Tomorrow starts the Labor Day weekend, and I just realized today that I desperately need a break from writing this blog.
This open thread will be all there is until Monday, or maybe Tuesday, depending on how I feel. There will be a Remedy du Jour on Saturday because that's traditional and important to me.
Have a nice weekend.
Here's Jeremy Jackson's lecture Silent Ocean (28:12). I originally cited Jackson in How We Wrecked The Oceans (and see part II). I have written extensively on the oceans since those posts. Do this search:
Today I am going to hold my nose and look at politics as usual in 2012 from the Republican side. Their tried and true strategy — attack/blame the poor — is still as popular as ever, as BuzzFeed reported in Romney Camp Bets On Welfare Attack.
Mitt Romney's aides explained with unusual political bluntness today
why they are spending heavily — and ignoring media criticism — to air an
add accusing President Barack Obama of "gutting" the work requirement
for welfare, a marginal political issue since the mid-1990s that Romney
pushed back to center stage.
"Our most effective ad is our welfare
ad," a top television advertising strategist for Romney, Ashley
O'Connor, said at a forum Tuesday hosted by ABCNews and Yahoo! News.
"It's new information."
The welfare ad [video below] has been the center of
intense dispute, with Democrats accusing Romney of unearthing old racial
ghosts and Romney pointing out that the Obama Administration has
offered states waivers that could, in fact, lighten work requirements in
welfare, a central issue in Bill Clinton's 1996 revamping of public
assistance.
The most effective welfare ad
This is complete bullshit, of course, but in politics there is no need to stick to the facts because propaganda is a form of emotional persuasion based on lies or half-truths.
The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" awarded Romney's ad "four Pinocchios," a measure Romney pollster Neil Newhouse dismissed.
"Fact
checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and
we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers," he
said. The fact-checkers — whose institutional rise has been a feature of
the cycle — have "jumped the shark," he added after the panel.
I think it would be exceedingly generous to say we have reverted back to some vicious version of high school here because these assholes never left. We could safely ignore all this nonsense, but the fact is that the 2013 agricultural appropriations bill contains significant cuts to food stamps (the SNAP program). I'll quote from an editorial which appeared recently in The Tennesean.
One of the more sobering aspects of our nation’s crippling
polarization is that issues on which Americans found consensus in the
past have become fodder for political partisanship.
Fodder, indeed — these well-stocked politicians are tampering with programs that keep poor families from going hungry.
The
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, is on
the congressional chopping block, even though more people are in need
of it than ever before. The Senate would cut $4.5 billion from the
program over 10 years; the House, a staggering $16 billion.
If you think food stamps are used by a needy few, you are relying on
outdated information. The U.S. Department of Agriculture distributes
food-stamp assistance to feed 46.2 million Americans each month. In
Tennessee, more than 1.2 million people applied for food stamps in 2010.
Think of that: One in five Tennesseans cannot afford to feed their families on their own.
Well, we have thought of that here on DOTE. We know exactly what the situation is.
What is their reason for the dramatic cuts? They say cheats and
deadbeats are taking advantage of the public. But if 46 million people
are cheating the government, how is it that the government hasn’t
collapsed?
The obstinacy of lawmakers who want to tear the safety
net is infuriating. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office
tells them that food-stamp fraud is at an all-time low of 4.36 percent,
so they trot out isolated reports of food-stamp trafficking and say that
is evidence that SNAP money is wasted. This, even though the department
inspects thousands of stores every year and uses the Electronic Benefit
Transfer system to track food-stamp purchases.
It is not much of an exaggeration to say that all government spending is a form a welfare, especially defense spending. Congressman Ron Paul thinks the United States doesn't need to be the world's policeman and leading arms dealer—by a very large margin—but he lost, also by a very large margin, in the primaries.
It is far more effective, at least among Republicans voters, to attack/blame the poor for our fiscal woes as Willard Romney does.
According to the Huffington Post, the SNAP program "now consumes 2 percent of the federal budget, or $78 billion
in fiscal 2011. That's about the cost of the auto industry bailout." That's also roughly one tenth the size of annual defense appropriations. And the food situation in the United States is very, very bad according toTruthOut's Mike Ludwig.
A Gallup poll released this week
shows that 18.2 percent of Americans did not have enough money to buy
the food they or their families needed at least once during the past
year. In 15 states, at least 1 in 5 Americans polled in the first half
of 2012 reported struggling to pay for food during the past 12 months.
Now, we have discussed the root causes of all these gross inequities at length here on DOTE, but every once and a while it behooves us to inspect a few of the deplorable facts directly, as we have done today.
But now the stench is getting too strong for me to bear, and I am unable to hold my nose any longer.
Suppose an alien planetary research team showed up at my front door and asked me to write up a series of reports on human life on Earth. Why me? Hey, why not? They want useful information, right? What would I tell them?
Well, I would need to tell them that humans are clearly the top-predators on this planet, that they've developed what is called "culture" to an astonishing extent, that they fear the natural world, which had brutalized them in the past, and this fear, combined with their innate and thus insatiable urge to grow, is causing them to destroy their Earthly habitat, and thus themselves. I would tell these aliens that humans love technology, often for its own sake, and use it to dominate the perilous natural world.
In short, I would tell these aliens that my fellow humans are exceedingly clever but equally clueless. And then, by way of example, I would show them Stanford Robot a Search Engine For the Ocean. I would have to give them the context, explaining that shark populations have been declining for a long time now, but especially lately, and all of the top-of-the-line predators in the oceans (like sharks, but also including tuna, swordfish, et. al.) are under threat of extinction in the not-so-distant future due to human hunting. (Sharks are a subject I will take up soon on DOTE.)
A few days ago, Stanford marine biologists were excited to detect a
white shark swimming along the California coast north of San Francisco.
Although the biologists routinely monitor sharks, this particular moment
marked the first step toward a "wired ocean" full of mobile robotic
receivers and moored listening stations that can detect ocean wildlife
as it swims by.
Environmental groups have petitioned the federal government to list the
declining population of great white sharks off the coast of California
as an endangered species.
Although similar technologies have been used to monitor the ocean
itself, specifically to investigate climate change, this is the first
such experiment dedicated to wildlife.
In addition to providing researchers with near real-time data of
sharks and other animals, the project supports a new iPhone and iPad app
designed to give the public a more visceral connection to the ocean and
the creatures within.
The Wave Glider robot [image left] — named Carey in honor of noted large pelagic
fish biologist Frank Carey — is probing the Pacific Ocean off the
California coast in an initiative led by Stanford marine sciences
Professor Barbara Block and her research team to keep tabs on the
comings and goings of top marine predators, and to provide better census
data of all species in the area.
The Blue Serengeti Initiative, as the effort is called, picks up
where the decade-long Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) project left
off. TOPP, an international collaboration among 75 scientists, involved
tagging thousands of marine animals –great white sharks, elephant seals
and leatherback turtles – and tracking their movements via satellite.
For example, TOPP revealed that great white sharks make seasonal
migrations almost exclusively between Northern California and offshore
waters called the White Shark Café, occasionally going as far west as
the Hawaiian archipelago...
There are now 120 white sharks carrying acoustic tags, along with 27
salmon sharks and five mako sharks. Other groups have tagged more
animals — including salmon, sturgeon and lingcod — along the California
coast with similar acoustic devices, which can also be picked up by the
network of listening buoys...
The buoys can detect a shark's transmitter — or any animal with an
acoustic tag — from as far away as 2,000 feet. The data is delivered in
near real time to mobile devices; the whole process takes about four
minutes.
What is the highlight of the new project?
The highlight of the new project is the acoustic detection data fed
into an iPhone and iPad app. Shark Net, which is available free in the
iTunes Store, allows users to follow the lives of about 20 white sharks [image below].
And then 19 ... then 18 ... then 17 ... and then eventually, zero.
According to Randall Kochevar, one of the Stanford developers of the
app, people understand that the ocean and its wildlife are important,
but unless one is experiencing the ecosystem every day, it is difficult
to connect to issues on a personal level. Shark Net is an attempt to bring the ocean into living rooms.
These aliens would no doubt be very conscious, very smart beings. After all, they would have successfully overcome the kind of evolutionary obstacles which are destroying us, and had the wherewithal to find and investigate the Earth from their planet of origin many, many light-years away.
I think these aliens would get the point right away — we humans are clever enough to build robots to keep tabs on the very species we are exterminating, but we're not clueful enough to stop killing them off.
How would these aliens respond? I don't know, they're aliens after all, but I suspect they would be polite, thank me very much for my efforts on their behalf, and muttering to themselves "nothing to see here" as they leave my humble abode, they would board their spaceship, and take off to explore other, more promising locales.
I also suspect they would ignore my pleas to take me with them
This has been a year of climate-related records, so it comes as no surprise that the Arctic sea ice has shrunk to its lowest extent since satellites measurements began in 1979. The National Snow And Ice Data Center (NSIDC) announced the record melt yesterday, although scientists could see this one coming for weeks.
NSIDC scientist Walt Meier was quoted in the New York Times.
Parts of the Arctic have become like a giant Slushee this time of year.
This text is from the NSIDC press release.
Arctic sea ice cover melted to its lowest extent in the satellite record
yesterday, breaking the previous record low observed in 2007. Sea ice
extent fell to 4.10 million square kilometers (1.58 million square
miles) on August 26, 2012. This was 70,000 square kilometers (27,000
square miles) below the September 18, 2007 daily extent of 4.17 million
square kilometers (1.61 million square miles)...
NSIDC scientist Walt Meier said, "By itself it's just a number, and
occasionally records are going to get set. But in the context of what's
happened in the last several years and throughout the satellite record,
it's an indication that the Arctic sea ice cover is fundamentally
changing."
According to NSIDC Director Mark Serreze, "The previous record, set
in 2007, occurred because of near perfect summer weather for melting
ice. Apart from one big storm in early August, weather patterns this
year were unremarkable. The ice is so thin and weak now, it doesn't
matter how the winds blow."
"The Arctic used to be dominated by multiyear ice, or ice that stayed
around for several years," Meier said. "Now it's becoming more of a
seasonal ice cover and large areas are now prone to melting out in
summer."
With two to three weeks left in the melt season, NSIDC scientists anticipate that the minimum ice extent could fall even lower.
In 2007, Arctic sea ice extent reached an all-time low in the
satellite record that began in 1979. Arctic sea ice follows an annual
cycle of melting through the warm summer months and refreezing in the
winter. While Arctic sea ice extent varies from year to year because of
changeable weather conditions, ice extent has shown a dramatic overall
decline over the past thirty years. The pronounced decline in summer
Arctic sea ice over the last decade is considered a strong signal of
long-term climate warming.
The melt season isn't over yet, so we're on course to shatter the 2007 all-time low in the Arctic. And though it got very little attention, we also set a new melt record in Greenland this summer, as reported in the Science Daily'sGreenland Melting Breaks Record Four Weeks Before Season's End.
Melting over the Greenland ice sheet shattered the seasonal record on
August 8 — a full four weeks before the close of the melting season,
reports Marco Tedesco, assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric
sciences at The City College of New York...
The melting season in Greenland usually lasts from June — when the
first puddles of meltwater appear — to early-September, when
temperatures cool. This year, cumulative melting in the first week in
August had already exceeded the record of 2010, taken over a full
season, according to Professor Tedesco's ongoing analysis.
"With more yet to come in August, this year's overall melting will fall
way above the old records. That's a goliath year — the greatest melt
since satellite recording began in 1979," said Professor Tedesco.
This year, Greenland experienced extreme melting in nearly every
region — the west, northwest and northeast of the continent — but
especially at high elevations. In most years, the ice and snow at high
elevations in southern Greenland melt for a few days at most. This year
it has already gone on for two months.
"We have to be careful because we are only talking about a couple of
years and the history of Greenland happened over millennia," cautioned
Professor Tedesco. "But as far as we know now, the warming that we see
in the Artic is responsible for triggering processes that enhance
melting and for the feedback mechanisms that keep it going. Looking over
the past few years, the exception has become part of the norm."
The Arctic sea ice gets most of the attention, but record-breaking melting of the Greenland ice sheet is a far more important event because it actually raises sea-level. If the entire ice sheet were to melt away, sea-level would rise about 7 meters (about 23 feet), which would most definitely change the definition of beach-front property. Realtors would be thrown into chaos. Wide-spread panic would almost certainly ensue in the real estate business.
Still, realtors needn't worry about the Greenland ice sheet melting down to nothing for a few centuries yet (maybe). However we are sure to see gradual (and accelerated) ice melt in Greenland as the decades roll by. Scientists don't fully understand the dynamics of these big ice sheets. That's not to say that anything could happen in a relatively short time frame (a few decades), but it seems that our ignorance more often than not obscures unforeseen climate disasters. Or, we could get lucky.
Bill Moyers is not a young man. Nevertheless, he has been active since his retirement from PBS. Bill still thinks life is unfair. He's right about that!
Bill also thinks we should do something about that unfairness. By "we" Bill means our utterly corrupt, hilariously dysfunctional political system. (The dysfunction is largely a consequence of the corruption.) So Bill often shoots himself in the head right off the bat. Invisible Americans Get the Silent Treatment is a good example.
It’s just astonishing to us how long this [presidential] campaign has gone on with no
discussion of what’s happening to poor people. Official Washington
continues to see poverty with tunnel vision — “out of sight, out of
mind.”
Whoa, Nelly! Let's stop right there. Ask yourself: how astonishing is it that politicians don't want to talk about the poor?
And we’re not speaking just of Paul Ryan and his Draconian budget plan
or Mitt Romney and their fellow Republicans. Tipping their hats to
America’s impoverished while themselves seeking handouts from
billionaires and corporations is a bad habit that includes President
Obama, who of all people should know better.
Remember: for three years in the 1980’s he was a community organizer
in Roseland, one of the worst, most poverty-stricken and despair-driven
neighborhoods in Chicago. He called it “the best education I ever had.”
And when Obama left to go to Harvard Law School, author Paul Tough writes in The New York Times,
he did so, “to gain the knowledge and resources that would allow him to
eventually return and tackle the neighborhood’s problems anew.” There’s
a moving line in Dreams from My Father where Obama writes: “I would learn power’s currency in all its intricacy and detail” and “bring it back like Promethean fire.”
Oddly, though, for all his rhetorical skills, Obama hasn’t made a
single speech devoted to poverty since he moved into the White House.
Not a single speech devoted to poverty in nearly four years. Bill finds that odd.
Why, for most humans, does that first clue never arrive? This is a complicated, deep question. Take Moyers. What kind of mush does his Big Brain contain? Is it as simple as this?
I'm a liberal. Barack Obama is a liberal. Liberals care about people, unlike those callous conservative bastards. So Obama should care. Yet he doesn't make speeches about the poor, let alone do anything special to lift them out of poverty. What's the problem? I'll give him a hard time, maybe that will do the trick!
I do not want Bill to die without that first clue. But it has to be a first clue, not something complicated like how stratification and inequality have characterized complex human societies since the Neolithic Revolution. (See my post Human Nature — Exhibit B.) So what might that first clue look like? Let's try this—
The poor don't have any money (because ... uhhh ... they are poor). Money runs the political world. Therefore, politicians don't have to pay any attention to the poor.
I know — it's a Big Leap. If Bill had a firm grasp of this first clue—a firm grasp of the obvious, as one reader recently put it—he would no longer find it astonishing how long this presidential campaign has gone on without any discussion of the poor. He would no longer find it odd that Barack Obama has not made a single speech about the poor since his Inaugural Day. And then a proper discussion of what's really going on could begin.
Bill finishes up with a flourish, a call to arms, if you like.
We know, we know: It is written that, “The poor will always be with us.”
But when it comes to our “out of sight, out of mind” population of the
poor, you have to think we can help reduce their number, ease the
suffering, and speak out, with whatever means at hand, on their behalf
and against those who would prefer they remain invisible.
Speak out: that means you and me, and yes, Mr. President, you, too. You once told
the big bankers on Wall Street that you were all that stood between them
and the pitchforks of an angry public. How about telling the poor you
will make sure our government stands between them and the cliff?
Speak out ... you have to think ... how about telling the poor. Bill! Wake up! You're not getting any younger. This is it. Last chance!
Then again, maybe having a clue is not actually the point of human life on Earth
We're setting sail
To the place on the map from which no one has ever returned...
Avarice and greed are gonna drive you over the endless sea
They will leave you drifting in the shallows
or drowning in the oceans of history
Traveling the world, you're in search of no good
but I'm sure you'll build your Sodom like you knew you would
Using all the good people for your galley slaves
as you're little boat struggles through the warning waves, but you don't pay
You will pay tomorrow
You're gonna pay tomorrow
You will pay tomorrow
Save me, save me from tomorrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools
— Ship Of Fools, Karl Wallinger & World Party (1987)
I often refer to the "elites" who own and run the United States. In America you become a member of this group if you own enough stuff and use the power which great wealth confers to influence how things go. Here's a good-enough definition of elite—
A group of people considered to be the best in a particular society or category, esp. because of their power, talent, or wealth.
An elite defined by money or power is not an elite at all as far as I'm concerned. Generally speaking, in this country, these people are really just a bunch of assholes tied together by limitless avarice, an insatiable hunger for control, bottomless personal insecurity, flaming untreatable narcissism, and the like. Do you realize how many people have to be stepped on in order to acquire a billion dollars in this country? Lots and lots, believe you me. By any reasonable definition of mental health, many of the so-called "persons" in this so-called elite should be put in a padded cell where they can't do anymore damage.
Let's talk about a real elite, people with rare insight into the human condition. Who am I talking about? I'm talking about you, the regular readers of DOTE, the cognoscenti, the tolerate-no-bullshit people.
I'm certainly not talking about those sorry, kiss-ass Washington think-tank hacks and fools who work at the Pew Research Center
Stand up and take a bow. Pat yourself on the back. I tell you this depressing but true stuff every day but you keep coming back for more. Perhaps you are like reader Steve, who recently said—
Reading [DOTE] on a daily basis reassures me that someone other than myself
sees the absurdity in the human condition. It is a daily reminder that I
am not totally insane.
That's Steve's reason, but there are many others. For me, the main reason is not wanting to be alone on this planet. I've got you, and you've got me and each other.
If we are an elite, we're certainly a peculiar one. We've got no money, no power to speak of, not really much of anything tangible. We're not a real community, either. In a community people need to occupy the same, well-defined physical (geographical) space. But my readers are scattered all over the world, connected only by this website and the intertubes.
But make no mistake about it, regular readers of DOTE are an elite. The common thread is insight, not "power, talent or wealth." And another important thing which ties some of us together is that we don't want to sail on this ship of fools into an extremely depressing, untenable future. Who are these fools? They are just about everybody else! Nearly all of these seven billion humans. Especially the billionaires!
And these fools think the planet Earth is their special vehicle, what we call a ship of fools. They think they are entitled to wreck the joint. They think they own it, that it is theirs to do what they want with.
But you know we're only renting, and we have an obligation to leave the place in at least as good a shape as we found it in.
Unfortunately, wherever these fools steer this spaceship Earth, we are bound to follow because there is nowhere else to go. After several million years, the Earth will recover but the fools will be gone. That's the good news.
So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say. I know there must be several thousand people—not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, certainly not millions—who might join us here on DOTE, but have not done so for various reasons. Maybe they don't know about this website. Maybe they do know about it but don't want to read here for personal reasons. Maybe they don't like me. I can be an arrogant prick, at least in print (but almost never in person).
But all of the "right people" are welcome here. The other seven billion can kiss my ass.
It might be useful to remember that—
It's not your fault. There are no earth-shattering choices left for you to make.
Of course there are personal choices you can make. And necessarily—
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
So, thanks for reading! I am grateful to reader Craig, who reminded me of this great World Party song, which I used to listen to over and over again the late 1980s. Way back then, I wasn't quite sure why I liked Ship of Fools so much, but I certainly know why I like it now.
Today I'm featuring contemporary songstresses I like. These women are also excellent musicians, composers or interpreters as the case may be. Good music is not dead, although you have to look hard to find it.
Perhaps you'll discover somebody new today. Always support great music. Only a few things make life worthwhile. Love and music are two of them. The rest of life is unmitigated crap and endless suffering.
Here's the playlist.
Don't Know Why — Norah Jones (song by Jessie Harris)
Baby, I'm A Fool — Melody Gardot (song by Melody Gardot)
Agua de Beber — Sophie Milman (song by Antonio Carlos Jobim, lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes)
Here It Is — Luciana Souza (song by Leonard Cohen)
How many fucking times have I said on this blog that the long-term destruction of the middle class (as measured by flat or shrinking incomes and rising debt levels) is a principal reason why this economy is dead in the water? Too many times to easily count. How many times have I talked about the fact that all the growth & and income gains over the last 30 years have accrued to the wealthy, who are getting wealthier nearly all the time? Ditto.
Like we didn't know that already. Like what this Pew study says is news to us, and especially to those who have considerable experience with being fucked up the ass for three decades now. I love shit like this—
Study Reveals That What You Know To Be True Is ReallyTrue!
Progress in the Social Sciences marches on! Those Pew people are really on top of things. Awesome analysis. Keep up the good work, boys!
I can only sit back and shake my head in wonder.
One of the most important stories in the U.S. economy these days is the rise of extreme inequality.
A stark and startling example of this trend is the fact that, adjusted for inflation, "average hourly earnings" in this country have not increased in 50 years.
A recent Pew study confirms that America's middle class has recently experienced a "lost decade." Since 2000, the Pew says, "the middle class has shrunk in size,
fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed some—but by no means
all—of its characteristic faith in the future." Pew cites statistics
showing that middle class earnings and net worth have plummeted since
the mid-2000s and that about 85% of the middle class say it is harder to
maintain their standard of living than it was 10 years ago...
The causes of this middle-class decline are many, from globalization
(jobs being shipped overseas), to the decline of private-sector unions,
to the wholesale embrace of a "shareholder value" religion that values
profit over everything else that companies produce. But the result of
the trend can be seen vividly in two charts.
To truly "fix" the U.S. economy, corporations are going to have to be
persuaded to invest more of their excess profits in their employees,
both by hiring new employees and paying existing employees more.
Earlier this week a story surfaced about the threat of a future mass extinction in the oceans. A Google news search reveals that this story appeared at phys.org, scienceblog.com, sciencealert.com.au (Australia) and sciencedaily.com, and nowhere else, at least not here in the United States.
We see, then, that this story was confined to the science ghetto. It was not reported by the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, or any of the rest. The story was based on a research paper called Extinctions In Ancient And Modern Seas (pdf) which recently appeared in the journal Trends In Ecology And Evolution.
Life in the world's oceans faces far greater change and risk of large-scale extinctions than at any previous time in human history, a team of the world's leading marine scientists has warned.
That's a stunning lead. You might think the world would pay attention to a story that starts off like that.
The researchers from Australia, the US, Canada, Germany, Panama,
Norway and the UK have compared events which drove massive extinctions
of sea life in the past with what is observed to be taking place in the
seas and oceans globally today.
Three of the five largest extinctions of the past 500 million years
were associated with global warming and acidification of the oceans —
trends which also apply today, the scientists say in a new article in
the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.
Other extinctions were driven by loss of oxygen from seawaters [anoxia],
pollution, habitat loss and pressure from human hunting and fishing — or a combination of these factors.
"Currently, the Earth is again in a period of increased extinctions
and extinction risks, this time mainly caused by human factors," the
scientists stated. While the data is harder to collect at sea than on
land, the evidence points strongly to similar pressures now being felt
by sea life as for land animals and plants...
Marine extinction events vary greatly. In the 'Great Death' of the
Permian 250 million years ago, for example, an estimated 95 per cent of
marine species died out due to a combination of warming, acidification,
loss of oxygen and habitat. Scientists have traced the tragedy in the
chemistry of ocean sediments laid down at the time, and abrupt loss of
many sea animals from the fossil record.
"We are seeing the signature of all those [Permian] drivers today — plus the
added drivers of human overexploitation and pollution from chemicals,
plastics and nutrients," Prof. Pandolfi says.
"The fossil record tells us that sea life is very resilient — that
it recovers after one of these huge setbacks. But also that it can take
millions of years to do so."
The researchers wrote the paper out of their concern that the oceans
appear to be on the brink of another major extinction event.
"There may be still time to act," Prof. Pandolfi says. "If we
understand what drives ocean extinction, we can also understand what we
need to do to prevent or minimize it.
I don't want to dwell on the details of the paper. You can read it if you want to (it's linked-in above). I did take the time to grab Table 1, which you can peruse at your leisure. It is quite informative.
Click to enlarge in a new tab or window
I used to worry about this stuff. Years ago, I would have gotten all bent of shape about the fact that only a few people seem to care about the very real, looming possibility of a mass extinction in the oceans. In fact, I believe the probability of such an event occurring in the next 200 years is near unity (= 1).
I don't worry about this stuff anymore. But I do want our collective descendants to know there were a few people in 2012 who thought such probable catastrophes were worth noting and reporting on.
In the United States, the media are too preoccupied with Hopey-Changey
versus The Mittster to notice that there is a coming mass extinction in
the oceans. I want our descendants to know that, too. Few people will remember in 2050 who ran for president in 2012, but those hapless folks will remark frequently on the fact that millions of humans are dying off because the oceans are turning to shit.
Posting will be light over the next few days. Have a nice weekend.
