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1) Arctic no longer in the CO2 black
NATURE: Wildfires offset the increasing but spatially heterogeneous Arctic–boreal CO2 uptake
Historically — as in, for millennia(!), the Arctic has been a CO2 sink, storing more than producing.
This seems to be changing now because of an interloper of sorts.
The abstract of the study:
The Arctic–Boreal Zone [ABZ] is rapidly warming, impacting its large soil carbon stocks. Here we use a new compilation of terrestrial ecosystem CO2 fluxes, geospatial datasets and random forest models to show that although the Arctic–Boreal Zone was overall an increasing terrestrial CO2 sink from 2001 to 2020 … more than 30% of the region was a net CO2 source. Tundra regions may have already started to function on average as CO2sources, demonstrating a shift in carbon dynamics. When fire emissions are factored in, the increasing Arctic–Boreal Zone sink is no longer statistically significant … and the permafrost region becomes CO2 neutral … underscoring the importance of fire in this region.
Of the four horsemen of the Anthropocene (per Gaia Vince: fire, heat, drought, flood), fire seems to be kicking ass as of late — here, shifting the Arctic to the dark side of the climatic force.
Arctic and fire … not historically bound — until now.
Worrisome side-note: this research relied heavily on Alaska-based sensors, which, BTW, showed Alaska’s ABZ was already a new source — even before fire emissions were added in.
The study ends by noting that both Canada and Russia have way too few sensors set up for this, raising the issue of under-estimation here, as, where the scientists had achieved the heaviest sensoring, they got the most disturbing results.
This strikes me as a known unknown issue: we know that we’re likely underestimating the diminishment of the ABZ’s role in trapping CO2; we just don’t know how much.
Whatever the degree of diminishment, this is not good news.
2) Weight-loss drugs earn a relatively clean bill of health
A big Veterans Affairs study on weight-loss drugs just reported out. The caveat is that the test group was overwhelmingly male, White, and middle-aged-to-elderly in makeup.
Cue: Jim Gaffigan’s latest comedy special “The Skinny”:
Funny how that so often seems to work out that way in medicine.
But hey, that’s the trapped pool the USG could easily get its hands on and track, so we note the caveat and move on to the good news: the positive effects vastly outnumber the negatives.
Indeed, this new type of drug therapy (sold as Mounjaro [Jim Gaffigan’s drug of choice], Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound) seems to be a rather magical elixir, improving the strong majority of the 175 diseases and conditions examined. So, not just diabetes and weight-loss but also substance addiction and Alzheimer’s — for God’s sake! Toss in chronic kidney and liver disease, plus cardiac risk diminishment, and that’s already a very impressive list. Indications are that it also helps in blood clotting, respiration, and infection control. And, if that’s not enough, toss in reduction in both emotional stress and suicidal ideation.
I feel better just reading about it!
Amazing to me: already one out of 8 Americans have tried or are using one of the GLP-1 medications.
I’ll have what they’re having!
Imagine all the good this drug category can achieve, and then realize that Big Pharma is charging a nicely round $1k/monthly shot.
The usual Big Pharma plea: we need to reap record profits so we can continue research into even better drugs!
To me, this is the big civil rights question of this century: who has access to cutting-edge biotech-produced therapies? Just the rich?
Ironic, is it not, that we’re such geniuses at medical innovation and yet we endure such a f##ked-up healthcare insurance system — still.
Somebody please get Trump on a GLP-1 drug — stat!
3) For all you British Imperialism apologists out there
TIMES OF INDIA: UK's richest 10% took half of India's wealth during colonial era: Oxfam report
The Brits did so much for India, so what’s the big deal about looting the place in the process?
A new report by Oxfam International, titled 'Takers, Not Makers,' reveals staggering figures on wealth extracted from India by Britain during the colonial era, claiming that $64.82 trillion was taken between 1765 and 1900. Of this, $33.8 trillion, which is more than half of the total wealth, adjusted for today’s value, is said to have enriched the UK’s richest 10%. Released at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, the report pointed out colonialism’s lasting impact on inequality and economic systems. "Legacies of inequality and pathologies of plunder, pioneered during the time of historical colonialism, continue to shape modern lives," Oxfam said.
The report’s website levels a broader charge against the oligarchs of our present world:
It’s never been a better time to be a billionaire. Billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than 2023. Five trillionaires are now expected within a decade. Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990. Most billionaire wealth is taken, not earned — 60% comes from either inheritance, cronyism and corruption or monopoly power. Their wealth has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels, while people living in poverty all over the world continue to face multiple crises.
Looked upon in this light, America’s new embrace of a billionaire presidential cabinet seems less surprising and more just a sign of the times.
Taken, not earned: a great distinction.
Something to remember when we declare all these people to be such natural geniuses when — for the most part — they’re just preternaturally greedy.
Tell me we’re not due to move past pointless populist anger and on to a comprehensively progressive era.
For truly transformational leadership, we need true “traitors to their class,” like Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, and not this current crop of two-faced Tech Bros pretenders sucking up to our billionaire POTUS — all of whom are making money hand over fist while our middle class atrophies.
This is simply unsustainable, as in …
They’re so fine, there’s no telling where the money went.
Seriously … tricking foreign nationals into coming to Russia for work and then pressing them into military service on the front lines, where they are killed.
And not just any foreign nationals, but Indians.
India is plenty pissed and the Kremlin is plenty evasive.
Risking that strategic relationship over a hundred-plus soldiers … that is desperate AND supremely stupid.
Ah, but let’s pretend that Russia + China + Iran + North Korea is some new Eurasia mega-Leviathan poised to dominate the Heartland/World Island.
Give me a f##king break.
Meanwhile, Trump is frantically signaling his displeasure at being unable to end the war within 24 hours or whatever other magical timeline he has proposed.
Zelensky says a very large multinational peacekeeping force of 200,000 would be needed to police any deal, and that America must be part of any such force.
We’ll see if Trump is willing to pony up anything along those lines
IT SHALL BE UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON TO DISCHARGE GENETIC MATERIAL WITHOUT THE INTENT TO FERTILIZE AN EMBRYO.
Forget about enforcing this, the notion is self-defeating and unhealthy, say I, as one of the realities of the rise in prostate cancer in our modern world is that it is thought partially due (but not absolutely proven) to a less-than-ideal frequency of ejaculations among males.
Think about it: all those millennia of evolution, men are set up to generate lots of genetic material. Then we become civilized and cut back dramatically, and voila! Our bodies cannot adjust that fast and so we are beset with this cancer that strikes fear like no other among men (seriously).
The bit about “no evidence” misses (or maybe just straw-mans) the point: this is all about great powers realizing the value of Big Data and wanting to hoard it for their flagship-company efforts in developing AI. The rise of cyber-sovereignty sees all sorts of governments mandating that such personal data be stored in data centers located on their sovereign territory.
Bit OBE, if you think about it, but it’s an easy “fix” for politicians to demand.
As for its effectiveness in general or with regard to Tik Tok:
Yet it is also worth noting that TikTok is not alone in that many other apps harvest significant quantities of user data. As Ciaran Martin, a former head of the UK cybersecurity agency NCSC, observes: “The system of personal data security across social media and other apps is so broken TikTok scarcely matters.”
This is how younger generations look at the issue.
And yet, some fear is justified: to the extent that any one great power’s comprehensively gains access to such data pools in any foreign environment, they achieve a sort of ownership (or is it overlordship?) of those affected individuals’ infospheres, absolutely allowing for influence operations, simply because they can curate your information-understanding of the world around you.
Hell, Amazon wants this. Facebook wants this. X wants this. All the US Tech Bros and their companies want this. The NSA wants this, as does any three-letter agency and all these overseas counterparts.
In the end, it’s all fun and gamification until it isn’t.
As I wrote in America’s New Map:
Jim Nuttle illustration from “America’s New Map”
Advanced authoritarian governments like China increasingly grasp the potential for gamifying their citizens’ daily lives as a virtual means of totalitarian control. Chinese technology companies are required by law to share with the government everything they collect on citizens, enabling security agencies to calculate a “social credit score” that captures any activity or association deemed more or less acceptable by the Communist Party. Have a friend who openly criticizes the government? You lose points. Noticed searching “harmful” ideas online or geo-located at a street protest? You lose points. Conversely, like the right pro-government post? You gain points. Same for ending associations with “antisocial” people.
By design, point totals trigger real-world consequences. You try to buy that train ticket to Province X but are told your rating does not allow such travel. Your attempts to access a more exclusive housing complex are rebuffed without explanation. Meanwhile, you look around and realize that friends who toe the party line increasingly live in an entirely better universe than yours, going to places off-limits to you and engaging in activities beyond your grasp.
Pretty soon you find that you are self-correcting to raise your point total. Frowning in public is captured on face-recognition cameras, so you smile vaguely whenever outside your apartment. You avoid friends with lower scores. You realize that your every movement, act, and even emotion is being held against you, determining the size of your virtual cage. The government no longer needs to actively control you—just remind you of your score. After some time, you are your own police, your own jail-keeper, your own minder. You have been gamified into complete submission within the Matrix.
China peddles that Orwellian vision around the world to frightened governments eager to control their restive middle class and tech-savvy youth. It is also why Beijing vacuums up Big Data on everyone on this planet to predictively identify those who are, or may become, a threat to Communist Party rule—Minority Report on a global scale.
Now imagine an America in which any online comment you offered in support or criticism of the January 6th Insurrection determines whether Fannie Mae approves your mortgage. Or when your online search for abortion services suddenly shuts down your Tesla as you attempt to drive out of state.
Gaming, VR, and the cyber realm offer users an escape from the limitations and strictures that govern the real world. As environments optimized for self-discovery, free association, and thought experimentation, they are naturally threatening to autocracies that are reflexively determined to extend their instruments of social control throughout these media, in the process strengthening their already firm hold over their citizens in the real world. China observers have taken to describing Beijing’s social credit scoring system as Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution digitalized, which makes Beijing’s aggressive pursuit of society-pacifying gamification systems an even greater threat to a world well conditioned and incentivized for their pervasive application.
The danger here is Beijing’s successful commoditization of social intangibles like freedom and security, transforming them into generic products (like gasoline, flat-screen TVs, or budget air travel) undistinguishable by their source (democracies vs. autocracies). To a nervous global middle class seeking certainties in a seemingly uncertain world, China promotes the image that its freedom-and-security offering is not all that different from America’s—just cheaper, more reliable, and easier for emerging-market governments to implement and operate.
That is how democracy dies in the twenty-first century, not with a bang but with a bargain.
So, yeah, who owns the platforms does matter, so it’ll be interesting to see if MAGA Trump sticks with that logic or goes with his own interpretation that, because Tik Tok seemed good for his re-election in terms of attracting more youth votes, then it doesn’t really matter who controls the data.
8) It may be the Devil or it may be the Lord but you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Hard not to have an all-Trump Cut Down this week, is it not?
Not hard to see how history will judge this move in the wake of COVID-19: basically, cutting off your ears and tongue to spite your face.
How less collaboration with WHO serves our purposes in a post-pandemic world boggles the mind, but chalk it all up to the anti-vaxxers and others ideologically scarred by the shutdowns.
Will lives be unnecessarily lost on this basis? American lives?
You better believe it — or not.
Vaccines are bad, experts are bad, international organizations are bad, unpasteurized milk and brain worms are good, and so on.
In a world of alternative facts and magical thinking, one can pick and choose as they please.
Freedom! Liberation day! I just got diagnosed with what?
I’ve known and interacted with Ken Klippenstein going back to investigative reporting he’s done over the years. He is admittedly a bit dark and cynical for my tastes, but that’s his muckraking persona (how timely for the Gilded Age 2.0), right down to his hand-grenade logo for his Substack-based news service of sorts (pull the “klip” … get it?).
Ken often leaves me shaking me head in various directions, but I keep reading his stuff because it strikes me as an important reference point in these times — agreement or no (and probably most crucial when it’s “no”).
Ken specializes in leaks and is very good at that. You have undoubtedly read something he published along such lines, trust me.
Ken is no fan of Trump, but then he’s no fan of anybody, as far as I can tell — at least anyone with power. This makes him sort of a young fogey: suspicious and cantankerous in all directions, but — again — one cannot get enough of that in our world of disinformation, so long as it is non-partisan and authentic and honest, and he is all that.
As Ken suggests in this post, we are likely to be entering a fierce period of struggle with Trump 2.0, despite all the prep work and personnel vigilance. Trump may well “cleanse” the “deep state,” but all that talent (and it is magnificent and deeply valuable talent, in m opinion) won’t go lightly.
Which means Ken will be big-time reading for the next four years, to be sure.
10) A religious leader asking for mercy from politicians? The devil take you!
If you read Susan Crawford’s Substack as I do (the archly titled Moving Day), this is familiar territory, with this piece just making the specific case for the LA Fires as a crystalizing event.
Reinsurance is how we socialize the risk across these United States:
The Los Angeles fires are likely to mark a turning point in how homes are built and insured in the United States. The apocalyptic images coming from the Palisades and Eaton fires are unforgettable, and the destruction is massive: 27 lives lost, 12,000 structures gone and $40 billion in insured damages. The toll will almost certainly rise. Ultimately, these fires could spur changes that touch every American home.
This won’t happen right away, but experts tell me that home insurance costs stand to rise nationwide later this year and next as a result of the disaster. Why? Because insurance companies protect themselves against big losses by buying their own insurance, called reinsurance. Reinsurers try to spread the risks around, including to homeowners in other states. This price hike will come on top of the 38 percent jump in home insurance rates that has occurred since 2019.
This disaster is likely to claim the crown as America’s most expensive to-date — upwards of $150B. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the post-quake San Francisco Fire of 1906 … these were, in their own ways, significant triggers of social, economic, and even constitutional debates/rethinking.
So, it’s completely in line that the LA Fires will lead to some significant outcomes to be watched — and encouraged.
Last year, there were 27 severe weather-related events in the United States that caused $1 billion or more in damages. That’s up from two in 1984. Most American homes are not built to withstand disasters. And the insurance market isn’t prepared, either.
The inconceivable inevitability? More government-run disaster insurance programs for homes.
The British study goes back 150 years. It’s findings point to the danger of the great monoculture that is modern agriculture:
Using high levels of common fertilisers on grassland halves pollinator numbers and drastically reduces the number of flowers, research from the world’s longest-running ecological experiment has found.
Increasing the amount of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus doused on agricultural grassland reduced flower numbers fivefold and halved the number of pollinating insects, according to the paper by the University of Sussex and Rothamsted Research.
Bees were most affected – there were over nine times more of them in chemical-free plots compared with those with the highest levels of fertiliser, according to the paper, published in the journal npj Biodiversity.
The lead researcher, Sussex University’s Dr Nicholas Balfour, said: “As you increase fertilisers, pollinator numbers decrease – that’s the direct link that to our knowledge has never been shown before.
“It’s having a drastic effect on flowers and insects. The knock-on effect goes right up the food chain,” he said.
This is primarily because fertilisers create conditions that allow fast-growing grasses to dominate, crowding out other grasses and flowers. It is generally assumed that having a greater diversity of flowers leads to a greater diversity of pollinators, which often have specialist requirements in terms of the blooms they like to visit.
No matter how we steward the land, we change it.
This is the essence of the Anthropocene — own it!
Nature survives through heterogeneity — not homogeneity. Humans have thrived because we’ll eat anything, anywhere, anytime.
The greater our diversity, the safer we are collectively.
Have mercy on ourselves!
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