Sunday Cutdown XXXVIII (a) 17 August 2024

Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document

1) How AC conditioned us not to care about climate change

NYT: How Air-Conditioning Made Us Expect Arizona to Feel the Same as Maine

Utterly fascinating bit of historical reporting from the NYT.

AC originally begins to enable certain types of industrial processes, then gets popularized by movie theaters, then creeps into cars and offices and finally goes fully mainstream across the US.

I remember it coming to cars. The first time I rode in my grandfather’s new Cadillac with AC as a kid, I was amazed by how it felt.

Today, 75% of Americans have central air, another 15% have window units, and roughly one-tenth go without. Of new construction, it’s 97% central.

Why this mattered: It has insulated us from nature and its changes, and it allowed us to move — in great numbers — to places we otherwise could not stand in terms of the heat and humidity, like the Southwest (heat) and Southeast (plus humidity). AC, the story argues, didn’t just circulate air, it circulated Americans.

Worse it corrupted our architecture: making it indifferent to energy efficiency for decades while homogenizing the look and feel of buildings and homes the country over.

Today, AC makes climate change an abstraction for most of us most of the time — at least until we get the electricity or home insurance bill.

AC will become a human right this century — no kidding. \

What’s a human right? Something humans decide they can’t live without.

2) The overkill switch

WAPO: More than 40,000 killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, Health Ministry says

My advice to Israel from the start was to speed the killing. Whomever you decide needs to go, get them gone — and fast. Israel mostly did that, but now it’s down in the weeds, number-wise: it’s killing lotsa of civilians to get that extra fighter or two or three.

Israel has also had ten months to execute its structural diminishment of Gaza. Now it’s time to switch over to that new reality on the ground and continue its hunting within that post-conflict context.

Then there is the shifting political reality in the US: Trump is looking iffier by the day, and Biden is in legacy mode with Harris on deck. The dealmaking will not get better than right now, as Biden will gladly pay to get this conflict offstage before 5 November.

The problem remains as it has long been: Netanyahu needs crisis to avoid his inevitable political downfall. The attacks happened on his watch and should, under normal circumstances, cost him his job in a parliamentary system.

Netanyahu got to come over here and harangue our Congress F2F. Time for us to start working all available vectors around Netanyahu within Israeli politics.

It’s time to pull the still-punching fighter off the corpse. There is no reasonable point to this killing anymore.

3) Never quite thought I’d see this article

THE CONVERSATION: Raising the retirement age won’t defuse China’s demographic time bomb – but mass immigration might

FINANCE YAHOO: China's population decline is having a big impact as marriages, diamond sales, and retail spending drop

Not the depopulation bit but the mass migration notion.

It is an intimidating image above, even as I tend to discount its likelihood.

Why?

The real problem is the dependency ratio, seen here:

By midcentury you’re at the point where the workers are just over half your population, giving a total dependency ratio of 1:1, or one worker for every dependent (kid and elder). That situation is either solved by robotics/AI/automation or you’ve got an untenable economic situation which leads to political upheaval. If I had to bet, it would be on that latter pathway.

China right now has a fertility rate of 1.1, or just over one kid per woman — a whopping entire child short of replacement (2.1). Long before that predicted crash in overall population unfolds, there will be great political upheaval/reform to correct the economic circumstances that so depress fertility (see the second citation above on that pathway).

In short, I see the CCP going down long before the population crash gets fully underway. I just don’t see China surrendering to this outcome anymore than I see it accepting mass immigration as the solution (also untenable so long as the CCP is embedded in single-party rule).

In other words, to get from here to there (including any truly bad “there”), the Party will have to end and yield to something else (likely just a splitting of the Party at first).

Still, it’s intriguing to think about China someday taking in masses of SE Asians fleeing the worst of climate change. That is a scenario I would love to explore because it would also have to be post-Party.

The inconceivables here are fascinating to ponder, because, if some don’t happen, then others MUST happen.

4) It only gets uglier from here

REUTERS: How Trump’s intimidation tactics have reshaped the Republican Party

Here is the scenario that keeps rumbling around in my brain:

• Trump is in the process of coming apart, and Vance is just an enabler

• Harris wins big and the Dems take both houses

• The Dems move to bring in both DC and Puerto Rico as new states, giving them 4 Senate seats

• And then the fun begins (like a revamping of SCOTUS).

I don’t find that pathway at all inconceivable, and Trump makes it all happen by so crippling the GOP with his cult-like rule. Populism burns out every time in our system. It’s the Ebola of political viruses.

Hard to see the Donald still not damagingly in control despite his second consecutive loss in November. And his persistence as bogeyman will only embolden Dems to strike hard and fast and deep.

We live in unprecedented political times, and I think they’re going to become a whole lot more unprecedented.

5) Where are the real climate disaster movies?

WAPO: Watch how a father’s risky plan to save his house from the Park Fire paid off

It rolls like a Roland Emmerich disaster flick (my fave being “2012”): crazy dad takes on a wild fire to save the family home. How much you wanna bet that for every one of him there’s dozens of now-dead people who had similar out-there dreams?

This guy is a former firefighter, so, don’t try this at home:

As a California firefighter earlier in life, [Mike Waltz] had learned to predict fire movement based on wind direction and fuel loads, and had designed an elaborate setup: 32 sprinklers, 300 feet of fire hose and a professional water pump connected to a pool and well — all meant to “develop a defensive line of sprinklers to lay down a humidity bubble.”

If everything on the property was wet, he said, raining embers wouldn’t ignite.

I spent Tuesday night in Lake Geneva WI getting hammered with a bunch of retired cops and firefighters, and the stories the latter told really would curl your hair (just like fire!). They would tell you to NEVER try anything like this: just ain’t worth your life or your kids’ dad.

Still, these stories will proliferate, and frankly, they are as dangerous as the fires.

6) Code switch? That’s just called good politics when the pol in question is a White male

NYT: Harris Gonna Code Switch

The story contextualizes the reality that minorities of all types tend to code switch when out of their element: the Black person acts White around Whites and goes back to being more Black around Blacks.

That notion of code switching is real enough, but it’s not as racial in its make-up as it is often portrayed. And by that I mean everybody does it all the time. It’s just that, for Whites, it’s less often and less pronounced.

Every time, when I was living out East and came home to WI for a Packers game, I grew more uff-da every mile closer to Green Bay I got. By halftime with several beers in me, I’m almost unrecognizable in my instantly reacquired local accent, ja! hey! Then, the next day flying back to Rhode Island, I would slowly morph back into Peter Griffin. Frankly, I love code switching. It’s like a little vacation from yourself.

But, think about it, when a White male politician does it (getting all folksy with the folks, or all athletic with the jocks, or all working class at the factory), it’s just consider savvy shape-shifting. Somehow, when Kamala does it, it’s more calculated and thus less authentic.

When did she decide to become BuuuLACK? the Donald asks.

Complete bullshit, I cry.

Harris a serious and talented pol and she can code switch or role play with the best.

And yes, being a woman of color, she’s probably far more practiced and expert at it.

So, good for her, bad for Orange Man who mostly just color switches (tangerine, peach, apricot, whatever!).

7) The globally crystalizing climate change event

NYT: How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points?

THE HILL: Permafrost melt raises threat of ‘giant mercury bomb’ in Arctic: Study

Fascinating and well graphed NYT story.

About 15 years ago, I designed and ran an online crowdsourced war-game on this question, and we explored all of the “big ones” cited here:

• Mass death of coral reefs

• Abrupt thawing of permafrost

• Collapse of Greenland ice

• Breakup of West Antarctic ice

• Sudden shift in West African monsoon

• Loss of Amazon rainforest

• Shutdown of Atlantic currents.

See The Hill story for an unusual twist on the permafrost melt. And if that don’t make you mad as a hatter, then nothing will.

8) Trench digging as the new military speciality, indeed! (with jobs actually posted on a Russian variant of indeed.com)

NEWSWEEK: Russia Map Shows Trenches Built Dozens of Miles From Kursk Front Line

NEWSWEEK: Russians Bombarded With Trench-Digging Job Ads

More proof of the looming Military Singularity: when in doubt, dig trenches!

At least 30 ads calling for trench builders in Kursk were found on a Russian job portal in the past few days, the BBC's Russian service reported on Wednesday. The majority of the ads called for shift workers to pitch in with building various types of "fortifications," including trenches and anti-tank structures, the outlet reported.

No need for Russia to be embarrassed, really. Happens all the time.

9) Teddy Roosevelt would be spinning in his grave

NYT: To Save the Panama Canal From Drought, a Disruptive Fix

Persistent drought in Panama endangers the operations of the canal.

The weak link is “Lake Gatún, the artificial reservoir that is the centerpiece of the Panama Canal system.” Drought has lowered its supply, and when that happens, the canal slows down, letting only a fraction of ships to traverse instead of the usual flow (more than half the cargo from Asia to America’s East Coast and back).

Climate change is the culprit, essentially challenging the entire operational model of the canal:

“The past 20 years have been totally different than from the previous 80 years,” said Victor Vial, the canal’s chief financial officer. “Forget about 2000 and before, because climate change has, in crescendo, had an impact that’s much different.”

I actually used that wording in America’s New Map:

As such, America could end up with stunningly little influence over world consumer trends amidst the tectonic collision of an ascendant global middle class and climate change’s crescendoing impact—two momentous dynamics driven by global consumption.

This description of how the canal needs water to work is fascinating:

From the air, the Panama Canal is revealed as a monumental drainage system powered entirely by gravity. Lake Gatún occupies the midsection, a shimmering expanse of water seeping toward the horizons, dotted by jungle-draped islands.

Water from the lake flows through a series of canal locks that function like ladders. The locks are needed to lift ships from the coast up into the interior of the country, and then gradually down to the opposite shore. In a quirk of geography, the Pacific Coast is actually higher than the Atlantic, necessitating some sort of ladder.

Ships pull into entrances on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, then pass through pairs of floating gates that stop the water from flowing downhill, causing it to pool. Once the water rises sufficiently, lifting ships to the next stage, the gates are opened and vessels can continue. After ships cross the lake, they pass through more locks, this time headed back down to sea level. The crossing runs 50 miles and typically takes 12 hours.

Staggering volumes of water from Lake Gatún are required to make the system work. The passage of a single ship needs more than 50 million gallons of water. Every day, the canal uses two-and-a-half times the amount of water consumed by the 8 million residents of New York City.

In a normal year, some 13,000 ships complete that journey. Since last October, traffic has been running at an annual pace of only 10,000 vessels.

The proposed answer is expensive enough at $1.6B:

The central fix is creating a second water source for the canal with the proposed dam on the Río Indio.

The canal authority had contemplated that option for decades …

The real problem is clearing the land proposed for the new reservoir created by the dam. Local resistance is fierce, of course.

But the dam must be built, the story says: “Climate change leaves them no choice.”

10) No cheeseburger! Blue crab!

POLITICO: Italy’s blue crab invasion: If you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em

Globalization (shipping) brought the blue crab from the Western Hemisphere to the Med, and then climate change enabled their rapid expansion by raising the water temp to a level they’re more used to, along with heavier precipitation that reduced the local water’s salinity — also a benefit.

This perfect bit of climate-meets-species velocity has enabled the blue crab to crowd out all sorts of local species of clams and mussels.

Italy is spending plenty of money to fight this fight, but local restaurants are learning to go with this flow and have started featuring the blue crab in more dishes.

Like the story’s subtitle says …

11) The US as new LNG king is a good thing

JAPAN TIMES: Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom

The fracking revolution put America in a sweet spot at just the right moment:

Until 2016, the U.S. was sending virtually none of the fuel abroad, but a fracking bonanza, a price spike following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and growing demand in Asia are among the factors that have led to a surge in exports. Last year, the U.S. was the biggest supplier of LNG traded internationally, trumping Qatar.

Japan has long been THE global LNG (liquid natural gas) buyer), with China now coming on very strong.

You can say, bad fossil fuel! But natural gas is a much lower emitter than coal or oil, and Asia will use plenty of those alternatives if denied LNG at a good price, so the overall global impact is good, even as this sort of mining tends to decimate local environments where it is done. Then there is the need to invest in technologies that choke off the methane emissions associated with natural gas, along with the question of whether or not such money is better used elsewhere.

Me? I have to bow in the direction of the all-of-the-above argument for Asia, which otherwise will remain far too dependent on coal for electricity.

But bowing to that reality in Asia does not mean I do the same in the US. Better to lead and thus profit from the Green Rev.

12) Where the babies are booming

NEWSWEEK: Map Reveals World's 10 Fastest Growing Populations

Per my slide from the brief:

You can see where the demographic dividend is played out (US, Japan, China), where it’s playing out now (SE Asia, India), and where it’s headed next (Middle East and Africa).

It’s not hard to track the demographic dividend.

Notice also the depopulation going on across Russia and Europe.

Wanna guess where all those climate migrants might end up? Worst climate change where the population growing fastest, and “best” climate change where the populations are collapsing. You don’t have to be a genius to figure this out — just patient.

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