.

[…]

The experiment is spraying microscopic salt particles into the air, and the secrecy surrounding its timing caught even some experts off guard.

So scientists are conducting an experiment to find a solution to a problem - what else is new?

Well, “solar radiation modification” is fancy university talk for blocking sunlight, and blocking sunlight is unpredictable in practice as well as in terms of consequences.

Put more gently by SciAm:

Solar radiation modification is controversial because widespread use of technologies like marine cloud brightening could alter weather patterns in unclear ways…

If, like me, you’re not a scientist, you might wonder how “alter[ing] weather patterns in unclear ways” is a desirable solution to a problem which we’re told is altering or will alter weather patterns, also in unpredictable if not unclear ways. Wouldn’t we just be creating a new problem while fighting another?

Thankfully, the people in charge of the experiment that could affect the atmosphere for everyone were happy to answer questions, outlining their goals and defending their plans in a transparent way.

Just kidding.

The University of Washington and SilverLining, a geoengineering research advocacy group involved in the CAARE project, declined interview requests. The mayor of Alameda, where the experiment is being conducted, didn't respond to emailed questions about the project.

The secrecy surrounding the landmark experiment seems to have been by design, according to The New York Times, which, along with a local newspaper, was granted exclusive access to cover the initial firing of the spray cannons.

"The idea of interfering with nature is so contentious, organizers of Tuesday's test kept the details tightly held, concerned that critics would try to stop them," the Times reported.

The New York Times, which cares so much about the public interest that they agreed to keeping the test a secret until after it had begun, reported breathlessly on the intrepid brainiacs working so hard to save the planet from the rest of us.

It was the first outdoor test in the United States of technology designed to brighten clouds and bounce some of the sun’s rays back into space, a way of temporarily cooling a planet that is now dangerously overheating. The scientists wanted to see whether the machine that took years to create could consistently spray the right size salt aerosols through the open air, outside of a lab.

If it works, the next stage would be to aim at the heavens and try to change the composition of clouds above the Earth’s oceans.

MSN.com reported last month on a new study that showed “stratospheric aerosol injection,” another fancy euphemism for blocking sunlight, wouldn’t even work because cooling the air of the planet wouldn’t affect the oceans effectively.

"The big picture result is that we believe we can control the surface temperature of the Earth, but other components of the climate system will not be so fast to respond," said Daniel Pflüger, a physical oceanographer at Utrecht University who led the study.

In March, Nature reported that a similar study at Harvard, also claiming to be “the first”, was cancelled due to pushback.

The study, called the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), was to be the first to systematically inject particles into Earth’s upper atmosphere and then measure whether they could safely reflect sunlight back into space.

“Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment” is, again, just a longer and more technological-sounding phrase that means blocking sunlight.

In the media, as in many of the scientists’ explanations of their thinking, the example of the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia is given, which, after spewing tonnes of ash and particles into the atmosphere, caused “a year without a summer.” The year in question was 1816, and the eruption proved that if enough crap gets ejected into the sky, it blocks out the sun and makes the planet colder. The result of the dip in temperature (around 0.4 - 0.7 degrees Centigrade) was “an agricultural disaster,” a series of “crop failures and major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere” described by one historian as “the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world.”

I wonder why people don’t like the sound of this type of experiment, and don’t want to find out if it works.

Reuters covered some of the objections to the abortive attempt by Harvard to spray calcium carbonate into the atmosphere above Sweden:

“There is no merit in this test except to enable the next step. You can’t test the trigger of a bomb and say ‘This can’t possibly do any harm’," said Nicklas Hällström, director of the Swedish green think-tank WhatNext?

Fun aside: Reuters lists Bill Gates as one of the supporters of the Harvard geoengineering project. Man, that guy gets around.

How is it reasonable for a small group of scientists to deploy technology that might seriously affect the entire planet?

More from Nature:

Harvard’s status as an elite research institution also fuelled fears that powerful Western players might unilaterally develop the technology, even though it could have global effects. Frumhoff says that what’s needed is some kind of international consensus on solar geoengineering. “No one seems to be able to agree at the moment about whether and how research should go forward in a way that would have legitimacy.”

Yet again, the crux of the issue is the public’s dislike for the idea.

[E]xperimental physicist David Keith, told Nature that the project struggled both with intense media attention and with how to address calls from the scientific advisory committee to broadly and formally engage with the public.

“We just didn’t see a way to square that circle and make it happen,” says Keith, who left Harvard last year to set up a new climate engineering programme at the University of Chicago in Illinois.

The “circle” they couldn’t “square” was to do something publicly and transparently that is unwanted and opposed by a lot of people. So the team in San Francisco learnt Harvard’s lesson and kept it a secret.

All of these attempts to block sunlight as a way of lowering the planet’s temperature, and the theoretical underpinning for the experiments, don’t prove that it would work. Or rather, they can’t prove it would work only in the way we want, without undesired consequences.

Meanwhile, predictably, snake oil pedlars have emerged to capitalise on bourgeois guilt and gullibility.

Nature again:

A for-profit company called Make Sunsets, based in Box Elder, South Dakota, says it has also begun dispersing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere by balloon. Backed by venture capitalists and criticized by scientists, the company is selling ‘cooling credits’ that allegedly offset one tonne of carbon-dioxide emissions for US$10 each, or $1 each with a monthly subscription.

MIT Technology Review spoke with the CEO of Make Sunsets in 2022:

Luke Iseman, the cofounder and CEO of Make Sunsets, acknowledges that the effort is part entrepreneurial and part provocation, an act of geoengineering activism.

He hopes that by moving ahead in the controversial space, the startup will help drive the public debate and push forward a scientific field that has faced great difficulty carrying out small-scale field experiments amid criticism.

“We joke slash not joke that this is partly a company and partly a cult,” he says.

Many a true word is spoken in jest, as they say.

More from that article:

“The current state of science is not good enough … to either reject, or to accept, let alone implement” solar geoengineering, wrote Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, in an email. The initiative is calling for oversight of geoengineering and other climate-altering technologies, whether by governments, international accords or scientific bodies. “To go ahead with implementation at this stage is a very bad idea,” he added, comparing it to Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s decision to use CRISPR to edit the DNA of embryos while the scientific community was still debating the safety and ethics of such a step.  

Speaking of implementation, it turns out that we’ve been unintentionally geoengineering on a small scale for years anyway.

An initial aircraft survey above the Arctic last year showed that rocket launches and falling satellite debris have left particles of aluminium, copper and various exotic metals in the stratosphere, with as-yet-unknown consequences.

Also, remember when we were all worried about the ozone layer? Well, funny story as mentioned in this 2015 paper on blocking sunlight with aluminium particles:

Geoengineering by stratospheric aerosol injection would be expected to lead to analogous ozone depletion, depending on the heterogeneous reactions that occur on the particle surfaces and their rates…[but] the impact of stratospheric aerosols on ozone will – all else being equal – decline over time.

Ceteris paribus indeed, my brainy chums. The paper’s authors conclude with a helpful statement about the risks involved in spraying stuff into the sky to save the planet.

We conclude that SRM by the injection of solid particles may have some advantages relative to sulfates and merits further study to reduce the sizable uncertainties that currently exist. It is important to note that the injection of substances like alumina or diamond nanoparticles have much greater “unknown unknowns” than sulfates, as they would be novel substances in the stratosphere. Laboratory studies of reaction kinetics for these particles under stratospheric conditions, as well as studies of their microphysical and radiative properties, are required to reduce uncertainties.

The MIT Technology Review summarised the balance of probabilities in a 2019 article giving off strong “How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb” vibes:

The computer modeling consistently shows [blocking sunlight by spraying particles into the atmosphere] would reduce global temperatures, sea-level rise, and certain other climate impacts. But some studies have found that high doses of certain particles might also damage the protective ozone layer, alter global precipitation patterns, and reduce crop growth in certain areas.

The SciAm piece on the San Francisco sky-salting ends with a pithy quote from Greg Goldsmith of Chapman University:

"History has shown us that when we insert ourselves into modification of nature, there are always very serious unintended consequences," said Goldsmith, who studies the implications of climate change for plant structure and function. "And therefore, it would be prudent to listen to what history has shown and look for consequences."

Switzerland Maybe Says No To Population Growth

Guardians of the Pope and Nazi gold, renowned for efficiency and watch-making, the Swiss often fly under the radar despite having one of the world’s highest average incomes and regularly placing well on lists of liveable places.

Not so this week, as the Swiss People’s Party (I’ll let you guess which end of the political spectrum they’re on) has successfully petitioned for a referendum on limiting the population of the mountainous muesli-munching country to 10 million. I hope they get one of those bouncers with the clicky-counting thing to sit at the border and keep track.

Remix News reports:

Under Switzerland’s direct democracy system, referenda on any issue can be called should a petition reach 100,000 signatures within 18 months of its launch. The UDC harvested 114,600 signatures in just nine months in its bid for the government to implement “sustainable demographic development” by ensuring the permanent resident population of Switzerland does not exceed 10 million people by 2050.

TalkTV has more:

The Swiss People's Party is the largest party in country's Federal Assembly, with 62 members of the National Council and six of the Council of States.

It has long been a vocal critic of immigration, arguing it leads to a drain on social welfare and a loss of Swiss prosperity. They've previously accused foreigners of being overly represented amongst public insurance benefit recipients and other social welfare programmes.

The party is no stranger to controversy having successfully pushed for a ban on the construction of minarets back in 2009.

France24 describes the goal of the initiative:

The initiative proposes to modify the Swiss constitution, stipulating that "the permanent resident population of Switzerland must not exceed 10 million people before the year 2050".

The permanent resident population would include Swiss nationals living in the country and foreigners with either a residence permit valid for at least one year, or staying in the country for at least 12 months.

The Swiss population, as per the 2015 census, was 8.3 million. As of 2023, it is estimated to be 8.9 million.

If it exceeds 9.5 million before 2050, the government and parliament "will take measures, in particular regarding asylum and family reunification, with a view to ensuring compliance".

If these measures are not enough, Switzerland would ultimately have to terminate the agreement on the free movement of people with the EU.

Swexit? Well, not really because Switzerland isn’t in the EU, but it does share free movement under Schengen.

No date for the referendum has been set, and there’s no guarantee that it will pass a public vote, but it’s a stark shot across the bow for Europe, which has been working towards “ever-closer union” for decades.

Switzerland, famously neutral in war, might be a thermometer taking the popular temperature of European countries when it comes to the demographic changes they are seeing but, historically, shutting out the world has never been a winning strategy. Even if the referendum result is a ‘yes’, enforcing such a law could prove nasty and corrosive to the social cohesion and quality of life they claim they are trying to preserve.

That’s it for this week.

Outro music is The Pogues with “Thousands Are Sailing”, a beautiful tribute to the Irish immigrants who crossed the Atlantic to the United States and helped build the country, not always receiving a warm welcome.

Stay sane, friends.