Friday, October 11, 2019
Betteridge's Law
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no". It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009, although the principle is much older. (...)
Ian Betteridge's name became associated with the concept after he discussed it in a February 2009 article, which examined a previous TechCrunch article that carried the headline "Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data to the RIAA?".(Schonfeld 2009):
Ian Betteridge's name became associated with the concept after he discussed it in a February 2009 article, which examined a previous TechCrunch article that carried the headline "Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data to the RIAA?".(Schonfeld 2009):
This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word "no." The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.A similar observation was made by British newspaper editor Andrew Marr in his 2004 book My Trade, among Marr's suggestions for how a reader should interpret newspaper articles:
If the headline asks a question, try answering 'no'. Is This the True Face of Britain's Young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No; or you wouldn't have put the question mark in.) Does This Map Provide the Key for Peace? (Probably not.) A headline with a question mark at the end means, in the vast majority of cases, that the story is tendentious or over-sold. It is often a scare story, or an attempt to elevate some run-of-the-mill piece of reporting into a national controversy and, preferably, a national panic. To a busy journalist hunting for real information a question mark means 'don't bother reading this bit'.by Wikipedia | Read more:
Must the House Vote to Authorize an Impeachment Inquiry?
Since taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the midterm election of 2018, the Democrats have been exploring how it might be possible to pursue an impeachment inquiry while retaining some plausible deniability about whether they are actually doing so. As President Trump has continued to behave in his usual manner, and as the Democratic caucus has gradually coalesced around the view that an impeachment might be necessary, the process has become more explicit. As the center of gravity in the caucus shifted toward impeachment after the revelation of Trump’s phone call within Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi finally announced that the “House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.”
But what counts as an “official impeachment inquiry,” and what is required to move forward with one? House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sent a letter to Pelosi asking her to “suspend” the impeachment inquiry until “transparent and equitable rules and procedures” could be put in place and a floor vote authorizing an impeachment inquiry could be taken. Pelosi responded that no vote was necessary. Now White House Counsel Pat Cipollone has written to Pelosi informing her that the administration will not cooperate with the House’s “constitutionally invalid” impeachment inquiry, in part because the House had not voted “to authorize such a dramatic constitutional step” or provided the president with “due process protections.”
Is it constitutionally acceptable for the House speaker to initiate an impeachment “by means of nothing more than a press conference”? In short, yes.
The constitutional text on this issue is spare. The Constitution simply says that the House has the sole power of impeachment. Ultimately, if the House wants to impeach someone, it needs to muster a simple majority in support of articles of impeachment that can be presented to the Senate. How the House gets there is entirely up to the chamber itself to determine. There is no constitutional requirement that the House take two successful votes on impeachment, one to authorize some kind of inquiry and one to ratify whatever emerges from that inquiry. An impeachment inquiry is not “invalid” because there has been no vote to formally launch it, and any eventual impeachment would not be “invalid” because the process that led to it did not feature a floor vote authorizing a specific inquiry. (...)
Impeachment has frequently been analogized to a grand jury indictment, and the analogy is informative here. The House is a prosecutorial body in an impeachment context. The House members themselves must decide what steps they think are necessary to satisfy themselves that a particular impeachment is warranted and to prepare a credible case that can be argued in the Senate, where the defense will have an opportunity to poke holes in it. It might be prudent for the House to create a more robust adversarial proceeding in order to help the House members themselves assess the strength of the case, but any such process is for the benefit of informing the House, not protecting the accused from a possible impeachment. A federal officer has no particular right not to be impeached, and the bar for impeachment is consequently set low.
The Senate trial, by contrast, provides an opportunity for an accused officer to mount a robust defense, plead his or her case, and seek total vindication. The procedural bar for a Senate conviction is set high. There, the House can have no expectation of a sympathetic hearing and the defendant can make use of the fact that a bipartisan supermajority in the upper chamber will almost always be necessary to remove him or her from office. It might not be possible to impeach a ham sandwich in the House, but the accused has no expectation of a fair or bipartisan hearing in the lower chamber.
Politically, the Democratic leadership is avoiding a vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry because thus far they seem uncertain whether they could win such a vote. If a vote authorizing an impeachment is seen by some citizens as indistinguishable from a vote to impeach, then House members in purple districts might well prefer to know how strong the case for impeachment actually is before they have to go on record effectively supporting an impeachment. In a perfect world, voters would be able to distinguish support for an impeachment inquiry from support for an impeachment—but in our imperfect world, the House leadership is expected to protect caucus members from unnecessary politically damaging votes. As a matter of institutional design, Congress’s ability to inquire into misconduct should not be held hostage by such electoral calculations. Rather, the system should allow for a process that allows the investigation of allegations of misconduct and uncovering of the facts, and that forces politicians to take responsibility for how they respond to those facts. A system that instead puts a thumb on the scale on the side of hiding potential misconduct is hardly in the public interest, even if it might serve the immediate personal or partisan interests of those who fear that their conduct might come under scrutiny. Americans should be reluctant to build into constitutional practice such a bias toward obstructing investigations. The constitutional framers did not themselves build in that kind of bias.
by Keith E. Whittington, LawFare | Read more:
Image:D. Myles Cullen
But what counts as an “official impeachment inquiry,” and what is required to move forward with one? House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sent a letter to Pelosi asking her to “suspend” the impeachment inquiry until “transparent and equitable rules and procedures” could be put in place and a floor vote authorizing an impeachment inquiry could be taken. Pelosi responded that no vote was necessary. Now White House Counsel Pat Cipollone has written to Pelosi informing her that the administration will not cooperate with the House’s “constitutionally invalid” impeachment inquiry, in part because the House had not voted “to authorize such a dramatic constitutional step” or provided the president with “due process protections.”Is it constitutionally acceptable for the House speaker to initiate an impeachment “by means of nothing more than a press conference”? In short, yes.
The constitutional text on this issue is spare. The Constitution simply says that the House has the sole power of impeachment. Ultimately, if the House wants to impeach someone, it needs to muster a simple majority in support of articles of impeachment that can be presented to the Senate. How the House gets there is entirely up to the chamber itself to determine. There is no constitutional requirement that the House take two successful votes on impeachment, one to authorize some kind of inquiry and one to ratify whatever emerges from that inquiry. An impeachment inquiry is not “invalid” because there has been no vote to formally launch it, and any eventual impeachment would not be “invalid” because the process that led to it did not feature a floor vote authorizing a specific inquiry. (...)
Impeachment has frequently been analogized to a grand jury indictment, and the analogy is informative here. The House is a prosecutorial body in an impeachment context. The House members themselves must decide what steps they think are necessary to satisfy themselves that a particular impeachment is warranted and to prepare a credible case that can be argued in the Senate, where the defense will have an opportunity to poke holes in it. It might be prudent for the House to create a more robust adversarial proceeding in order to help the House members themselves assess the strength of the case, but any such process is for the benefit of informing the House, not protecting the accused from a possible impeachment. A federal officer has no particular right not to be impeached, and the bar for impeachment is consequently set low.
The Senate trial, by contrast, provides an opportunity for an accused officer to mount a robust defense, plead his or her case, and seek total vindication. The procedural bar for a Senate conviction is set high. There, the House can have no expectation of a sympathetic hearing and the defendant can make use of the fact that a bipartisan supermajority in the upper chamber will almost always be necessary to remove him or her from office. It might not be possible to impeach a ham sandwich in the House, but the accused has no expectation of a fair or bipartisan hearing in the lower chamber.
Politically, the Democratic leadership is avoiding a vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry because thus far they seem uncertain whether they could win such a vote. If a vote authorizing an impeachment is seen by some citizens as indistinguishable from a vote to impeach, then House members in purple districts might well prefer to know how strong the case for impeachment actually is before they have to go on record effectively supporting an impeachment. In a perfect world, voters would be able to distinguish support for an impeachment inquiry from support for an impeachment—but in our imperfect world, the House leadership is expected to protect caucus members from unnecessary politically damaging votes. As a matter of institutional design, Congress’s ability to inquire into misconduct should not be held hostage by such electoral calculations. Rather, the system should allow for a process that allows the investigation of allegations of misconduct and uncovering of the facts, and that forces politicians to take responsibility for how they respond to those facts. A system that instead puts a thumb on the scale on the side of hiding potential misconduct is hardly in the public interest, even if it might serve the immediate personal or partisan interests of those who fear that their conduct might come under scrutiny. Americans should be reluctant to build into constitutional practice such a bias toward obstructing investigations. The constitutional framers did not themselves build in that kind of bias.
by Keith E. Whittington, LawFare | Read more:
Image:D. Myles Cullen
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Don't Force Patients Off Opioids Abruptly, New Guidelines Say, Warning Of Severe Risks
There's no doubt that opioids have been massively overprescribed in U.S. In the haste to address the epidemic, there's been pressure on doctors to reduce prescriptions of these drugs — and in fact prescriptions are declining. But along the way, some chronic pain patients have been forced to rapidly taper or discontinue the drugs altogether.
Now, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a new message for doctors: Abrupt changes to a patient's opioid prescription could harm them.
On Thursday, the agency issued new guidelines for physicians on how best to manage opioid prescriptions. They recommend a deliberate approach to lowering doses for chronic pain patients who have been on long-term opioid therapy.
"It must be done slowly and carefully," says Adm. Brett P. Giroir, MD, assistant secretary for health for HHS. "If opioids are going to be reduced in a chronic patient it really needs to be done in a patient-centered, compassionate, guided way."
This is a course correction of sorts. In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued prescribing guidelines. Those highlighted the risks of addiction and overdose and encouraged providers to lower doses when possible. In response, many doctors began to limit their pain pill prescriptions, and in some cases cut patients off.
These guidelines led to rigid rules in some cases. Giroir says it's concerning that some clinicians, policymakers, and health systems are "interpreting guidelines as mandates."
"A guideline is a guideline it's not a mandate or a rule that works for every single patient," he says.
The new HHS guidance cautions that a hasty removal of the medication can lead to acute withdrawal symptoms, provoke thoughts of suicide and lead patients to seek out illicit opioids "as a way to treat their pain or withdrawal symptoms."
Entirely discontinuing opioids for a chronic pain patient is not always appropriate, according to the guidelines: "Unless there are indications of a life-threatening issue, such as warning signs of impending overdose, HHS does not recommend abrupt opioid dose reduction or discontinuation." (...)
A growing concern about prescribing rules
The new tapering guidance follows earlier efforts to signal that too much emphasis on reducing opioids for chronic pain patients may backfire.
Earlier this year, both the CDC and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration put out statements about the dangers of suddenly discontinuing the medication or rapidly decreasing the dose.
In March, more than 300 doctors and health professionals, including three former White House Drug Czars, warned the CDC in a letter of the "widespread misapplication" of its 2016 opioid prescribing guidelines for chronic pain.
Even though the guidelines were voluntary and geared toward primary care doctors, the recommendations became a template for states and others seeking to minimize the risk of opioids.
Dr. Stefan Kertesz, a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, was a lead author on that letter to the CDC.
He says the new guidance from HHS does well to highlight the risks of tapering, but there are still many obstacles to making it "useful and protective of patients."
"We have to be concerned that the governmental and nongovernmental agencies continue to incentivize dose reductions that violate the precepts of this document and hold no one accountable for harm to patients when doses are forced down across the board," says Kertesz.
Clinicians across the country remain under immense pressures to curb prescribing. Kertesz notes that Medicaid, as well as states and private payers, still have policies that lead to forced dose reductions.
"Until those laws, regulations, quality metrics and criteria are revisited, we will have to live with a heart-breaking conflict between what well-intentioned experts think is good practice and what our health system and laws incentivize," he says.
In the current environment, doctors worry prescribing opioids could endanger their ability to practice, especially if state medical boards or law enforcement agencies identify them as high prescribers in the electronic databases maintained by states.
Kertesz says a growing body of research is undermining the "foolish assumption that because pills have gone down, safety has been created."
"Taper might help some patients if you do it 100% correctly," he says, "And in reality, we are mostly doing it wrong."
Increasingly, patients with chronic pain are echoing these concerns as their doses are being lowered or discontinued.
Lessons learned from a Seattle clinic
The dangers of paring back opioid prescribing came into sharp focus for Dr. Joseph Merrill when his primary care clinic in Seattle tightened its rules around opioid prescribing nearly a decade ago.
The new policy at Harborview Medical Center aimed for a more cautious approach to prescribing the pills – measures like urine drug tests, dosing recommendations and guidance to taper patients on higher doses.
"We felt there was enough data to show high doses of opioids for chronic pain could be unsafe," says Merrill, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
After the rules took effect, Merrill began to notice certain patients weren't faring well. Some were missing appointments. Others appeared to be using illicit drugs or misusing their prescriptions.
"We had the sense that we were losing some patients," he says.
Over the next five years, the clinic used an in-house registry to track 572 of its patients who were on chronic opioid therapy for pain. More than half had their opioids discontinued.
Merrill says the results were a "wake-up call"
About 20% of the patients died during the study period of all causes. Close to 4% died of a definite or possible overdose and most of those were people whose prescriptions were stopped.
"The most concerning finding was that the group of patients whose opioid prescriptions were discontinued had a higher rate of overdose death than the group who stayed on their opioid medications," Merrill says. (...)
About half of the patients who were discontinued later experienced an opioid-related hospitalization or emergency department visit.
"The typical rate of discontinuation was one day, which essentially means people were not tapered at all – they were just stopped," Mark says.
She says the University of Washington study is more evidence that doctors don't feel well-equipped to help patients who are potentially misusing opioids, "other than by having them discontinue opioids which resulted in as high or higher opioid death rates." (...)
In the big picture, Merrill says, the seesaw in opioid prescribing – from liberal dispensation to the current climate of restriction – needs to stop.
"I think neither of those extremes is appropriate," he says.
Now, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a new message for doctors: Abrupt changes to a patient's opioid prescription could harm them.
On Thursday, the agency issued new guidelines for physicians on how best to manage opioid prescriptions. They recommend a deliberate approach to lowering doses for chronic pain patients who have been on long-term opioid therapy.
"It must be done slowly and carefully," says Adm. Brett P. Giroir, MD, assistant secretary for health for HHS. "If opioids are going to be reduced in a chronic patient it really needs to be done in a patient-centered, compassionate, guided way."This is a course correction of sorts. In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued prescribing guidelines. Those highlighted the risks of addiction and overdose and encouraged providers to lower doses when possible. In response, many doctors began to limit their pain pill prescriptions, and in some cases cut patients off.
These guidelines led to rigid rules in some cases. Giroir says it's concerning that some clinicians, policymakers, and health systems are "interpreting guidelines as mandates."
"A guideline is a guideline it's not a mandate or a rule that works for every single patient," he says.
The new HHS guidance cautions that a hasty removal of the medication can lead to acute withdrawal symptoms, provoke thoughts of suicide and lead patients to seek out illicit opioids "as a way to treat their pain or withdrawal symptoms."
Entirely discontinuing opioids for a chronic pain patient is not always appropriate, according to the guidelines: "Unless there are indications of a life-threatening issue, such as warning signs of impending overdose, HHS does not recommend abrupt opioid dose reduction or discontinuation." (...)
A growing concern about prescribing rules
The new tapering guidance follows earlier efforts to signal that too much emphasis on reducing opioids for chronic pain patients may backfire.
Earlier this year, both the CDC and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration put out statements about the dangers of suddenly discontinuing the medication or rapidly decreasing the dose.
In March, more than 300 doctors and health professionals, including three former White House Drug Czars, warned the CDC in a letter of the "widespread misapplication" of its 2016 opioid prescribing guidelines for chronic pain.
Even though the guidelines were voluntary and geared toward primary care doctors, the recommendations became a template for states and others seeking to minimize the risk of opioids.
Dr. Stefan Kertesz, a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, was a lead author on that letter to the CDC.
He says the new guidance from HHS does well to highlight the risks of tapering, but there are still many obstacles to making it "useful and protective of patients."
"We have to be concerned that the governmental and nongovernmental agencies continue to incentivize dose reductions that violate the precepts of this document and hold no one accountable for harm to patients when doses are forced down across the board," says Kertesz.
Clinicians across the country remain under immense pressures to curb prescribing. Kertesz notes that Medicaid, as well as states and private payers, still have policies that lead to forced dose reductions.
"Until those laws, regulations, quality metrics and criteria are revisited, we will have to live with a heart-breaking conflict between what well-intentioned experts think is good practice and what our health system and laws incentivize," he says.
In the current environment, doctors worry prescribing opioids could endanger their ability to practice, especially if state medical boards or law enforcement agencies identify them as high prescribers in the electronic databases maintained by states.
Kertesz says a growing body of research is undermining the "foolish assumption that because pills have gone down, safety has been created."
"Taper might help some patients if you do it 100% correctly," he says, "And in reality, we are mostly doing it wrong."
Increasingly, patients with chronic pain are echoing these concerns as their doses are being lowered or discontinued.
Lessons learned from a Seattle clinic
The dangers of paring back opioid prescribing came into sharp focus for Dr. Joseph Merrill when his primary care clinic in Seattle tightened its rules around opioid prescribing nearly a decade ago.
The new policy at Harborview Medical Center aimed for a more cautious approach to prescribing the pills – measures like urine drug tests, dosing recommendations and guidance to taper patients on higher doses.
"We felt there was enough data to show high doses of opioids for chronic pain could be unsafe," says Merrill, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
After the rules took effect, Merrill began to notice certain patients weren't faring well. Some were missing appointments. Others appeared to be using illicit drugs or misusing their prescriptions.
"We had the sense that we were losing some patients," he says.
Over the next five years, the clinic used an in-house registry to track 572 of its patients who were on chronic opioid therapy for pain. More than half had their opioids discontinued.
Merrill says the results were a "wake-up call"
About 20% of the patients died during the study period of all causes. Close to 4% died of a definite or possible overdose and most of those were people whose prescriptions were stopped.
"The most concerning finding was that the group of patients whose opioid prescriptions were discontinued had a higher rate of overdose death than the group who stayed on their opioid medications," Merrill says. (...)
About half of the patients who were discontinued later experienced an opioid-related hospitalization or emergency department visit.
"The typical rate of discontinuation was one day, which essentially means people were not tapered at all – they were just stopped," Mark says.
She says the University of Washington study is more evidence that doctors don't feel well-equipped to help patients who are potentially misusing opioids, "other than by having them discontinue opioids which resulted in as high or higher opioid death rates." (...)
In the big picture, Merrill says, the seesaw in opioid prescribing – from liberal dispensation to the current climate of restriction – needs to stop.
"I think neither of those extremes is appropriate," he says.
by Will Stone and Allison Aubrey, NPR | Read more:
Image: Douglas Sacha/Getty Images
[ed. Who could have known? Well, actually, anyone with half a brain. I've been highlighting this problem for years. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. It's as if during the AIDS epidemic the only response doctors, hospitals and politicians could come up with was to tell patients to stop having sex. They've all been complicit in making this epidemic worse. It remains to be seen whether there'll be any real change.]
The Dawn of the Age of Geoengineering
Let’s be honest. The world’s governments might not coordinate to stop climate change.
Between bickering over which country is paying the bill, the fact that the major costs of climate change are decades away, and countless more urgent political problems caused by the sudden surge of populism around the world, it’s possible sensible policies like carbon taxes won’t be fully adopted in time.
Fortunately, technology and entrepreneurship are contributing solutions. Solar and wind energy is plummeting in price. Transport is electrifying because it turns out electric cars are simply better than conventional ones.
But also, there is still a chunk of humanity with the determination, audacity, and ingenuity to succeed on a massive scale where political coordination has so far failed. Meet the geoengineers.
Here are four of my favorite large-scale projects to improve Earth’s environment.
Pleistocene Park
I’ve been following the effort to bring Mammoths back to Siberia since 2017 when I read Ross Andersen’s spellbinding feature on the subject in The Atlantic (highly suggested).
The core idea is delightfully counterintuitive: Siberia has too many trees. In ages past, Siberia used to be grassland, and today it is mostly forest. Although trees can sequester carbon in their trunks and branches (at least until they burn or decompose), Siberian forests have significant drawbacks with respect to climate change.
First, forests don’t reflect a lot of solar radiation. A treeless, grassy Siberia would increase Earth’s albedo, reflecting more solar energy back into space. Forests absorb more solar radiation and put it into the ground as heat.
Second, forests are poor habitats for snow-trampling herd animals. In the winter, a thick layer of snow acts as an insulator on the permafrost, preventing frigid above-ground temperatures from reaching deep into the Earth’s crust, where they can shore up the frozenness of the permafrost. When large herds of grazing animals trample the snow, its insulating properties are reduced and the permafrost can hard freeze. Forests reduce these snow-trampling grazing populations.
These effects matter because Arctic permafrost is potentially a carbon bomb. Legions of microbes lay in suspended animation in the frozen soil. If the temperature of the soil rises only 3 more degrees (C), the microbes will come to life, eat, reproduce, and start generating carbon emissions. Arctic permafrost contains more carbon than all the planet’s forests and the atmosphere combined. Thawing permafrost could therefore be a tipping point, leading to significantly more carbon in the atmosphere and a runaway warming scenario. An increase in albedo from converting the terrain to steppe would mean that the Siberian permafrost would absorb less heat, allowing it to stay frozen longer. And the trampled snow from the return of herding animals would allow Siberia’s frigid winter air to keep the permafrost deep-frozen.
So how do we convert Siberia to grassland? Nikita Zimov is already doing it. He is director of Pleistocene Park, a 144 km² grassy Siberian reserve founded by his father, gonzo scientist Sergey Zimov. The Zimovs have spent the past two decades ripping up trees and reintroducing grazing herds, including bison, moose, wild horses, yaks, and reindeer.
The plan is working. Nikita Zimov says the permafrost, which is at around –3º outside the park, is 17º colder (!) inside the park. The question then, is how to expand the park as efficiently as possible.
Here’s where the project gets really audacious: the plan is to bring back woolly mammoths. Like much other megafauna, mammoths died out around 10,000 years ago, hunted to extinction by our human ancestors. Mammoths provided the Pleistocene with the valuable services of grazing, trampling snow and moving it around to get to the grass below, and uprooting trees. Nothing will make a mammoth happier, it is thought, than ripping a tree out of the icy ground, just as modern elephants enjoy doing the same in the warmer ground of Africa. Based on everything we know, mammoths were a critical part of the Siberian Steppe ecosystem, and their extinction at human hands is what caused the forests to take hold.
To bring back woolly mammoths, we don’t need mammoth DNA perfectly preserved in amber as in Jurassic Park. Instead, geneticists are starting from mammoths’ closest living relative, the Asian elephant, and adding genes that provide traits that could help them to survive in cold climates. If we give Asian elephants a nice layer of subcutaneous fat, a thicker coat of hair, smaller ears (so that the extremities don’t freeze), and some hemoglobin adapted for the cold, that may be enough to allow them to survive in the cold, Siberian winter. Modify perhaps as few as 50 genes. From there, it is thought, evolution will resume and make them more mammoth-like.
This genetic work is going on at the Wyss Institute at Harvard, led by ubiquitous geneticist George Church. There, scientists are identifying genes that could aid winter survival of Asian elephants, CRISPRing them into living elephant fibroblasts, and reprogramming the fibroblasts into pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells, with luck, will be used to produce new “mammoth” embryos. Once enough likely-to-survive mammoth-like elephants are incubated (artificially, because Asian elephants are endangered) to form a herd, they can be released into Pleistocene Park to help transform, maintain, and expand it—and, over a few generations, to transform themselves into better mammoths.
Between bickering over which country is paying the bill, the fact that the major costs of climate change are decades away, and countless more urgent political problems caused by the sudden surge of populism around the world, it’s possible sensible policies like carbon taxes won’t be fully adopted in time.
Fortunately, technology and entrepreneurship are contributing solutions. Solar and wind energy is plummeting in price. Transport is electrifying because it turns out electric cars are simply better than conventional ones.
But also, there is still a chunk of humanity with the determination, audacity, and ingenuity to succeed on a massive scale where political coordination has so far failed. Meet the geoengineers.
Here are four of my favorite large-scale projects to improve Earth’s environment.
Pleistocene Park
I’ve been following the effort to bring Mammoths back to Siberia since 2017 when I read Ross Andersen’s spellbinding feature on the subject in The Atlantic (highly suggested).
The core idea is delightfully counterintuitive: Siberia has too many trees. In ages past, Siberia used to be grassland, and today it is mostly forest. Although trees can sequester carbon in their trunks and branches (at least until they burn or decompose), Siberian forests have significant drawbacks with respect to climate change.
First, forests don’t reflect a lot of solar radiation. A treeless, grassy Siberia would increase Earth’s albedo, reflecting more solar energy back into space. Forests absorb more solar radiation and put it into the ground as heat.Second, forests are poor habitats for snow-trampling herd animals. In the winter, a thick layer of snow acts as an insulator on the permafrost, preventing frigid above-ground temperatures from reaching deep into the Earth’s crust, where they can shore up the frozenness of the permafrost. When large herds of grazing animals trample the snow, its insulating properties are reduced and the permafrost can hard freeze. Forests reduce these snow-trampling grazing populations.
These effects matter because Arctic permafrost is potentially a carbon bomb. Legions of microbes lay in suspended animation in the frozen soil. If the temperature of the soil rises only 3 more degrees (C), the microbes will come to life, eat, reproduce, and start generating carbon emissions. Arctic permafrost contains more carbon than all the planet’s forests and the atmosphere combined. Thawing permafrost could therefore be a tipping point, leading to significantly more carbon in the atmosphere and a runaway warming scenario. An increase in albedo from converting the terrain to steppe would mean that the Siberian permafrost would absorb less heat, allowing it to stay frozen longer. And the trampled snow from the return of herding animals would allow Siberia’s frigid winter air to keep the permafrost deep-frozen.
So how do we convert Siberia to grassland? Nikita Zimov is already doing it. He is director of Pleistocene Park, a 144 km² grassy Siberian reserve founded by his father, gonzo scientist Sergey Zimov. The Zimovs have spent the past two decades ripping up trees and reintroducing grazing herds, including bison, moose, wild horses, yaks, and reindeer.
The plan is working. Nikita Zimov says the permafrost, which is at around –3º outside the park, is 17º colder (!) inside the park. The question then, is how to expand the park as efficiently as possible.
Here’s where the project gets really audacious: the plan is to bring back woolly mammoths. Like much other megafauna, mammoths died out around 10,000 years ago, hunted to extinction by our human ancestors. Mammoths provided the Pleistocene with the valuable services of grazing, trampling snow and moving it around to get to the grass below, and uprooting trees. Nothing will make a mammoth happier, it is thought, than ripping a tree out of the icy ground, just as modern elephants enjoy doing the same in the warmer ground of Africa. Based on everything we know, mammoths were a critical part of the Siberian Steppe ecosystem, and their extinction at human hands is what caused the forests to take hold.
To bring back woolly mammoths, we don’t need mammoth DNA perfectly preserved in amber as in Jurassic Park. Instead, geneticists are starting from mammoths’ closest living relative, the Asian elephant, and adding genes that provide traits that could help them to survive in cold climates. If we give Asian elephants a nice layer of subcutaneous fat, a thicker coat of hair, smaller ears (so that the extremities don’t freeze), and some hemoglobin adapted for the cold, that may be enough to allow them to survive in the cold, Siberian winter. Modify perhaps as few as 50 genes. From there, it is thought, evolution will resume and make them more mammoth-like.
This genetic work is going on at the Wyss Institute at Harvard, led by ubiquitous geneticist George Church. There, scientists are identifying genes that could aid winter survival of Asian elephants, CRISPRing them into living elephant fibroblasts, and reprogramming the fibroblasts into pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells, with luck, will be used to produce new “mammoth” embryos. Once enough likely-to-survive mammoth-like elephants are incubated (artificially, because Asian elephants are endangered) to form a herd, they can be released into Pleistocene Park to help transform, maintain, and expand it—and, over a few generations, to transform themselves into better mammoths.
by Eli Dourado | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. See also: Can we really prevent all warming for less than 10B$ with the mostly side-effect free geoengineering technique of Marine Cloud Brightening? (LessWrong)
[ed. See also: Can we really prevent all warming for less than 10B$ with the mostly side-effect free geoengineering technique of Marine Cloud Brightening? (LessWrong)
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Costco Doesn’t Make Much Money Selling You Groceries
Have you ever wondered how Costco makes money?
Most people know that the membership-only mega-retailer sells items in large quantities at what are basically wholesale prices, so where’s the profit in that? Turns out, it’s all in the membership fees, according to a Twitter thread that went viral over the weekend.
The thread by an investor explained to the general public what most experts in retail circles have known for some time — Costco’s high volume of sales and rapid turnover of inventory are not the real reason the company is so profitable: the memberships are. The cheapest membership option is the Gold Star card, which costs $60 annually. The more expensive membership card, the Gold Star Executive card, costs $120 a year and has added perks like 2% cash back on eligible purchases.
Here’s how it works:
Since Costco operates at very low gross margins — if you buy 5 pounds of peanut butter for $10, the company makes only $1 off your purchase, according to the thread — it can’t make big bucks just by selling you things cheaply. But, since the retailer has developed a reputation for having consistently lower prices than its competitors, it has something called “price authority,” meaning Costco can lean on suppliers for competitive prices and also rely on consumers to steadily continue signing up for and renewing their memberships. The company had a 90% member renewal rate in the U.S. and Canada last year (and 88% worldwide), according to the company’s annual report.
There are more than 53 million paid members as of this year, according to the Twitter thread. That means Costco is on track to make $4.3 billion from memberships in 2019, which accounts for essentially all of the company’s profit so far, the thread says.
by Alix Langone, Money | Read more:
Image: via
Most people know that the membership-only mega-retailer sells items in large quantities at what are basically wholesale prices, so where’s the profit in that? Turns out, it’s all in the membership fees, according to a Twitter thread that went viral over the weekend.
The thread by an investor explained to the general public what most experts in retail circles have known for some time — Costco’s high volume of sales and rapid turnover of inventory are not the real reason the company is so profitable: the memberships are. The cheapest membership option is the Gold Star card, which costs $60 annually. The more expensive membership card, the Gold Star Executive card, costs $120 a year and has added perks like 2% cash back on eligible purchases.Here’s how it works:
Since Costco operates at very low gross margins — if you buy 5 pounds of peanut butter for $10, the company makes only $1 off your purchase, according to the thread — it can’t make big bucks just by selling you things cheaply. But, since the retailer has developed a reputation for having consistently lower prices than its competitors, it has something called “price authority,” meaning Costco can lean on suppliers for competitive prices and also rely on consumers to steadily continue signing up for and renewing their memberships. The company had a 90% member renewal rate in the U.S. and Canada last year (and 88% worldwide), according to the company’s annual report.
There are more than 53 million paid members as of this year, according to the Twitter thread. That means Costco is on track to make $4.3 billion from memberships in 2019, which accounts for essentially all of the company’s profit so far, the thread says.
by Alix Langone, Money | Read more:
Image: via
Off the Rails
Hanoi closes trackside cafes thronged by selfie-seeking tourists.
It's the kind of shot every Instagram connoisseur yearns for: century-old railway tracks cutting through dusty backstreets, flanked by tourists drinking beer or iced tea mere inches from the slow-moving trains.
The sight has become such a draw in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi that authorities have set a weekend deadline for the removal of dozens of cafes that have cropped up, citing safety concerns.
"I love it. It's crazy, and completely different to anywhere I've been before," said Australian tourist Laura Metze, after a train rumbled by.
"I can also see why they would close it down because it's pretty dangerous."
Built in 1902 under French colonial rulers, the railway to Vietnam's northern provinces carries passengers and cargo mostly between Hanoi and the eastern city of Haiphong, and the remote towns of Lang Son and Lao Cai, on the mountainous border with China.
It uses an old-fashioned French narrow gauge, and is so old that when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited Hanoi in February for a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, he had to stop at the border and continue by car.
In Hanoi, the line brushes the rear of houses and shops as it snakes through the city's dense centre. Vendors stroll on the tracks, selling snacks on skewers, while some visitors sit on the railway lines and soak in the vibe.
In recent months, crowds of tourists have gathered along the railway to snap selfies with passing trains or lounge at trackside cafes.
On Sunday, a train had to make an emergency stop soon after leaving Hanoi railway station to avoid hitting tourists, state media said.
The next day, the city's governing body ordered the cafes removed by Saturday to "ensure traffic safety", at the request of the transport ministry.
"Though the railway cafes attract tourists, they are, in fact, violating some regulations," Ha Van Sieu, a government tourism official, told media on Tuesday.
New and creative tourism products are encouraged, but must conform to legal regulations, Sieu added.
Vietnam received 12.87 million foreign visitors in the first nine months of this year, up nearly 11% on the year, government data shows.
by Khanh Vu, Yahoo News | Read more:
Image: Reuters/Kham via
[ed. See also: Has Overtourism Killed Big Sur? (Outside). I know, irony.]
The sight has become such a draw in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi that authorities have set a weekend deadline for the removal of dozens of cafes that have cropped up, citing safety concerns.
"I love it. It's crazy, and completely different to anywhere I've been before," said Australian tourist Laura Metze, after a train rumbled by.
"I can also see why they would close it down because it's pretty dangerous."Built in 1902 under French colonial rulers, the railway to Vietnam's northern provinces carries passengers and cargo mostly between Hanoi and the eastern city of Haiphong, and the remote towns of Lang Son and Lao Cai, on the mountainous border with China.
It uses an old-fashioned French narrow gauge, and is so old that when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited Hanoi in February for a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, he had to stop at the border and continue by car.
In Hanoi, the line brushes the rear of houses and shops as it snakes through the city's dense centre. Vendors stroll on the tracks, selling snacks on skewers, while some visitors sit on the railway lines and soak in the vibe.
In recent months, crowds of tourists have gathered along the railway to snap selfies with passing trains or lounge at trackside cafes.
On Sunday, a train had to make an emergency stop soon after leaving Hanoi railway station to avoid hitting tourists, state media said.
The next day, the city's governing body ordered the cafes removed by Saturday to "ensure traffic safety", at the request of the transport ministry.
"Though the railway cafes attract tourists, they are, in fact, violating some regulations," Ha Van Sieu, a government tourism official, told media on Tuesday.
New and creative tourism products are encouraged, but must conform to legal regulations, Sieu added.
Vietnam received 12.87 million foreign visitors in the first nine months of this year, up nearly 11% on the year, government data shows.
by Khanh Vu, Yahoo News | Read more:
Image: Reuters/Kham via
[ed. See also: Has Overtourism Killed Big Sur? (Outside). I know, irony.]
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Is Your Retirement Fund Ruining Our Economy?
In the mid-2000s, Michael Burry smelled trouble in the housing market, realizing that big banks were packaging shady subprime mortgages and reselling them as surefire investments. He concluded that it would lead to a spectacular collapse, made a huge bet against the market and, ultimately, tons of money. His story was dramatized in the book The Big Short by Michael Lewis and in a Hollywood movie in which he was played by Christian Bale.
Burry recently told Bloomberg that he sees another massive bubble happening. This time, he says, it's in index funds. Instead of relying on financial experts to actively pick winners and losers, index funds buy everything in a market, passively going up and down as the entire market goes up and down. If you're saving for retirement, there's a good chance you're invested in at least one of them.
In 1995, index funds represented only 4% of the total assets invested in equity mutual funds. By 2015, that had jumped to 34%. There is now over $4 trillion in passive funds indexed to the U.S. stock market, more than the market cap of Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Google combined.
Index funds make a persuasive offer. Don't pursue the expensive and risky strategy of buying and selling individual stocks. Don't pay brokers or mutual funds big fees to move money around for you. Instead, just park your money in these passive moneymakers, which offer lower fees, diversified risk, and — as the data has made clear — better returns over the long run.
It sounds almost too good to be true, and Burry is arguing it is. And he's not alone in expressing concerns about the astonishing rise of index funds.
The Price Isn't Right
Actively buying and selling stocks and bonds provides a service to the market: It's called "price discovery." If something is overvalued, traders sell it. If it's undervalued, they buy it. That moves the price of the asset — and it is the crucial mechanism to make sure the price is right, signaling its true value.
But index funds don't really discover prices. Investors just dump money into these investments, which mindlessly hold stock in companies whether they're doing well or not. Burry believes the fall of active buying and selling has led to overvaluations, and he's predicting a crash in the value of the large companies held in index funds. "I just don't know what the timeline will be. Like most bubbles, the longer it goes on, the worse the crash will be," he told Bloomberg. He's now investing in small companies, which he says are often ignored by index funds.
Burry has not disclosed much about his data or methodology. And like any trader, he could be wrong. But, even if he is, concerns about index funds go well beyond bubbles.
A Specter
Legal scholars Lucian A. Bebchuk and Scott Hirst recently published a working paper called "The Specter of the Giant Three." The vast majority of money flowing into index funds are run by three companies: Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street Global Advisors. Their combined average stake in each of the top 500 American corporations (the S&P 500) has gone from 5.2% in 1998 to 20.5% in 2017.
The market for index funds, Bebchuk and Hirst argue, naturally favors bigness. Managing a trillion dollar fund is not dramatically more expensive than managing a billion dollar firm. This means the big firms can use their larger revenue streams to offer consumers lower fees, giving them a competitive advantage. Innovations in types of index funds are also easy to copy, meaning that it's especially hard for small companies to disrupt the big ones.
As more and more people put their money in index funds, Bebchuk and Hirst believe these companies will just continue getting bigger and bigger. And, unlike many other investors, Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street reliably vote at shareholder meetings, which makes them even more influential when it comes to company decision-making. If trends continue, Bebhcuk and Hirst project these three companies could cast over 40% of the votes in every single one of the 500 largest American corporations within the next couple decades.
"In this Giant Three scenario, three investment managers would largely dominate shareholder voting in practically all significant U.S. companies that do not have a controlling shareholder," Bebchuk and Hirst warn. They fear this could have drastic implications for corporate governance and competition.
Burry recently told Bloomberg that he sees another massive bubble happening. This time, he says, it's in index funds. Instead of relying on financial experts to actively pick winners and losers, index funds buy everything in a market, passively going up and down as the entire market goes up and down. If you're saving for retirement, there's a good chance you're invested in at least one of them.
In 1995, index funds represented only 4% of the total assets invested in equity mutual funds. By 2015, that had jumped to 34%. There is now over $4 trillion in passive funds indexed to the U.S. stock market, more than the market cap of Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Google combined.Index funds make a persuasive offer. Don't pursue the expensive and risky strategy of buying and selling individual stocks. Don't pay brokers or mutual funds big fees to move money around for you. Instead, just park your money in these passive moneymakers, which offer lower fees, diversified risk, and — as the data has made clear — better returns over the long run.
It sounds almost too good to be true, and Burry is arguing it is. And he's not alone in expressing concerns about the astonishing rise of index funds.
The Price Isn't Right
Actively buying and selling stocks and bonds provides a service to the market: It's called "price discovery." If something is overvalued, traders sell it. If it's undervalued, they buy it. That moves the price of the asset — and it is the crucial mechanism to make sure the price is right, signaling its true value.
But index funds don't really discover prices. Investors just dump money into these investments, which mindlessly hold stock in companies whether they're doing well or not. Burry believes the fall of active buying and selling has led to overvaluations, and he's predicting a crash in the value of the large companies held in index funds. "I just don't know what the timeline will be. Like most bubbles, the longer it goes on, the worse the crash will be," he told Bloomberg. He's now investing in small companies, which he says are often ignored by index funds.
Burry has not disclosed much about his data or methodology. And like any trader, he could be wrong. But, even if he is, concerns about index funds go well beyond bubbles.
A Specter
Legal scholars Lucian A. Bebchuk and Scott Hirst recently published a working paper called "The Specter of the Giant Three." The vast majority of money flowing into index funds are run by three companies: Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street Global Advisors. Their combined average stake in each of the top 500 American corporations (the S&P 500) has gone from 5.2% in 1998 to 20.5% in 2017.
The market for index funds, Bebchuk and Hirst argue, naturally favors bigness. Managing a trillion dollar fund is not dramatically more expensive than managing a billion dollar firm. This means the big firms can use their larger revenue streams to offer consumers lower fees, giving them a competitive advantage. Innovations in types of index funds are also easy to copy, meaning that it's especially hard for small companies to disrupt the big ones.
As more and more people put their money in index funds, Bebchuk and Hirst believe these companies will just continue getting bigger and bigger. And, unlike many other investors, Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street reliably vote at shareholder meetings, which makes them even more influential when it comes to company decision-making. If trends continue, Bebhcuk and Hirst project these three companies could cast over 40% of the votes in every single one of the 500 largest American corporations within the next couple decades.
"In this Giant Three scenario, three investment managers would largely dominate shareholder voting in practically all significant U.S. companies that do not have a controlling shareholder," Bebchuk and Hirst warn. They fear this could have drastic implications for corporate governance and competition.
by Greg Rosalski, NPR | Read more:
Image: Pixabay
When Biking and Bears Don’t Mix
The death of a ranger, Brad Treat, in 2016 was a wake-up call for grizzly bear biologists.
Mr. Treat, an avid mountain biker, was zipping along at about 25 miles an hour through dense forest near Glacier National Park in the middle of a summer afternoon when he collided with a large male grizzly bear.
Apparently startled, the bear reacted defensively and quickly killed him. A witness couldn’t see what happened but could hear it. “I heard a thud and an ‘argh,’” the unnamed witness told investigators. Then the bear made a noise “like it was hurt.” The bear disappeared before emergency responders arrived.
Dr. Christopher Servheen, who led the committee that investigated Mr. Treat’s death, said the accident prompted him to speak out publicly against recreational sports in the areas where grizzlies live.
This past summer, he tried to stop two ultramarathons in the Flathead National Forest, but the Forest Service approved the contests anyway. One was held this past weekend, at a time when bears are particularly active in foraging for food before their hibernating season begins later this year.
“We tell people not to run in grizzly bear habitat, to make noise and to be aware of their surroundings,” said Dr. Servheen, who has retired from his post as coordinator for the grizzly bear recovery program of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “Agencies are permitting the very activities we are telling people not to do.”
Vast tracts of public land in the West have become favorite haunts of a growing number of mountain bikers, exploring wild areas for recreation. The Trump administration recently allowed e-bikes, or electric bikes, to be used on all federal trails where bicycles are allowed.
The increasing popularity of trail biking has brought to the fore some of the inherent conflicts in the uses of public land — natural regions or playgrounds. And while the growth of tourism may help local businesses, the forays into deeper parts of the forests by more and more people are encroaching on wildlife.
Mechanized mountain bikes and e-bikes, especially at higher speeds, are incompatible with hiking, hunting, and bird and wildlife watching, some argue. Safety is also a concern. Some mountain bikers revel at bombing down trails at 20 or 30 miles per hour on single-track trails that hikers also frequent.
And biologists like Dr. Servheen who have spent decades studying grizzlies offer reminders about protecting the bears and other wildlife that unwittingly share their territory with more people and more mechanized vehicles.
In its report on Mr. Treat’s fatal accident, the interagency committee concluded: “The bear apparently had no time to move to avoid the collision. At a speed of 20-25 miles per hour, there were only one-to-two seconds between rounding the curve, the victim seeing the bear in the trail and impacting the bear.”
Dr. Stephen Herrero, a professor emeritus of ecology at the University of Calgary, spent much of his career studying grizzlies, and is the author of “Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance.” An avid mountain bike rider, he shares Dr. Servheen’s concerns.
“Bears respond to surprises usually by fleeing, but sometimes by attacking whatever it is that is surprising them,” he said. “Events like runners and bike riders and anything else that suddenly thrusts a disturbance or surprise into their environment, they sometimes respond by attacking.
“I try to avoid mountain biking in any area that is grizzly bear habitat,” Dr. Herrero said. “There are plenty of areas that aren’t.”
Bikers tend to play down the risks. Rebecca Briber, executive director of the Flathead Area Mountain Bikers, said she always carries bear spray with her on rides. “We’re always aware we are recreating in bear country,” she said. “Mountain bike-grizzly bear interactions are rare. It’s more common for hikers to be attacked.”
Other concerns include whether the increase in biking in natural areas could do more to displace grizzlies and other wildlife than hiking, because bikes cover so much more ground, Dr. Servheen said.
“The impacts are mounting because there are more and more mountain bikers and there is more pressure to go into these places with faster bikes and electric mechanized bikes,” he said. “The technology has exceeded our ability to manage it for the benefit of animals.”
Or to understand it. Some experts are raising questions about how fast-moving bikes startle not just bears, but elk, deer and other species, and disrupt their lives.
Dr. Servheen also believes that the sensational news of a grizzly bear killing a bike rider works against the bear from a public relations standpoint. “The response from many people to these kinds of attacks is that grizzly bears are dangerous and their habitat is a dangerous place,” he said. “It’s a cost the bears have to pay in terms of public support and the willingness to have grizzly bears around.”
Because the popularity of biking in these areas has grown rapidly, there is little research on its effects on wildlife. But there is a growing body of evidence that outdoor recreation of all kinds has serious consequences for wildlife.
[ed. This has been a problem in Alaska for years, especially where single-track trails run along salmon streams and are essentially game trails. Bikers there are just as bull-headed, and to suggest that a can of bear spray is going to protect you is ridiculous. One time, I rounded a blind corner on a bicycle and nearly broadsided a grizzly crossing the trail. Missed it by a micro-second and literally brushed it's butt going by. I didn't even have time to press my hand brakes.]
Mr. Treat, an avid mountain biker, was zipping along at about 25 miles an hour through dense forest near Glacier National Park in the middle of a summer afternoon when he collided with a large male grizzly bear.
Apparently startled, the bear reacted defensively and quickly killed him. A witness couldn’t see what happened but could hear it. “I heard a thud and an ‘argh,’” the unnamed witness told investigators. Then the bear made a noise “like it was hurt.” The bear disappeared before emergency responders arrived.
Dr. Christopher Servheen, who led the committee that investigated Mr. Treat’s death, said the accident prompted him to speak out publicly against recreational sports in the areas where grizzlies live.
This past summer, he tried to stop two ultramarathons in the Flathead National Forest, but the Forest Service approved the contests anyway. One was held this past weekend, at a time when bears are particularly active in foraging for food before their hibernating season begins later this year.“We tell people not to run in grizzly bear habitat, to make noise and to be aware of their surroundings,” said Dr. Servheen, who has retired from his post as coordinator for the grizzly bear recovery program of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “Agencies are permitting the very activities we are telling people not to do.”
Vast tracts of public land in the West have become favorite haunts of a growing number of mountain bikers, exploring wild areas for recreation. The Trump administration recently allowed e-bikes, or electric bikes, to be used on all federal trails where bicycles are allowed.
The increasing popularity of trail biking has brought to the fore some of the inherent conflicts in the uses of public land — natural regions or playgrounds. And while the growth of tourism may help local businesses, the forays into deeper parts of the forests by more and more people are encroaching on wildlife.
Mechanized mountain bikes and e-bikes, especially at higher speeds, are incompatible with hiking, hunting, and bird and wildlife watching, some argue. Safety is also a concern. Some mountain bikers revel at bombing down trails at 20 or 30 miles per hour on single-track trails that hikers also frequent.
And biologists like Dr. Servheen who have spent decades studying grizzlies offer reminders about protecting the bears and other wildlife that unwittingly share their territory with more people and more mechanized vehicles.
In its report on Mr. Treat’s fatal accident, the interagency committee concluded: “The bear apparently had no time to move to avoid the collision. At a speed of 20-25 miles per hour, there were only one-to-two seconds between rounding the curve, the victim seeing the bear in the trail and impacting the bear.”
Dr. Stephen Herrero, a professor emeritus of ecology at the University of Calgary, spent much of his career studying grizzlies, and is the author of “Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance.” An avid mountain bike rider, he shares Dr. Servheen’s concerns.
“Bears respond to surprises usually by fleeing, but sometimes by attacking whatever it is that is surprising them,” he said. “Events like runners and bike riders and anything else that suddenly thrusts a disturbance or surprise into their environment, they sometimes respond by attacking.
“I try to avoid mountain biking in any area that is grizzly bear habitat,” Dr. Herrero said. “There are plenty of areas that aren’t.”
Bikers tend to play down the risks. Rebecca Briber, executive director of the Flathead Area Mountain Bikers, said she always carries bear spray with her on rides. “We’re always aware we are recreating in bear country,” she said. “Mountain bike-grizzly bear interactions are rare. It’s more common for hikers to be attacked.”
Other concerns include whether the increase in biking in natural areas could do more to displace grizzlies and other wildlife than hiking, because bikes cover so much more ground, Dr. Servheen said.
“The impacts are mounting because there are more and more mountain bikers and there is more pressure to go into these places with faster bikes and electric mechanized bikes,” he said. “The technology has exceeded our ability to manage it for the benefit of animals.”
Or to understand it. Some experts are raising questions about how fast-moving bikes startle not just bears, but elk, deer and other species, and disrupt their lives.
Dr. Servheen also believes that the sensational news of a grizzly bear killing a bike rider works against the bear from a public relations standpoint. “The response from many people to these kinds of attacks is that grizzly bears are dangerous and their habitat is a dangerous place,” he said. “It’s a cost the bears have to pay in terms of public support and the willingness to have grizzly bears around.”
Because the popularity of biking in these areas has grown rapidly, there is little research on its effects on wildlife. But there is a growing body of evidence that outdoor recreation of all kinds has serious consequences for wildlife.
by Jim Robbins, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Lido Vizzutti for The New York Times[ed. This has been a problem in Alaska for years, especially where single-track trails run along salmon streams and are essentially game trails. Bikers there are just as bull-headed, and to suggest that a can of bear spray is going to protect you is ridiculous. One time, I rounded a blind corner on a bicycle and nearly broadsided a grizzly crossing the trail. Missed it by a micro-second and literally brushed it's butt going by. I didn't even have time to press my hand brakes.]
Monday, October 7, 2019
Keeping Our Eyes on the Ball
A reader from California, Joe Carroll, writes with an update on political goings-on in his state:
Our governor and legislature have been quite active, passing new bills to confirm our Supreme Court decision that Uber-style employment arrangements do not qualify for independent contractor status, curb spurious vaccine exemptions, set a statewide rent control cap, limit the NCAA’s right to keep student-athletes from being paid for endorsements, somewhat strengthen oversight of charter schools, limit police officers’ ability to legally use deadly force, ban private prisons (eventually… probably…), and possibly even limit payday loan rates to a merely-obscene 36% + the federal funds rate. (We’ll see if that one’s too hot for the governor, as reinstituting the Obama administration’s rules on for-profit colleges apparently was.) All laudable liberal advances, all breaths of fresh air compared to what we’re seeing from the federal government, but also so frustratingly, painfully incremental and notable for their omissions: the governor campaigned on a fracking ban that promptly evaporated; our cap-and-trade program appears to be creating incentives for industry to pretend that they were considering development so that they can sell the credits from deciding not to; cities remain free to determine that a low-income housing development or apartment complex is “out of character with the neighborhood” and insist that it be relocated to someone else’s backyard, while my growing city is closing elementary schools because people increasingly can’t afford to live here while they’re young enough to have school-age children.
So, pretty mixed: some encouraging, some discouraging, but a lot happening that will have major consequences for people’s lives and for the planet generally. I’m grateful for Joe’s update, because I think he has a strong sense for what actually matters and is worth paying attention to. The top three stories on the New York Times right now are “Trump Publicly Urges China To Investigate The Bidens,” “Democrats’ Subpoena Threat Is Latest In Rapidly Unfolding Inquiry,” and “Trump Does It All Himself, And That Worries Republicans.” And the New York Times remains one of the most substantive publications in the world. (The next story is a terrifying piece of reportage about ICE’s use of new surveillance technology.) If you visit MSNBC.com, nearly every story is about Trump. On the main page right now, you’ll find the following stories:
‘A president alone’: Trump lashes out amid inquiry
Trump tries again, publicly recommends Ukraine and China investigate the Bidens
Trump grows emotional as impeachment takes aggressive steps ahead
MaddowBlog: Report implicates VP Pence in intensifying Trump scandal
Analysis: As impeachment war turns hot, Trump sounds partisan rallying cry
There is ‘clear obstruction’ from Trump admin.: Rep. Max Rose on supporting
impeachment inquiry
Trump, GOP accuse Schiff of orchestrating whistleblower complaint (...)
I’m about 1/3 down the page. I give up. You get the point. (You’re also told that if you want to “Keep up with the fast-developing impeachment story… Subscribe to the MSNBC Daily newsletter”) There are a few news stories on MSNBC unrelated to Trump. (There is, for example, a piece of climate change news: “Watch London climate change protest involving 1,800 liters of fake blood go horribly wrong.”) But for the most part, it’s utterly obsessed with the latest micro-developments in the plot of the Trump Show.
Ok, before we go any further: I am not saying that an impeachment inquiry into the President of the United States is not important. I am less concerned, however, with what Rep. Slotkin from Michigan’s 8th Congressional District thinks, or with whether Trump violated Nickelback’s copyright on Twitter. Certainly, since I hadn’t heard about half the things Joe told me about, I rather wish our news organizations had spent a bit more time on what states are doing about payday loans and fracking and a bit less time on what Donald Trump did or did not tell the president of Ukraine.
It somewhat frightens me when I realize how many people watch and enjoy MSNBC, because it shows just how distracted people are getting from what are fairly obviously the most important issues in the world: climate catastrophe, the increasing power of the plutocracy, the threat of nuclear armageddon, the 2 million people in our prisons and the tens of thousands committing suicide each year. These are, to be sure, extremely depressing, and watching Trump is like watching an insane alternate universe version of The West Wing where everybody is pure evil and has a screw loose. Hard not to want to stay glued to that. I understand why MSNBC, as a profit-seeking company, has chosen to focus on this bullshit rather than all the depressing stuff no one wants to hear about.
This is, of course, why I love Bernie Sanders so much. He has a way of hyperfocusing on what matters: people’s medical bills, the need for a Green New Deal, the rebuilding of the labor movement. He has this very satisfying contempt for issues that do not directly affect the conditions of working people’s lives. Yes, impeach the president, but can we talk about Medicare For All?
The alternative to this is something that vaguely resembles politics but is more like the internal drama of a royal court. Read this incredible New York Times profile of Rachel Maddow and you’ll see what I mean. It details how Maddow has become obsessed with Trump, and how her audience has grown and in turn become obsessed with her. (And I do mean obsessed with her. The profile includes a description of one fan who “had a Maddow-themed birthday party, at which her friends and her two young sons put on big black glasses and slicked their hair to the side. Also in attendance was a life-size cardboard cutout of Maddow, which is now in storage so as not to startle guests.”)
The profile describes how the Maddow show now devotes itself to the weaving of conspiratorial webs about Trump. Maddow “carries her viewers along on a wave of verbiage, delivering baroque soliloquies about the Russian state, Trump-administration corruption and American political history.” In the show’s office, “on the wall is a poster of ‘Trump Organization Projects and Partners,’ over which has been tacked the image of Carrie Mathison, the Homeland C.I.A. officer known for her paranoid conspiracy walls and unhinged (but often on-point) investigations.” In fact, Maddow is rather honest about where her interests lie and what kind of show she is doing: “I’m happy to admit that I’m obsessed with Russia. I realize it’s controversial, and people give me a lot of grief for focusing on it. But I make no apologies.”
Interestingly, the profile shows the degree to which Maddow has become a mirror-image version of FOX News, the only difference being that they are pro-Trump and she is anti-Trump.
Our governor and legislature have been quite active, passing new bills to confirm our Supreme Court decision that Uber-style employment arrangements do not qualify for independent contractor status, curb spurious vaccine exemptions, set a statewide rent control cap, limit the NCAA’s right to keep student-athletes from being paid for endorsements, somewhat strengthen oversight of charter schools, limit police officers’ ability to legally use deadly force, ban private prisons (eventually… probably…), and possibly even limit payday loan rates to a merely-obscene 36% + the federal funds rate. (We’ll see if that one’s too hot for the governor, as reinstituting the Obama administration’s rules on for-profit colleges apparently was.) All laudable liberal advances, all breaths of fresh air compared to what we’re seeing from the federal government, but also so frustratingly, painfully incremental and notable for their omissions: the governor campaigned on a fracking ban that promptly evaporated; our cap-and-trade program appears to be creating incentives for industry to pretend that they were considering development so that they can sell the credits from deciding not to; cities remain free to determine that a low-income housing development or apartment complex is “out of character with the neighborhood” and insist that it be relocated to someone else’s backyard, while my growing city is closing elementary schools because people increasingly can’t afford to live here while they’re young enough to have school-age children. So, pretty mixed: some encouraging, some discouraging, but a lot happening that will have major consequences for people’s lives and for the planet generally. I’m grateful for Joe’s update, because I think he has a strong sense for what actually matters and is worth paying attention to. The top three stories on the New York Times right now are “Trump Publicly Urges China To Investigate The Bidens,” “Democrats’ Subpoena Threat Is Latest In Rapidly Unfolding Inquiry,” and “Trump Does It All Himself, And That Worries Republicans.” And the New York Times remains one of the most substantive publications in the world. (The next story is a terrifying piece of reportage about ICE’s use of new surveillance technology.) If you visit MSNBC.com, nearly every story is about Trump. On the main page right now, you’ll find the following stories:
‘A president alone’: Trump lashes out amid inquiry
Trump tries again, publicly recommends Ukraine and China investigate the Bidens
Trump grows emotional as impeachment takes aggressive steps ahead
MaddowBlog: Report implicates VP Pence in intensifying Trump scandal
Analysis: As impeachment war turns hot, Trump sounds partisan rallying cry
There is ‘clear obstruction’ from Trump admin.: Rep. Max Rose on supporting
impeachment inquiry
Trump, GOP accuse Schiff of orchestrating whistleblower complaint (...)
I’m about 1/3 down the page. I give up. You get the point. (You’re also told that if you want to “Keep up with the fast-developing impeachment story… Subscribe to the MSNBC Daily newsletter”) There are a few news stories on MSNBC unrelated to Trump. (There is, for example, a piece of climate change news: “Watch London climate change protest involving 1,800 liters of fake blood go horribly wrong.”) But for the most part, it’s utterly obsessed with the latest micro-developments in the plot of the Trump Show.
Ok, before we go any further: I am not saying that an impeachment inquiry into the President of the United States is not important. I am less concerned, however, with what Rep. Slotkin from Michigan’s 8th Congressional District thinks, or with whether Trump violated Nickelback’s copyright on Twitter. Certainly, since I hadn’t heard about half the things Joe told me about, I rather wish our news organizations had spent a bit more time on what states are doing about payday loans and fracking and a bit less time on what Donald Trump did or did not tell the president of Ukraine.
It somewhat frightens me when I realize how many people watch and enjoy MSNBC, because it shows just how distracted people are getting from what are fairly obviously the most important issues in the world: climate catastrophe, the increasing power of the plutocracy, the threat of nuclear armageddon, the 2 million people in our prisons and the tens of thousands committing suicide each year. These are, to be sure, extremely depressing, and watching Trump is like watching an insane alternate universe version of The West Wing where everybody is pure evil and has a screw loose. Hard not to want to stay glued to that. I understand why MSNBC, as a profit-seeking company, has chosen to focus on this bullshit rather than all the depressing stuff no one wants to hear about.
This is, of course, why I love Bernie Sanders so much. He has a way of hyperfocusing on what matters: people’s medical bills, the need for a Green New Deal, the rebuilding of the labor movement. He has this very satisfying contempt for issues that do not directly affect the conditions of working people’s lives. Yes, impeach the president, but can we talk about Medicare For All?
The alternative to this is something that vaguely resembles politics but is more like the internal drama of a royal court. Read this incredible New York Times profile of Rachel Maddow and you’ll see what I mean. It details how Maddow has become obsessed with Trump, and how her audience has grown and in turn become obsessed with her. (And I do mean obsessed with her. The profile includes a description of one fan who “had a Maddow-themed birthday party, at which her friends and her two young sons put on big black glasses and slicked their hair to the side. Also in attendance was a life-size cardboard cutout of Maddow, which is now in storage so as not to startle guests.”)
The profile describes how the Maddow show now devotes itself to the weaving of conspiratorial webs about Trump. Maddow “carries her viewers along on a wave of verbiage, delivering baroque soliloquies about the Russian state, Trump-administration corruption and American political history.” In the show’s office, “on the wall is a poster of ‘Trump Organization Projects and Partners,’ over which has been tacked the image of Carrie Mathison, the Homeland C.I.A. officer known for her paranoid conspiracy walls and unhinged (but often on-point) investigations.” In fact, Maddow is rather honest about where her interests lie and what kind of show she is doing: “I’m happy to admit that I’m obsessed with Russia. I realize it’s controversial, and people give me a lot of grief for focusing on it. But I make no apologies.”
Interestingly, the profile shows the degree to which Maddow has become a mirror-image version of FOX News, the only difference being that they are pro-Trump and she is anti-Trump.
by Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. See also: The Anatomy of MSNBC (Jacobin).]
Sunday, October 6, 2019
My University is Dying
And soon yours will be, too.
Starting in 2016, our state university system endured three successive rounds of annual budget cuts, with average 10-percent reductions resulting in a loss of more than a third of the system’s overall funding. Additional cuts, even, were on the table this past year. And while our state legislators ultimately avoided taking yet one more stab at the dismembered body of higher education, there has been no discussion of restoring any of those funds.
The experience of living with the metastasizing effects of austerity grants me some insight into what has been going on in Alaska. In July, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced a plan to strip the University of Alaska system of 41 percent of its operating budget. He has since tempered this plan, opting instead for a 20-percent cut to be meted out over a period of three years. After weathering three straight years of forced retirements, self-protective “pivots” to administration, and personal waterloos on my own campus, I cannot help but grieve for my colleagues in Alaska. Some of them, I know, will lose their jobs, or else be coerced into giving them up, as my own colleagues have been (my department lost 10 tenured/tenure-track faculty members — half of its roster — in four years and has not been permitted to rehire). But some of them, I know, will not, and I grieve for them, too. Back in 2013, when I was finishing up my dissertation and heading out “on the market,” I did so in the company of a number of other tenure-track hopefuls. The end of that year saw two of us packing up and heading off to new jobs: me to North Dakota, another to Alaska. A third colleague at a nearby school went off to Wyoming. What all of these states and all of these schools have in common, of course, are economies that rely on natural-resource extraction. When the budget cuts first hit North Dakota in 2016, our state legislature cited falling oil prices. I had been hired at the tail end of a boom that was just starting to taper off and resemble healthily average rates of production.
Oil production in the state has grown since then and now outpaces the boom rates of 2014, even. But our campus has not recovered. The same will be true in Alaska, where the governor’s veto was spurred by campaign promises touting higher household revenue from the state’s Permanent Fund, which pays out dividends from oil revenue to private citizens.
Our campus has struggled to recover, first, because austerity isn’t over for us, even if the blitzkrieg of cuts has stalled for the time being. The second reason is because there are fewer people around now to help see each other through the grueling work of recovery. We lost our top-ranked women’s hockey team, which nurtured many an Olympian over the years; we lost whole programs and departments, or else saw them so hollowed from the inside as to effectively be lost. We survivors lost friends, colleagues, and neighbors. No one from my college, which is the largest at UND, a flagship state school, went up for tenure last year, because there was no one left who was eligible to apply.
But these are the obvious losses, the ones that could be counted and read about in the local newspaper, or in the The Chronicle. It is the many and lingering surreptitious forms of loss — loss of confidence, of spirit, of purpose — that do the real damage.
In the spring of 2018, I found myself occupying a spot at a banquet table as part of our campus’s annual Founders Day festivities. The event honors faculty and staff who are retiring from the university, alongside those who have won awards for service, research, or teaching. Two of my departmental colleagues were included among the latter, so a small group of us reserved a table (everyone — including award-winners — must pay to attend). No words can describe the bleakness of an affair recognizing dozens and dozens of middle-aged, energetic employees who have been told that it is the end of their career. The theme for the evening was a 1950s sock hop, which couldn’t have been less appropriate given the age of most of the honorees. Then there were the speeches. The president was supposed to serve as master of ceremonies, but he couldn’t attend because he was interviewing for a job at another university. (He didn’t get it, but he got one a year later and has since moved on.)
This is what I’m talking about when I talk about living with, or surviving, austerity. I’m talking about the nonmaterial consequences of material resource depletion, which can last for generations and make earnest attempts at normalcy appear shot through with undercurrents of gloom. But the feeling isn’t unique to campuses like mine — campuses that have already met and locked horns with the new, ascetic order.
by Sheila Liming, The Chronicle Review | Read more:
Image: U. of North Dakota (Sheila Liming)
[ed. Too bad articles like this on the state of education are blocked by paywalls. Says a lot about priorities.]
Three Big Things: The Most Important Forces Shaping the World
An irony of studying history is that we often know exactly how a story ends, but have no idea where it began.
Here’s an example. What caused the financial crisis?
Well, you have to understand the mortgage market.
What shaped the mortgage market? Well, you have to understand the 30-year decline in interest rates that preceded it.
What caused falling interest rates? Well, you have to understand the inflation of the 1970s.
What caused that inflation? Well, you have to understand the monetary system of the 1970s and the hangover effects from the Vietnam War.
What caused the Vietnam War? Well, you have to understand the West’s fear of communism after World War II …
And so on endlessly.
Every current event – big or small – has parents, grandparents, great grandparents, siblings, and cousins. Ignoring that family tree can muddy your understanding of events, giving a false impression of why things happened, how long they might last, and under what circumstances they might happen again. Viewing events in isolation, without an appreciation for their long roots, helps explain everything from why forecasting is hard to why politics is nasty.
Those roots can snake back infinitely. But the deeper you dig, the closer you get to the Big Things: the handful of events that are so powerful they influence a range of seemingly unrelated topics.
The ultimate of those great-grandmother events was World War II.
It’s hard to overstate how much the world reset from 1939 to 1945, and how deeply the changes the war left behind went on to define virtually everything that’s happened since.
Penicillin owes its existence to the war. So do radar, jets, nuclear energy, rockets, and helicopters. Subsidizing consumption with consumer credit and tax-deductible interest were deliberate policies meant to keep the economy afloat after war-time production ended. The highways you drove on this morning were built to evacuate cities and mobilize the military in case of a nuclear bomb attack during the Cold War, and the Cold War was a WW2 cousin. Same for the internet.
The Civil Rights movement – perhaps the most important social and political event of our time – began in earnest with racial integration during the war.
The female laborforce grew by 6.5 million during the war because women were needed in factories. Most kept working after the war ended, beginning a trend that led to a doubling of the female laborforce participation rate by 1990. It’s probably the single most important economic event of our lifetime.
Find something that’s important to you in 2019 – social, political, economic, whatever – and with a little effort you can trace the roots of its importance back to World War II. There are so few exceptions to this rule it’s astounding.
But it’s not just astounding. It’s an example of something easy to overlook: If you don’t spend a little time understanding World War II’s causes and outcomes, you’re going to have a hard time understanding why the last 60 years have played out the way they have.
You’ll struggle to understand how the biggest technologies got off the ground, and how the most important innovations are born from panic-induced necessity more than cozy visions.
Or why household debt has risen the way it has.
Or why Europeans have different views on social safety nets than Americans. John Maynard Keynes predicted countries wrecked by war would go on to have a “craving for social and personal security,” and indeed they did. Historian Tony Judt writes of post-war Europe:
Which raises the question: What else is like World War II?
What are the other Big Things – the great-grandparents – of important topics today that we need to study if we want to understand what’s happening in the world?
Nothing is as influential as World War II has been. But there are a few other Big Things worth paying attention to, because they’re the root influencer of so many other topics.
The three big ones that stick out are demographics, inequality, and access to information.
There are hundreds of forces shaping the world not mentioned here. But I’d argue that many, even most, are derivatives of those three.
Each of these Big Things will have a profound impact on the coming decades because they’re both transformational and ubiquitous. They impact nearly everyone, albeit in different ways. With that comes the reality that we don’t know exactly how their influence will unfold. No one in 1945 knew exactly how World War II would go on to shape the world, only that it would in extreme ways. But we can guess some of the likeliest changes.
by Morgan Housel, Collaborative Fund | Read more:
Image: Census Bureau
Here’s an example. What caused the financial crisis?
Well, you have to understand the mortgage market.
What shaped the mortgage market? Well, you have to understand the 30-year decline in interest rates that preceded it.
What caused falling interest rates? Well, you have to understand the inflation of the 1970s.What caused that inflation? Well, you have to understand the monetary system of the 1970s and the hangover effects from the Vietnam War.
What caused the Vietnam War? Well, you have to understand the West’s fear of communism after World War II …
And so on endlessly.
Every current event – big or small – has parents, grandparents, great grandparents, siblings, and cousins. Ignoring that family tree can muddy your understanding of events, giving a false impression of why things happened, how long they might last, and under what circumstances they might happen again. Viewing events in isolation, without an appreciation for their long roots, helps explain everything from why forecasting is hard to why politics is nasty.
Those roots can snake back infinitely. But the deeper you dig, the closer you get to the Big Things: the handful of events that are so powerful they influence a range of seemingly unrelated topics.
The ultimate of those great-grandmother events was World War II.
It’s hard to overstate how much the world reset from 1939 to 1945, and how deeply the changes the war left behind went on to define virtually everything that’s happened since.
Penicillin owes its existence to the war. So do radar, jets, nuclear energy, rockets, and helicopters. Subsidizing consumption with consumer credit and tax-deductible interest were deliberate policies meant to keep the economy afloat after war-time production ended. The highways you drove on this morning were built to evacuate cities and mobilize the military in case of a nuclear bomb attack during the Cold War, and the Cold War was a WW2 cousin. Same for the internet.
The Civil Rights movement – perhaps the most important social and political event of our time – began in earnest with racial integration during the war.
The female laborforce grew by 6.5 million during the war because women were needed in factories. Most kept working after the war ended, beginning a trend that led to a doubling of the female laborforce participation rate by 1990. It’s probably the single most important economic event of our lifetime.
Find something that’s important to you in 2019 – social, political, economic, whatever – and with a little effort you can trace the roots of its importance back to World War II. There are so few exceptions to this rule it’s astounding.
But it’s not just astounding. It’s an example of something easy to overlook: If you don’t spend a little time understanding World War II’s causes and outcomes, you’re going to have a hard time understanding why the last 60 years have played out the way they have.
You’ll struggle to understand how the biggest technologies got off the ground, and how the most important innovations are born from panic-induced necessity more than cozy visions.
Or why household debt has risen the way it has.
Or why Europeans have different views on social safety nets than Americans. John Maynard Keynes predicted countries wrecked by war would go on to have a “craving for social and personal security,” and indeed they did. Historian Tony Judt writes of post-war Europe:
Only the state could offer hope or salvation to the mass of the population. And in the aftermath of depression, occupation and civil war, the state—as an agent of welfare, security and fairness—was a vital source of community and social cohesion.There are so many things happening today that aren’t easy to grasp without a working knowledge of the 75-year-old wartime forces that got them going in the first place. To me, the war is fascinating to study not because of what happened, but what it went on to influence.
Which raises the question: What else is like World War II?
What are the other Big Things – the great-grandparents – of important topics today that we need to study if we want to understand what’s happening in the world?
Nothing is as influential as World War II has been. But there are a few other Big Things worth paying attention to, because they’re the root influencer of so many other topics.
The three big ones that stick out are demographics, inequality, and access to information.
There are hundreds of forces shaping the world not mentioned here. But I’d argue that many, even most, are derivatives of those three.
Each of these Big Things will have a profound impact on the coming decades because they’re both transformational and ubiquitous. They impact nearly everyone, albeit in different ways. With that comes the reality that we don’t know exactly how their influence will unfold. No one in 1945 knew exactly how World War II would go on to shape the world, only that it would in extreme ways. But we can guess some of the likeliest changes.
Image: Census Bureau
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)