Unraveling

The annual Arctic Report Card from NOAA paints a grim picture. 

Another ramification of the dramatic warming of the Arctic is that permafrost is now releasing more greenhouse gases, like methane, which is 100 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2, during the winter. The report notes that this is happening now at a rate faster than that at which plants can absorb the gas during the summer, which means the Arctic has now become a net source of heat-trapping pollution.

Update (December 18):  More from Andrea Thompson.

Update (January 7, 2017):  An interview with Jennifer Francis from the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University about arctic records. And Joe Romm discusses the global loss of sea ice.

Systems with amplifying feedbacks tend to have tipping points beyond which change is irreversible. In the case of the great polar ice sheets that will drive catastrophic sea level rise and ultimately inundate every major coastal city, we appear to be dangerously close to such tipping points.

Update (July 16, 2017):  "Arctic Heat Is Becoming More Common and Persistent".

Since 1979, the number of warm events has doubled and the number of days with mild air has tripled. There are now 21 days of mild weather at the North Pole in an average winter compared to just seven mild winter days at the start of record keeping.

Update (December 20, 2017):  This year's report card finds that "the region is now definitively trending toward an ice-free state".

Shortly after the beginning of the 21st Century, the Arctic began an environmental transition so extensive that it caught scientists, policymakers, and residents by surprise. The extent and duration of these transitions define the New Arctic, characterized by the lowest winter maximum in sea ice cover on record for 2017, the persistent and record warming of sea surface temperatures across the Arctic, and the downward trend in total ice mass of the Greenland ice sheet, just to name a few.

Update (December 12, 2018):  This year's report card finds that melting at both poles has been worse than previously thought. It notes that 95 percent of the Arctic's oldest ice has melted in the past 30 years.

Update (December 13, 2019):  This year's report card continues the bad news.

The Arctic could be releasing upwards of 600 million tons of net carbon per year, the report finds, potentially putting the region alongside Mexico, Canada, and South Korea as one of the world’s largest contributors to atmospheric CO2.

Hard Rain

Is Bob Dylan's poetry still relevant? Absolutely.

Update (June 7, 2017):  Dylan's recorded Nobel lecture.

Russian Hack

The Washington Post reports the CIA conclusion that Russia was acting on behalf of the Republican nominee. But does it matter? Heather Digby Parton notes that FBI director James Comey's letters swung enough late-deciding voters to shift key states.

It is very hard to escape the conclusion that Comey knew exactly what he was doing. If the Russians didn’t give us [the Republican nominee], the FBI director did.

Update (December 17):  Oh, good, the FBI now agrees with the CIA assessment. That should take care of the problem.

Update (December 18):  Andrew O'Hehir thinks we may not know all the machinations behind this year's election for a long time. And that's not our biggest problem.

Those who want to argue that American democracy is perfectly OK and the Democratic Party is perfectly OK, for example, can cherry-pick whichever marginal factors they prefer. If the only reason Hillary Clinton lost the election to a moronic demagogue and professed sexual predator was because of Russian sabotage, then there’s no reason not to keep on running candidates like her into the indefinite future.

Update (June 7, 2017):  While the hard left is highly skeptical, a leaked NSA document seems to show actual interference.

Update (July 2, 2018):  Looks like Russia had something to do with the British referendum on the European Union.

Update (July 3, 2018):  This is interesting.

The Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday repudiated [Fuckface von Clownstick's] denials that Russia interfered to help his 2016 campaign. But the release of the report—at around 3pm, just before the July 4 holiday—suggests that the Senate Republicans are eager to keep their differences with [Dear Leader] out of the sunlight.

The report endorses the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, or ICA, finding Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 with the goals of undermining Americans' faith in the democratic process and denigrating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The assessment also concludes that Russia "developed a clear preference for" [Orangeman].

Update (July 4, 2018):  It should be noted that the House Intelligence Committee reached a different conclusion than the Senate committee and that the House has been pressuring the Department of Justice to disclose information about informants. Now Marcy Wheeler has disclosed that she is one of many sources the FBI generally seeks to protect.

The Republicans' ceaseless effort to find out more details about people who've shared information with the government puts those people in serious jeopardy.

I'm speaking out because they can't — and shouldn't have to.

It infuriates me to observe (and cover) a months-long charade by the House GOP to demand more and more details about those who have shared information with the government, at least some of whom were only trying to prevent real damage to innocent people, all in an attempt to discredit the Mueller investigation.

Update (July 28, 2018):  Timothy Summers analyzes how Russia's hacking activities worked.

Update (December 20, 2018):  In an interview with Chauncey DeVega, Kathleen Hall Jamieson says it it probable, but not certain, the Russians swung the 2016 election.

The Russians were able to change the climate of communication for some voters and members of the public through social media in ways that disadvantaged Hillary Clinton. The Russians were able to change the media agenda and questions asked during two presidential debates in ways that disadvantaged Hillary Clinton. The Russians and their disinformation campaign may have influenced a consequential decision by James Comey to make public the reopening of the FBI investigation into the Clinton email server on Oct. 28, 2016, in ways that decisively impacted the election.

Update (July 27, 2019):  The Senate Intelligence Committee has produced a report:

[T]he first section of its report on 2016 Russian interference, which found that hackers likely tried to access election systems in all 50 states, confirm[s] widespread fears that America’s election system may not be secure from attack.

Not to worry.  The Major Leader is all over it.

Mitch McConnell blocked two election security measures on Thursday, arguing Democrats are trying to give themselves a "political benefit."

Update (September 29, 2019):  Among the conversations the White House has kept hidden:

[During a 2017 Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak], [Dear Leader] purportedly said he was not concerned about Moscow's meddling in the United States' 2016 presidential election because the U.S. has done the same abroad.

The End of Civilization?

The polls turned out to be spectacularly wrong. They severely underestimated just how many people want to "blow things up". I didn't realize how much hate is out there.

It's not just the next four years. We'll feel the impact for the rest of our lives.

I guess I could go on a long rant about what it means, but it's too depressing. In short, it certainly means climate change won't be dealt with and that alone brings us to the end.

To those celebrating: Be careful what you wish for.

Update (November 10):  In 2012, some Republicans thought the polls were wrong and some guy got noticed for "unskewing" the polls. Romney was supposedly surprised by the result. But I don't think there really was any problem. Nate Silver nailed it. So what changed in four years? Has the backlash against Obama been growing beyond what is was even back then? It seems we severely underestimated the strength of that backlash. And some asshole knew how to take advantage of the situation. It truly is the greatest con ever. Almost nobody saw it coming. Michael Moore did and I thought he was crazy. May this be my public apology. Moore:

[The] election is going to be the biggest 'fuck you' ever recorded in human history. And it will feel good.

Update (November 16):  Here's a thought experiment: What do you suppose would be happening in the country right now if the Republican had received 2 million more votes while Clinton had won the Electoral College?

Update (January 7, 2017):  Was it economic distress or racism?

Update (April 18, 2017):  Heather Digby Parton cites data suggesting that voters weren't angry about the economy.

[T]hroughout the Obama presidency, politics became more racialized, with non-college-educated whites developing less and less favorable attitudes toward African-Americans and moving toward the Republican Party.

Update (June 7, 2017):  Chauncey DeVega reiterates his contention that the election hinged on "a combination of white racial resentment, old-fashioned racism and sexism as opposed to some vague type of 'economic insecurity' ".

New polling data from the American National Election Study has provided even more ammunition to finally kill off this argument. As detailed by Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu of The Washington Post, white working-class voters comprised only 25 percent of his voters.

Update (June 17, 2017):  Anthony DiMaggio on the myth of blue-collar populism.

There is some evidence that economic anxiety was a significant factor in voting for [von Clownstick]. But most of the attitudes embraced by [his] supporters were of the typical Republican Party variety, indicating support for elitist, pro-corporate, and reactionary social agendas.

Danny Westneat reports:

Neither [University of Washington political scientist Christopher] Parker, nor the latest research, is saying that [von Clownstick] voters are all racists. Most voting is simply party-line no matter who is running. What they’re saying is that worries about the economy, free trade and the rest were no more important in 2016 than in previous elections, but racial resentment spiked.

Update (June 19, 2017):  Chauncey DeVega interviews Tim Wise who says we are suffering from a failure to confront white nationalism years ago.

One of the most highly correlated factors with [von Clownstick] support, on a county-by-county basis, is the level of opiate addiction. 

In a sense, [he's] the perfect candidate. Here is a guy who comes along and essentially is a walking, talking opioid. He’s somebody who comes along and says — just like heroin does, just like OxyContin does, just like all these opiates do, he says, “I can take away your pain.” Not only can I take it away, I can tell you what the source is and you just take me or in the case of an election, you vote for me and you won’t have to be in pain anymore. But just like an opiate, he doesn’t really solve the problem of these individuals. 

There’s a real discussion that needs to happen about this moment in American history where white folks more broadly are in a desperate search to be numb. Numb to other people’s pain, numb to their own suffering, seeking out scapegoats for their problems. Which of course is what addicts often do as well. To some extent if you become addicted to privilege, even if it’s not great wealth, you’ve just become addicted to the privilege of being considered what a “real” American is.

Update (June 21, 2017):  Cognitive dissonance will keep many voters from admitting they were wrong. And Democrats won't have a plan for 2020.

Update (June 28, 2017):  Jordan Kraemer considers the "reluctant [von Clownstick] voter".

Many on the left struggle to understand how devout conservatives voted for a glitzy New York real estate mogul turned reality TV star. But [von Clownstick's] election brings into stark relief the threats many white people perceive not just to their economic position, but their basic sense of self and belonging.

Update (July 9, 2017):  Andrew O'Hehir analyzes Dear Leader's speech in Poland.

So what exactly the president means when he praises the strength and resilience of Western civilization is deliberately left unclear. Since he self-evidently doesn’t give a crap about any of that tradition’s cultural, philosophical and artistic accomplishments — and would no doubt deem most of them to be fake news and/or pretentious bullshit — we are left with other possibilities. It’s all about consumer capitalism and white rage, pretty much. The president of the United States sending angry tweets from his gold-plated toilet seat, with an empty tub of Häagen-Dazs beside him. There’s Western civilization for you.

Update (July 11, 2017):  Is this part of what it means to make America great again?

For the first time, a majority of Republicans think that colleges and universities have a negative impact on the country. Fifty-eight percent say that colleges “are having a negative effect on the way things are going in the country,” according to Pew.

Just two years ago, a majority of Republicans, 54 percent, rated universities’ effect as positive. As Pew noted, “this shift in opinion has occurred across most demographic and ideological groups within the GOP,” but in particular the poll found that positive views of colleges among Republicans under the age of 50 sunk by 21 percentage points from 2015 to 2017. While Republican views of colleges and universities remained largely the same throughout much of the Obama administration, 65 percent of self-identified conservatives now say that colleges and universities have a negative impact on the country. Positive views of colleges dropped even among Republicans who hold a college or graduate degree, declining by 11 percentage points during the last two years.

Democrats and independents who lean Democrat, on the other hand, continue to hold a positive attitude toward such institutions, with 72 percent saying they approve of higher education.

So now I'm not the enemy because of what I teach, I'm the enemy because I teach.

Update (July 15, 2017):  Cynthia Tucker Haynes makes it clear: "It's the racism, stupid".

Philip Klinkner, a political scientist at Hamilton College, has studied the [American National Election Studies] data and concluded that “the evidence from the 2016 election is very clear that attitudes about blacks, immigrants and Muslims were a key component ,,,, [Von Clownstick] did worse than Mitt Romney among voters with low and moderate levels of racial resentment, but much better among those with high levels of resentment.”

[His] appeal lies in his implicit promise to restore white hegemony, to put black and brown people in their place, to return America to a bygone era of racial repression.

That hardly means that every person who voted for [him] harbors racist views. In this hyper-partisan era, many rank-and-file Republicans held their noses and voted for the GOP nominee, even if that meant supporting a celebrity TV host with no clue about how to run a country.

But those garden-variety Republicans are still culpable, not just for [his] election, but also for the racial animosity that fueled it. For decades, the GOP has pandered to the fears and resentments of those whites who are uncomfortable with a country growing more racially diverse.

Many Americans had hoped that President Barack Obama’s election was a watershed event that signaled the transformation of American politics, that a nation once scarred by racism had overcome its past. Instead, his election sparked a furious backlash, as racially resentful whites saw more clearly the demographic changes that would bring an end to their cultural and political dominance.

Update (August 4, 2017):  A report from Cato Institute describes five types of von Clownstick supporters.

This analysis finds five unique clusters of [his] voters: American Preservationists (20%), Staunch Conservatives (31%), Anti-Elites (19%), Free Marketeers (25%), and the Disengaged (5%).

There is no such thing as “one kind of [von Clownstick] voter” who voted for him for one single reason. Many voted with enthusiasm for [him] while others held their noses and voted against Hillary Clinton. 

[Von Clownstick] voters hold very different views on a wide variety of issues including immigration, race, American identity, moral traditionalism, trade, and economics. 

Four issues distinguish [Fuckface] voters from non-[Fuckface] voters: attitudes toward Hillary Clinton, evaluations of the economy, views about illegal immigration, and views about Muslim immigration.

And a paper by Thomas Pettigrew lists five psychological traits von Clownstick supports share.

No one factor describes [his] supporters. But an array of factors – many of them reflecting five major social psychological phenomena can help to account for this extraordinary political event: authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, prejudice, relative deprivation, and intergroup contact.

Update (August 5, 2017):  Chauncey DeVega explains the attraction of evangelicals for von Clownstick.

Faith, after all, is a matter of believing in that which cannot be proven by normal or empirical means. This definition is a perfect description of both movement conservatism and the Christian right.

Update (October 1, 2017):  The debate continues. Justin Gest argues that the "white working class" had nothing to lose by voting Republican.

I don’t think white working-class people thought the Democrats gave a damn about them in 2016. You know what the truth is? They were right. I don’t think white working-class voters are necessarily "low information." The truth is, they could easily discern that Republicans didn’t care about them. They were right, which is why they voted for someone who is effectively neither a Democrat or a Republican. That is why I bristle a little bit at the narrative that white working-class people vote against their interests. They are just not voting in their material interests. They’re voting in their cultural interests.

Update (October 15, 2017):  Richard Wolff's take.

[T]he powers that be paid a heavy price for the social quiet they purchased with Obama’s presidency. Sections of the white working class plus broad swaths of right-wing and conservative populations recoiled from the Obama administration. The 2008 crash had hurt them too. The trickle down recovery likewise largely bypassed them. Badly needing help, they resented “others” who seemed to have captured the government and would use it exclusively to help themselves. Indeed, those “others” included people they had long feared and/or hated: major parts of old party establishments coalescing with non-whites and “liberals.”

Bitterly, they seethed over symbolic slights, policy changes, and what they increasingly perceived as an America abandoning them to lower incomes, poorer jobs, and lower overall social status than they believed they had earlier enjoyed. Fearing to blame capitalism (and lacking even the vocabulary with which to think or articulate such blame), they undertook instead a classic selection of scapegoats: Mexico, China, North Korea, immigrants, ethnic and sexually identified minorities, Jews, women, and insufficiently nationalistic corporations. The different targeted scapegoats suffered according to their vulnerability: immigrants a great deal, China next to nothing. [Von Clownstick], many Republican politicians, and rightwing organizations surged. They saw and grasped a moment of real opportunity for what they each represented.

Update (October 30, 2017):  Joy Reid says Republican voters don't really care about the economy.

His supporters don’t care that he is vulgar- they are actually glad that he is vulgar and crude.

They just want him to crush us.

Update (November 26, 2017):  Adam Serwer says that most white Americans are not confronting the role of racism in the election.

When you look at [von Clownstick's] strength among white Americans of all income categories, but his weakness among Americans struggling with poverty, the story of [Fuckface] looks less like a story of working-class revolt than a story of white backlash. And the stories of struggling white ... supporters look less like the whole truth than a convenient narrative—one that obscures the racist nature of that backlash, instead casting it as a rebellion against an unfeeling establishment that somehow includes working-class and poor people who happen not to be white.

Update (January 14, 2018):  With Bannon out of the way, the Administration is following a pretty traditional Republican agenda. Removing the president from office is a fantasy, and while Democrats might have an advantage is this year's swing of the pendulum, Matt Grossman says Republicans are hardly facing a crisis.

Republicans can recover from in-party challenges to their president or an unpopular presidency. After losing both a president and vice president to scandal under Nixon, incumbent Gerald Ford barely survived a challenge from Ronald Reagan—who won the presidency only four years later. In 1992, President George H. W. Bush faced both a primary challenge from Pat Buchanan and an independent challenge from Ross Perot (which also drew Republicans). But Republicans regrouped to take back control of Congress two years later and elect Bush’s son six years after that. George W. Bush’s popularity also dove while in office, culminating in an unpopular war, a botched hurricane response, and the largest recession in decades. Yet Republicans again had to wait out only one presidency before returning to power. A few dissenting senators under [von Clownstick] (especially complaints from those entering retirement) is hardly a sign of an imminent breakup or division that cannot be survived.

Update (April 7, 2018):  Neuroscientist Bobby Azarian explains why von Clownstick supporters may be beyond reach.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect
Hypersensitivity to Threat
Terror Management Theory
High Attentional Engagement

Update (June 17, 2018):  Rick Shenkman suggests the von Clownstick cult is built on the human need to avoid cognitive dissonance.

We all want to believe what we believe is true. That’s the Perseverance Bias in action. Once we settle on a view of the world, we are inclined to persist in it. If forced to confront inconvenient facts ... we are capable of going to great lengths to explain them away.

Update (July 29, 2018):  Fuckface voters were overwhelmingly "ordinary" Republicans. But Clinton failed to turn out many Obama voters. Meanwhile, the world burns.

Update (November 12, 2018):  More from Bobby Azarian--14 traits of von Clownstick supporters.

Update (March 11, 2019):  Chauncey DeVega interviews David Smith and Eric Hanley on how their research shows that "what unified [von Clownstick's] voters was not 'economic anxiety' but prejudice and intolerance." Smith explains:

[W]e seem to have two opposite forms of emotional blindness. Many liberals can’t believe that large numbers of people are vindictive while many conservatives scoff at the idea that liberals are not vindictive. Liberals often make excuses for people who show signs of intolerance. Right-wingers, in contrast, often laugh at claims to "feel your pain".

The bottom line is that bullying rhetoric won tens of millions of white votes in 2016. That, not financial worry, is the reality we face. We can’t explain away the fact that, after nearly two years of insults and abuses – children in cages, excuses for white supremacists, the Muslim travel ban and so much more – nearly 90 percent of Republicans support [Dear Leader].

Update (September 17, 2019):  A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds a big problem with the Electoral College.

In presidential elections in which a candidate wins the popular vote by less than 2 percentage points, or about 2.6 million votes (based on 2016 turnout), there’s about a 32% chance they will still lose the Electoral College. These mismatches, called electoral inversions, become more frequent when the race is even tighter: There’s a 45% probability when the race is decided by less than 1 percentage point, or 1.3 million votes.

Update (August 6, 2020): Alan Blotcky, David Reiss, and John Talmadge think a psychological understanding of Fuckface "devotees" might still change some minds.

Multiple psychological factors seem to influence and explain his supporters. We have divided these factors into four major categories: Rebelliousness and Chaos; Shared Irrationality; Fear; and Safety and Order.

Shared irrationality includes the Dunning-Kruger effect, magical thinking, obsession with celebrity, and shared omnipotence. Fear includes brain reactivity to threats, fear mongering, and conspiracy theories. Safety and order includes social dominance orientation, and authoritarianism.

[S]upporters are tied to [Dear Leader] based on multiple and complex psychological principles and phenomena. To continue to respond to them as if they are psychotic or evil is a grave mistake and will not lead to change. Identifying the category or categories of psychological influence for each person can be a much more productive strategy.

Running Out of Time

There's a stark contrast in this year's election and my vote, in part, is somewhat defensive. As always, Collapse of Industrial Civilization remains focused on the threat of climate change.

The biosphere is collapsing under the weight of 7.5 billion people living off the combustion of a one time endowment of ancient carbon energy, from the factory-farmed produce they eat to the petroleum-based medical supplies that keep them alive.

We’ve been fooling ourselves for a very long time about what is truly sustainable and will continue to do so as the system falls apart, geoengineering fixes are applied, interstellar space colonization fantasies are dreamed up, and wars are fought for what remains. Humans have constructed a reality incompatible with the well-being of the natural world and the stability of the biosphere, but we won’t be able to escape the rules of physics, chemistry, and biology. We’ve spent generations making the bed we’re going to be lying in, never realizing it’s also our death bed. Time is not on our side.

According to United Nations Environment Programme chief scientist Jacqueline McGlade, the Paris Agreement is

just too little, and it’s not happening quickly enough. If we don’t see emissions peaking by 2020, then the chances of getting to 1.5 degrees is vanishingly small.

Update (April 27, 2018):  Referring to John Ehrenfeld, Aleszu Bajak highlights the problem with purely technological fixes for climate change.

Tackling a problem as deeply ingrained as global warming ... will require humanity to face an existential question that geoengineering alone cannot address: Are we willing to sacrifice growth to ensure the survival of our species?

Sustainable Infrastructure

A report from The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate advocates for smart choices over the next 15 years with an expected investment of US$90 trillion for infrastructure worldwide. Co-chair Nicholas Stern:

We cannot continue with business as usual, which will lock in high-carbon infrastructure and create further congestion and pollution while choking off development opportunities, particularly for poor people. We can and should invest in and build cities where we can move and breathe and be productive, while protecting the natural world that underpins our livelihoods.

Ten Times More Galaxies

So if the number of galaxies were undercounted by a factor of ten, does that do anything to explain the "missing mass" that dark matter/dark energy are supposed account for?

Update (October 26):  Not a related study, but a paper published in Scientific Reports by lead author Subir Sarkar from Oxford University uses a larger database of supernovae to dispute a previous claim that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. It's been the justification for the hypothesized dark matter/dark energy.

[W]e find, rather surprisingly, that the data are still quite consistent with a constant rate of expansion.

Update (May 28, 2020):  It's cool how J. Xavier Prochaska and Jean-Pierre Macquart describe their efforts to find missing "baryonic" matter in the form of low-density, hot plasma dispersed throughout the universe. The missing matter is half of the predicted 5% of all matter represented by baryons. The other 95%, of course, is dark matter/dark energy whatever the hell that is.

Rapid Change

The World Meteorological Organization warns that changes in the Arctic climate are increasingly challenging to monitor. Dan Grimes:

The Arctic is a principal, global driver of the climate system and is undergoing an unprecedented rate of change with consequences far beyond its boundaries.

The changes in the Arctic are serving as a global indicator – like ‘a canary in the coal mine’ – and are happening at a much faster rate than we would have expected.

Stop Digging

A report from Oil Change International called The Sky's Limit: Why the Paris Climate Goals Require a Managed Decline of Fossil Fuel Production reaches a bleak conclusion.

We find that the oil, gas, and coal in already-developed fields and mines (that is, where the infrastructure has been built) exceeds the amount that can be burned while likely staying below 2°C, and significantly exceeds the amount that can be burned while staying below 1.5°C.

They recommend that

No new fossil fuel extraction or transportation infrastructure should be built worldwide.

Instead, we should allow for the gradual decline of existing operations, over the coming decades, and invest strongly in clean energy to make up the difference. We have seen that there is no economic or technical barrier to making this transition over this time frame: the only requirement is political will.

Humans have, maybe, 17 years to get our act together.

Income Up, Poverty Down

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that "[i]n 2015, household income grew at the fastest rate on record, [and] the poverty rate fell faster than at any point since 1968."

Justin Wolfers selects additional details from Income and Poverty in the United States: 2015.

Update (September 18):  Edwin Rios also presents highlights from the Census report.

Lowest Average Sea Ice Extent

This year's Arctic sea ice minimum looks to be the second lowest on record, just edging out third place 2007. But a chart from blogger Tamino shows that the sea ice extent averaged from September 2015 to August 2016 did reach a record low.

Largest General Strike

As many as 180 million workers in India went on strike September 2 to protest greater privatization of the economy and the breakdown of minimum wage negotiations. I'm just now noticing any mention of the strike since U.S. media generally doesn't cover historic labor actions. Vijay Prashad reports:

680 million Indians live in deprivation. These people – half the Indian population – are deprived of the basics of life such as food, energy, housing, drinking water, sanitation, health care, education and social security. Most of India's workers and peasants count amongst the deprived. Ninety per cent of India’s workers are in the informal sector, where protections at the workplace are minimal and their rights to form unions virtually non-existent.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi ... did not pay heed to these workers. His goal is to increase India’s growth rate, which ... can be accomplished by a cannibal like attitude towards workers’ rights and the livelihood of the poor. Selling off state assets, giving hugely lucrative deals to private business and opening the doors of India’s economy to Foreign Direct Investment are the mechanisms to increase the growth rate. None of these strategies, as even the International Monetary Fund acknowledges, will lead to social equality. This growth trajectory leads to greater inequality, to less power for workers and more deprivation.

Update (December 15, 2020):  Alex Henderson reports on strikes in India involving as many as 250 million farmers and workers.

Update (December 22, 2020):  Sonali Kolhatkar explains the issues behind the Indian farmers' strike.

About half of India’s workers depend on the agricultural industry, and the government has long had in place regulations to protect farmworkers, acting as a middleman between farmers and buyers of their produce. Now those protections have been upended. In September 2020, [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pushed three deregulatory bills through Parliament amid chaos and even some opposition from within his own party.

Lost Wilderness

An article in Current Biology finds that 30.1 million square kilometers of wilderness remain (23.2 percent of total land area) which represents a 9.6 percent loss since the early 1990s. Unsustainable practices for agriculture are largely responsible for the losses.

Update (September 13):  Dahr Jamail points out additional details from the wilderness study.

[A]t least 27 entire "ecoregions" -- environmentally and ecologically distinct geographic units at the global scale -- have lost all of their "remaining globally significant wilderness areas" since the early 1990s. The Amazon basin, in particular, has been reduced from an area of 1.8 million km to 1.3 million km (a loss of over 30 percent) in the same time frame.

Unions Matter for Everyone

A report from the Economic Policy Institute concludes that pay for nonunion workers would be higher if unions had maintained the strength they had in the past.

Unions, especially in industries and regions where they are strong, help boost the wages of all workers by establishing pay and benefit standards that many nonunion firms adopt. But this union boost to nonunion pay has weakened as the share of private-sector workers in a union has fallen from 1 in 3 in the 1950s to about 1 in 20 today.

For nonunion private-sector men, weekly wages would be an estimated 5 percent ($52) higher in 2013 if private-sector union density (the share of workers in similar industries and regions who are union members) remained at its 1979 level.

Warming Started Earlier

Research published in Nature concludes that anthropogenic climate change began about 180 years ago, well before modern weather records began. That implies we're a bit closer to the suggested 1.5 degree Celsius limit on temperature rise over pre-industrial levels.

Update (September 1):  Data from NASA show that the past 30 years have been quite unusual.

The planet is warming at a pace not experienced within the past 1,000 years, at least, making it “very unlikely” that the world will stay within a crucial temperature limit agreed by nations just last year.

Trickle Down Threat

Nick Hanauer advocates for a $15 minimum wage and cites research that disputes the idea that wage increases cause higher unemployment. He argues that this idea amounts to an "intimidation tactic" and not real economics.

The two cornerstones of trickle-down economics are:
1. If wages for the poor go up, employment goes down; and
2. If taxes on the rich go up, employment goes down. 

But this isn’t a scientific theory or a law of nature that describes the world in any empirically verifiable way. This is a threat—a moral claim aimed at social control. As such, it is repeated again and again and again, not because it is true, or because the powerful believe it to be true (although some might—self-deception can be a soothing psychic balm). The rich and the powerful relentlessly repeat this claim because if they can persuade the poor and the weak to believe it, it will be very advantageous to the powerful and the rich.

State of the Climate

The annual report shows a number of milestones for 2015.

Update (August 21):  Dahr Jamail has a summary of climate news including the re-emergence of diseases as permafrost melts.

Lost Biodiversity

A study published in Science by lead author Tim Newbold of the United Nations Environment Programme and University College London finds that 58 percent of the land area has undergone a loss of biodiversity beyond the "safe" boundary. Chris Mooney explains.

As a conservative or precautionary standard, the researchers therefore assumed that a decline of more than 10 percent of species abundance in a given area (compared with what that abundance was before human interference) represented crossing into a danger zone for biodiversity. But their study found that overall, across the globe, the average decline is already more like 15 percent. In other words, original species are only about 85 percent as abundant (84.6 percent to be precise) as they were before human land-use changes.

The Privilege of Ignorance

The title is a phrase that stuck with me from Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me. From my (limited) experience, white people don't examine our privilege too often or at all. I imagine many would deny any such thing. It feels like a personal failing to not understand better or do more. It's so much easier to sit around doing this thing for no-one than actually get involved.

But maybe it can lead to ... somewhere. Michael Eric Dyson tries to get through.

We all can see the same videos. But you insist that the camera doesn’t tell the whole story. Of course you’re right, but you don’t really want to see or hear that story. 

At birth, you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead when the encounter is over.

Those binoculars are also stories, bad stories, biased stories, harmful stories, about how black people are lazy, or dumb, or slick, or immoral, people who can’t be helped by the best schools or even God himself. These beliefs don’t make it into contemporary books, or into most classrooms. But they are passed down, informally, from one white mind to the next. 

The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know. Your knowledge of black life, of the hardships we face, yes, those we sometimes create, those we most often endure, don’t concern you much.

Update (September 12):  Natalia Khosla and Sean McElwee examine the lack of acknowledgement and the significance of white privilege.

Acknowledging white privilege could present an opportunity for making progress on racial justice. But the problem is that when most pundits talk about race in America, they don’t focus on the complicity of whites in creating racial inequality or the equal stake of whites in eliminating it. They focus instead on nonwhites, so that race gets portrayed as a “people of color” issue instead of as everyone’s shared issue. ... [R]ace problems aren’t people of colors’ problems; they are white people’s problems with people of color, and they are the negative effects of this on everyone through racism and inequality in society.

Update (February 25, 2018):  John Feffer explains the dangers of majoritarianism and a "besieged majority".

After the victories of the civil rights movement and other social movements, some white people have acquired the mentality of a besieged majority: They fear that they will lose their remaining privileges, like members of an elite frequent flyer program forced to sit back in economy class. Perhaps only a minority of white people — mostly white men — feel like a besieged majority. But for the next decade or so, before demographics decisively downgrade white status, this group will continue to flex its political muscle.

Endless Cycle

In apparent retaliation for two more shooting deaths of black men by police, an "ambush-style" attack at a Dallas protest killed five officers and wounded seven.

Is this what the second amendment is for? They shoot you and so you shoot them? How do more guns help when trained officers can't stop an attack? But, of course, now is not the time to talk about regulation. Heather Digby Parton:

[T]he NRA had nothing to say about police officers killing black citizens who were legally carrying guns this week. Their minions in the GOP have refused to do anything about the ongoing gun violence after mentally ill people shot up college campuses and movie theaters and elementary schools and night clubs. Thousands of children dying in gun accidents every year doesn’t move them. They cannot even bring themselves to regulate the semi-automatic weapons which are responsible for at least 65 out of 81 mass shootings since 1982.

So I’m not going to suggest that a mass shooting of [12] police officers will move them to end the slaughter either. They’ll just say the police need more and better guns. That’s their answer for everything. And we’ll all adjust and go on until the next one and the one after that. I have no idea what it will take to break this cycle.

Update (July 10):  Leonard Pitts considers the "madness" of these recent events.

There is a sickness afoot in our country, my friends, a putrefaction of the soul, a rottenness in the spirit. Consider our politics. Consider the way we talk about one another — and to one another. Consider those two dead black men. Consider those five massacred cops.

Deny it if you can. I sure can’t. Something is wrong with us. And I don’t mind telling you that I fear for my country.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article88403142.html#storylink=cp

Socialism or Barbarism

In his collection of essays, How Did We Get Into This Mess?, George Monbiot notes that corporate power tends to overwhelm any opposition.

So few are the countervailing voices ... that the dominate forms of power remain almost unchallenged.

Take, for example, the ideology that now governs our lives. Not only is it seldom challenged; it is seldom even identified. ... What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

Monbiot goes on to identify our time as the Age of Loneliness and offers solace to his fellow travelers.

So if you don't fit in; if you feel at odds with the world; if your identity is troubled and frayed; if you feel lost and ashamed, it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.

Neal Gabler argues that technology is not producing polarization so much as the segmentation of society.

Social media have helped create an America in which there is not only very little national conversation, common experience, sense of community or even very much desire to cross the boundaries that divide us; they have helped create an America of 300 million separate entities, each chronicling its own individual activities. You don’t have to imagine what this does to our politics. You’re living it. 

Under these circumstances, a healthy political system cannot really exist. I am not sure healthy individuals can either. [Virginia] Heffernan ... say[s] that in this digital age of non-stop communication, “we’re all more alone than ever.” That may be the most profound and enduring effect of the media on our politics. We are now so divided we may not be able to unite; we are so divided we live within an aching metaphysical malaise of unconnectedness. We have more “friends” than ever, but feel more friendless. 

Ours is an extremely discontented country today, and a seemingly discontented world, too. We usually chalk it up to economic stress, inequality, globalization, disempowerment — the usual suspects. But that media-induced malaise that afflicts us, may be the anxiety of loneliness at a time when not only we have lost one another, we’ve lost our sense of self, the one anchor that might root us in the storm. We are adrift — some from the digital world and some within that world — and so are our politics.

Out of this fragmentation comes a need for answers -- a need for someone who can speak for those who feel left behind in what John Feffer calls America B.

Falling behind economically and feeling betrayed by politicians on both sides of the aisle, America B might have moved to the left if the United States had a strong socialist tradition. In the 2016 primary campaign, many of the economically anxious did, in fact, support Bernie Sanders, particularly the younger offspring of America A fearful of being deported to America B. ... [H]owever, America B has always been more about rugged individualism than class solidarity. Its denizens would rather buy a lottery ticket and pray for a big payout than rely on a handout from Washington (Medicare and Social Security aside). [The Republican nominee], politically speaking, is their Powerball ticket.

Above all, the inhabitants of America B are angry. They’re disgusted with politics as usual in Washington and the hypocritical, sanctimonious political elite that goes with it. They’re incensed by how the wealthy have effectively seceded from American society with their gated estates and offshore accounts. And they’ve focused their resentment on those they see as having taken their jobs: immigrants, people of color, women. They’re so desperate for someone who “tells it like it is” that they’ll look the other way when it comes to [the nominee’s] inextricable links to the very elite who did so much to widen the gap between the two Americas in the first place.

Feffer says this year's election, with an expected Democratic win, won't resolve these issues.

The real change will come when a more sophisticated politician, with an authentic political machine, sets out to woo America B. Perhaps the Democratic Party will decide to return to its more populist, mid-century roots. Perhaps the Republican Party will abandon its commitment to entitlement programs for the 1%. 

More likely, a much more ominous political force will emerge from the shadows. If and when that new, neo-fascist party fields its charismatic presidential candidate, that will be the most important election of our lives.

 All the more reason, according to Daniel Denvir, to insist on a socialist alternative.

If nobody knows who the bad guys are, the left’s job is to name them. Clinton will likely defeat [the Republican nominee] in November. Defeating [neo-fascism], however, will require a powerful vision for transformative change. Instability will only increase as global warming disrupts the ecological foundation of people’s lives and millions of refugees and migrants flee a swath of disintegrating nation states stretching from Africa through the Middle East to South Asia. Racist and xenophobic hate can’t be defeated unless the cresting anger is organized to fight the super-rich and not one another.

Highest Income Inequality

Emmanuel Saez uses IRS data to show that the top one percent of earners is doing better than ever while the bottom 99 percent are marginally better off since the recession.

Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson use historical data to show that U.S. income inequality is nearing the highest point in U.S. history.

Also, despite some gains, a Pew Research Center study shows that race and gender income gaps persist.

Undue Burden

Three years after Wendy Davis' 11-hour filibuster to try to stop it, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas law "requiring that doctors who perform abortions maintain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and that all abortions be performed in hospital-like surgical centers." Justice Ginsburg was particularly forceful in her concurring opinion stating that the court will continue to reject laws like this.

[I]t is beyond rational belief that [this law] could genuinely protect the health of women.

Red Snow

Blooms of red algae in melting snow produce a pink color. A study published in Nature Communications shows how this algae has a significant positive feedback.

Turns out, red snow algae have a non-trivial effect on the albedo of the snowy surfaces they colonize, reducing it by as much as 13 percent.

Update (August 27):  Algae is contributing to Greenland's ice loss.

European Union

In a move largely tied to views on immigration, the United Kingdom has narrowly voted to leave the European Union. The country is quite polarized between Northern Ireland, Scotland and large cities versus Wales and the rest of England. Tom Hamilton voted to remain.

That this campaign departed so completely from fact-based policies and disregarded the opinions of economists and business leaders or ‘so-called experts’ is mind-boggling.

Orlando

On Sunday, 49 people were killed and 53 injured in a gay nightclub by a man firing an "AR-15-style" rifle. The worst in recent U.S. history.

Congress will do what it does best. Senator Chris Murphy:

This phenomenon of near constant mass shootings happens only in America — nowhere else. Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence. This doesn’t have to happen, but this epidemic will continue without end if Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing — again.

Update (June 15):  Senator Murphy and many Democratic colleagues are holding the floor of the Senate talking about gun violence.

Update (June 16):  After nearly 15 hours, Murphy has won an agreement to hold two votes.

One is an amendment that would bar people who are on terrorist watchlists from buying guns. Another would crack down on online and private gun sales that evade background checks.

Update (June 19):  Mark Sumner describes the Orlando killer as a domestic terrorist who "was simply, terribly a violent man who turned his hate and conflict outward".

[The Republican nominee] has his magic words of “radical Islamic extremist,” and a lot of people are finding them very handy. Handy for cutting off those who want to discuss the motivations behind [the killer's] actions or the ease with which he was able to kill so many people so quickly. They find the phrase convenient, because labeling [the killer] as a radical Islamic extremist gives them permission to do nothing. Or to do something they wanted to do in the first place, even if had nothing to do with the murders in Orlando.

Update (June 20):  As expected, the Senate failed to reach cloture on any modest gun control proposals, even ones sponsored by Republicans. But the Supreme Court declined to review lower court rulings upholding assault weapon bans in New York and Connecticut.

This perfectly encapsulates the modern Republican Party.

Update (June 22):  Led by Rep. John Lewis, at least 60 Democratic Senators and Members of Congress are staging a sit-in on the floor of the House of Representatives demanding votes on gun control legislation. Representative Lewis:

Not next month! Not next year! But now! Today! Sometimes you have to do something out of the ordinary. Sometimes you have to make a way out of no way. We have been too quiet for too long. There comes a time when you have to say something, when you have to make a little noise. When you have to move your feet. This is the time. Now is the time to get in the way. The time to act is now. We will be silent no more.

Update (June 23):  The sit-in is over for now.  Amanda Marcotte responds to criticism of "no fly, no buy". It was known from the outset that nothing would pass Congress. Marcotte:

So why offer up a bill that was destined always to fail? Two reasons: 1) To kickstart political momentum for more comprehensive gun control and 2) To cause political problems for Republicans in a year when they are already in disarray due to the [Republican nominee]. On both counts, this bill did what it was intended to do.

Update (July 7):  Ghost guns.

Update (October 2, 2017):  I guess we can't be surprised anymore, but that doesn't make it any less awful.

At least 59 people were killed and 527 wounded after a gunman unleashed a storm of bullets on an outdoor country music concert in Las Vegas late Sunday. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Carbon Dioxide into Rock

A report in Science discusses an advancement in carbon sequestration. Instead of storing carbon dioxide gas in sedimentary rock, the gas is mixed with water and injected into basalt. Almost all the gas formed carbonate minerals within two years. The issue, as usual, is being able to do enough to make a difference. Chris Mooney:

The researchers are enthusiastic about their possible solution, although they caution that they are still in the process of scaling up to be able to handle anything approaching the enormous amounts of carbon dioxide that are being emitted around the globe — and that transporting carbon dioxide to locations featuring basalt, and injecting it in large volumes along with even bigger amounts of water, would be a complex affair.

Neoliberal Failure

A report from the International Monetary Fund reviews the impact of the "neoliberal agenda".

Our assessment of the agenda is confined to the effects of two policies: removing restrictions on the movement of capital across a country’s borders (so-called capital account liberalization); and fiscal consolidation, sometimes called “austerity,” which is shorthand for policies to reduce fiscal deficits and debt levels. An assessment of these specific policies (rather than the broad neoliberal agenda) reaches three disquieting conclusions: 

•The benefits in terms of increased growth seem fairly difficult to establish when looking at a broad group of countries.­ 

•The costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent. Such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda.­ 

•Increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustainability of growth. Even if growth is the sole or main purpose of the neoliberal agenda, advocates of that agenda still need to pay attention to the distributional effects.­

The report further states:

The increase in inequality engendered by financial openness and austerity might itself undercut growth, the very thing that the neoliberal agenda is intent on boosting. There is now strong evidence that inequality can significantly lower both the level and the durability of growth.

Ben Norton puts it more bluntly.

The IMF essentially admitted that many of the policies that it demanded countries implement for decades only made things worse.

An Inconvenient Projection

While Maddie Stone notes the continued rise in carbon dioxide emissions in the ten years since Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, a study published in Nature Climate Change examines the consequences of using up all known fossil fuels.

For this scenario of unmitigated fossil fuel burning, a total of 5 trillion tons would have found its way to the atmosphere by 2300 in the form of carbon dioxide.

Under this scenario, CO2 stabilizes at roughly 2,000 parts per million.

Five trillion tons of carbon would raise global temperatures by 6.4-9.5 C, relative to preindustrial times.

According to author Richard Allen:

This is a useful ‘what if’ study that exercises computer simulations to their limits. But, in reality, the damage to societies and ecosystems by such severe climate change would cripple economies to such an extent that it would be practically impossible to burn all the fossil fuel reserves.

Racist Politics

An analysis of negative ads put out by John McCain's 2008 campaign documents the use of darkened images of Barack Obama. And other studies correlate viewing darker skin with increased support for right-wing organizations. The campaign study finds that "darker images can activate [racial] stereotypes". Right-wing support "result[s], in part, from threats to the status of whites in America".

Never underestimate the existence of racial resentment in the United States. How many people still view Obama as unqualified and so why not just support any bozo? No serious person could give a reasoned argument in favor of the Republican nominee and so the whole election becomes a big joke to them--let's teach those Obama voters a lesson.

Update (June 28):  A survey from Pew Research Center shows that whites and blacks are far apart on views about race, especially white Republicans.

Update (June 29):  A poll from Reuter's/Ipsos about racial attitudes shows that supporters of the Republican nominee are more likely to hold negative opinions of African Americans than the supporters of other candidates.

Also, Lilly Workneh summarizes the Pew survey.

1. Most black people believe the country should do more to achieve racial equality, while less than half of white people say enough has already been done. 

2. Black and white America’s assessment of President Barack Obama’s impact on race relations widely differ. 

3. Most black and white Americans are aware of Black Lives Matter but have mixed views on their support and assessment of the movement. 

4. Black people believe institutional racism is a critical problem while more white people say individual instances of discrimination are a bigger concern. 

5. Black people experience discrimination at a much higher rate than whites. 

6. Racial gaps persist when it comes to household income and poverty.