The Economist - USA (2019-12-21)

120 Science & technology The EconomistDecember 21st 2019

2 seek such patterns with the help of mach-

ine-learning algorithms that can crunch

through imagery far faster than any human

being, and which can spot far tinier varia-

tions. (The team has collaborated with

DeepMind, a British artificial-intelligence

firm co-founded by Mustafa Suleyman,

who sits on The Economist’s board.) They

may, it should be remembered, never find

such patterns. Although there is circum-

stantial evidence that the back of the eye

does change as its owner develops Alz-

heimer’s, it may be that the changes are too

subtle to be detected reliably enough for di-

agnosis. If such patterns could be recog-

nised reliably, though, the potential im-

pact would be huge. Even in rich countries,

between 50% and 80% of Alzheimer’s cases

go undiagnosed. Moreover, even if the

technique does not work for Alzheimer’s, it

might work for something else. Dr Wagner

and Dr Keane therefore plan further

searches for patterns related to strokes and

heart disease. Even one relevant pattern

would constitute a remarkable diagnostic

leap forward.

Seeing is believing

If it does work, the technique the two re-

searchers are proposing will be cheap to

implement. An indication of how cheap is

the project’s total budget of just £15,000

(about $19,000). Equipment to perform an

eye scan is becoming ubiquitous. Spec-

savers, which runs a chain of high-street

opticians, now routinely offers the same

sort of scans as Moorfields’ in half of its 800

branches. Costco, a bulk retailer, offers

scans in Britain for £24.99 a pop. An Israeli

company called Notal Vision is building an

eye-scanning device that is small enough

to operate at home. The equipment and al-

gorithms required to run machine learning

on an eye scan are available to anyone,

through cloud-computing services like

Google and Amazon. Dr Keane once joked

that he would like to see eye-scanning wid-

gets become so cheap that they could be

bundled in boxes of cereal.

This project will also act as a model for

linking disparate health data together in a

useful way while respecting patients’

rights. Other such endeavours involving

information-technology firms handling

health data, such as Google’s work with As-

cension hospitals in America, or other

parts of its subsidiary DeepMind’s work

with England’s health service, have gener-

ated controversy because they offered no

notice of their plans to patients. As well as

jumping deftly through all the required le-

gal and ethical hoops, Drs Wagner and

Keane also posted notices around the hos-

pital and on Moorfields’ website, inform-

ing patients of the impending linkage. Be-

sides explaining what was happening,

these also noted the research’s potential

benefits. Not one person complained. 7

A

nnual un climatesummits are never

moments of unbridled optimism, but

this year’s, held in Madrid and dubbed

cop25, was particularly dispiriting. Its logo

was a clock with its hands at a quarter to 12.

Midnight duly passed on Friday December

13th—supposedly the summit’s last day,

and then again on Saturday. Only on Sun-

day did delegates agree to weak and wa-

tered-down commitments to enact previ-

ously promised cuts in emissions of

greenhouse gases. And they deferred until

next year a decision on regulating a new in-

ternational carbon market.

In 2015, in Paris, nearly 200 countries

promised to stop global warming before

average temperatures rose by more than

1.5-2°C above pre-industrial levels. Most

climate scientists, though, admit privately

that there is little hope of this. A coalition

of governments including the European

Union therefore came to Madrid demand-

ing a strongly worded final text that would

urge all countries to promise in 2020 to cut

emissions further and faster than agreed so

far. That text failed to materialise.

In fact, the real effort on this front came

from Brussels, where the eu’s leaders, after

some wrangling, committed themselves

on December 12th to reducing emissions to

“net zero” by 2050. This means any release

of greenhouse gases thereafter will be bal-

anced by the capture of such gases already

in the atmosphere by, say, extra afforesta-

tion. The European Commission’s presi-

dency has published a comprehensive and

ambitious, if sometimes vague, proposal

for measures that would achieve this goal.

As part of it, an euclimate law enshrining

the 2050 target will be put forward in the

spring of 2020.

Weak and watered-down commitments

to enact cuts in emissions of greenhouse

gases are nothing new. What cop25 is really

likely to be remembered for, though, is a

failure to deal with carbon markets. Plans

for such markets go back to a scheme

created by the Kyoto protocol, a treaty

signed in 1992. An arcane technical clause

in the Paris agreement then offered a

framework for linking existing national or

regional markets and thus creating a new

global one that would be administered by

the unand offer access to countries that do

not have their own. Delegates in Madrid

drew up guidelines for environmentally

sound trading principles for this putative

market. What they did not make clear was

how all this would connect with what

Kyoto had already achieved.

Credit where it’s due

The Kyoto version of carbon markets, the

Clean Development Mechanism (cdm), let

rich countries buy carbon credits from

poor countries for carbon-capturing pro-

jects that offset their emissions at home.

Thousands of cdmprojects were duly reg-

istered, but unknown numbers of credits

were left unclaimed after their value

crashed in 2012, because demand dried up

as a result of rule changes within the eu.

Some of the main participants in the

cdm, chiefly Brazil, want these credits

transferred to the Paris scheme. But doing

so would flood that scheme with “hot air”:

credits that no longer correspond to real,

future reductions in emissions.

Done well, international carbon mar-

kets could accelerate emissions cuts by

drawing in private funds and helping mon-

ey to flow faster to the cheapest opportuni-

ties. One analysis, by the Environmental

Defence Fund, an advocacy group, found

that they might, in theory, reduce the cost

of meeting climate targets by between 59%

and 79%, assuming most countries partici-

pated. If financial gains were reinvested in

further climate action, cumulative emis-

sions cuts between 2020 and 2035 might be

double those currently on the table in na-

tional pledges under the Paris agreement.

All this leaves a lot to do in 2020. Within

the un, technical work on carbon markets

will resume in the new year, leading up to

next year’s meeting, in Glasgow. Climate is

also on the agenda at an eu-China summit

scheduled for September. During his presi-

dency, Barack Obama was able to work with

China’s president, Xi Jinping, and break the

stalemate that had previously existed be-

tween the world’s two largest emitters.

With America set to pull out of the Paris

agreement in November, perhaps the Euro-

pean Union can step into the gap. 7

MADRID

Yet another meeting on the climate.

Yet another disappointment

Climate change

COP-out

Welcome to Madrid