Shrinking Glaciers

The Second Glacier Inventory of China shows that the glacial area has decreased from 59,425 to 51,840 square kilometers since 2002.  That looks like a 13 percent decrease in less than 12 years, depending on when the satellite images were taken.

Update (August 3, 2015):  Glaciers are melting at the fastest rate since record keeping began.

Update (November 27, 2015):  Glacier National Park may be glacier-free by 2050.

A Call for Justice Shouldn't Offend

All of us white people in the United States need to hear this--Cleveland Browns player Andrew Hawkins refuses to apologize for wearing a shirt protesting police violence.

I was taught that justice is a right that every American should have. Also justice should be the goal of every American. I think that’s what makes this country. To me, justice means the innocent should be found innocent. It means that those who do wrong should get their due punishment. Ultimately, it means fair treatment. So a call for justice shouldn’t offend or disrespect anybody. A call for justice shouldn’t warrant an apology. 

To clarify, I utterly respect and appreciate every police officer that protects and serves all of us with honesty, integrity and the right way. And I don’t think those kind of officers should be offended by what I did. My mom taught me my entire life to respect law enforcement. I have family, close friends that are incredible police officers and I tell them all the time how they are much braver than me for it. So my wearing a T-shirt wasn’t a stance against every police officer or every police department. My wearing the T-shirt was a stance against wrong individuals doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons to innocent people. 

Unfortunately, my mom also taught me just as there are good police officers, there are some not-so-good police officers that would assume the worst of me without knowing anything about me for reasons I can’t control. She taught me to be careful and be on the lookout for those not-so-good police officers because they could potentially do me harm and most times without consequences. Those are the police officers that should be offended. 

Being a police officer takes bravery. And I understand that they’re put in difficult positions and have to make those snap decisions. As a football player, I know a little bit about snap decisions, obviously on an extremely lesser and non-comparative scale, because when a police officer makes a snap decision, it’s literally a matter of life and death. That’s hard a situation to be in. But if the wrong decision is made, based on pre-conceived notions or the wrong motives, I believe there should be consequence. Because without consequence, naturally the magnitude of the snap decisions is lessened, whether consciously or unconsciously. 

I’m not an activist, in any way, shape or form. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I keep my opinions to myself on most matters. I worked extremely hard to build and keep my reputation especially here in Ohio, and by most accounts I’ve done a solid job of decently building a good name. Before I made the decision to wear the T-shirt, I understood I was putting that reputation in jeopardy to some of those people who wouldn’t necessarily agree with my perspective. I understood there was going to be backlash, and that scared me, honestly. But deep down I felt like it was the right thing to do. If I was to run away from what I felt in my soul was the right thing to do, that would make me a coward, and I can’t live with that. God wouldn’t be able to put me where I am today, as far as I’ve come in life, if I was a coward. 

As you well know, and it’s well documented, I have a 2-year-old little boy. The same 2-year-old little boy that everyone said was cute when I jokingly threw him out of the house earlier this year. That little boy is my entire world. And the No. 1 reason for me wearing the T-shirt was the thought of what happened to Tamir Rice happening to my little Austin scares the living hell out of me. And my heart was broken for the parents of Tamir and John Crawford knowing they had to live that nightmare of a reality. 

So, like I said, I made the conscious decision to wear the T-shirt. I felt like my heart was in the right place. I’m at peace with it and those that disagree with me, this is America, everyone has the right to their first amendment rights. Those who support me, I appreciate your support. But at the same time, support the causes and the people and the injustices that you feel strongly about. Stand up for them. Speak up for them. No matter what it is because that’s what America’s about and that’s what this country was founded on.

Lima Call for Climate Action

It seems that a weakened agreement was reached for all nations to voluntarily announce emissions cuts.  But without concrete milestones, the aggregate cuts are likely to fall short of what's needed to hold warming to 2 degrees Celsius.  There's a split between what rich and poor countries want to see happen.

Also, a National Bureau of Economic Research paper says warmer temperatures slow productivity and a summary of the year's climate stories.

Update (December 18):  Recent pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions by Europe, China and the United States are not enough to keep warming within the 2 degree threshold.

Update (December 22):  Lindsay Abrams gives a climate change overview for 2014.

Update (December 24):  Joe Romm reminds us that although climate change in the works is irreversible, additional change is not unstoppable.

Update (December 27):  Rebecca Solnit sees hope in climate activism and writes that while the physics of climate change is inevitable, the politics are not.

Update (January 10, 2015):  Michael Klare warns that Big Oil isn't going down without a fight.

Wealth Gap

A Pew Research Center analysis shows that while median real net worth of all U.S. households declined by 40 percent from 2007 to 2013 ($135,700 to $81,400), the gap between white households and black or Hispanic households has grown.  White household wealth declined 26.3 percent.  Black household wealth declined 42.7 percent.  Hispanic household wealth declined 41.9 percent.

Update (December 15):  Tanvi Misra explains:

What’s driving the two ends of the wealth spectrum apart is that while white wealth is growing (albeit modestly), minority wealth is declining steeply. Black household net worth declined by 33.7 percent and Hispanic net worth fell by 14.3 percent between 2010 and 2013.

During the recession, black and Hispanic households took more out of savings to keep their families afloat, but they have not been to replenish that savings post-recession.

Update (December 21):  More from Pew:  the median wealth of upper income households is now 6.6 times that of middle income households.

Torture Report

The Senate Intelligence Committee released a summary of its investigation into torture committed by the Central Intelligence Agency in support of the "war on terror".  Those who carried out the crimes are condemning the report.  Anthony Romero of the ACLU suggests the best we may hope for is a set of pardons--no one would be held accountable, but formal pardons would acknowledge that crimes were committed.

Luke Brinker lists ten appalling findings:

1. The CIA misled executive branch officials, members of Congress, and the public about torture’s effectiveness.

2.  Interrogators would deprive some detainees of sleep for more than a week.

3. Detainees underwent waterboarding until they were unresponsive.

4. The CIA force-fed detainees through their rectums.

5. Interrogators threatened to harm the families and children of detainees.

6. An interrogator threatened to sodomize a detainee with a broomstick.

7. The chief of interrogations described one facility as a “dungeon.”

8. Agency interrogators forced detainees to stand on broken legs and feet.

9. Detainees experienced severe psychological problems.

10.  The CIA lied about how many detainees were in its custody.

Update (December 10):  I can barely bring myself to read much about it, but the crimes need to be reported.

Update (December 13):  Falguni Sheth reminds us that U.S. torture specifically targeted Muslims whether they were actually involved in terrorism or not.

Update (December 16):  Patrick Smith says its time to let go of the myths Americans believe about ourselves.

The myths are more than simply preposterous now. They grow dangerous in a world of rising aspirations and alternative poles of power.

We have shredded all claim to superior political, economic and social arrangements.

Update (December 22):  The New York Times calls for prosecution.

Mr. Obama has said multiple times that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” as though the two were incompatible. They are not. The nation cannot move forward in any meaningful way without coming to terms, legally and morally, with the abhorrent acts that were authorized, given a false patina of legality, and committed by American men and women from the highest levels of government on down.

Starting a criminal investigation is not about payback; it is about ensuring that this never happens again and regaining the moral credibility to rebuke torture by other governments. Because of the Senate’s report, we now know the distance officials in the executive branch went to rationalize, and conceal, the crimes they wanted to commit. The question is whether the nation will stand by and allow the perpetrators of torture to have perpetual immunity for their actions.

And speculation about the contents of a classified, internal CIA report referred to as the Panetta Review.

Not Just For the Future

A study by Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institute for Science uses computer modeling to show that maximum warming from an emission of carbon dioxide occurs in about ten years.  The warming persists for over 100 years.  Emissions reductions matter to us now.

Temperature increase from an individual emission of carbon dioxide (CO2). Time series of the marginal warming in mK (=milliKelvin = 0.001 K) per GtC (=1015 g carbon) as projected by 6000 convolution-function simulations for the first 100 years after the emission. Maximum warming occurs a median of 10.1 years after the CO2 emission event and has a median value of 2.2 mK GtC−1. The colors represent the relative density of simulations in a given region of the plot.