The Climates They Are A Changin’ | The Trolls Lose Their Bridge | Sleep is a Competitive Advantage

“Man is a genius when he is dreaming.” – Akira Kurosawa

“People today have forgotten they’re really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don’t understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they’re so proud of their inventions. What’s worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don’t know it, but they’re losing nature. They don’t see that they’re going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water.” – Ibid.

The Climates They Are A Changin’: The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday a chilling new report on global warming. Some of the world’s top climate scientists and researchers have concluded that new technologies must be developed to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, because the temperature of the planet is on track, by 2030, to rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees F) that was the limitation goal set under the 2015 Paris Climate accord. The ICPP’s report is warning that a 1.5-degree C increase in global temperatures will cause serious changes to weather, sea levels, agriculture and natural ecosystems. One of the report’s authors said: “Limiting warming to 1.5 C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics, but doing so would require unprecedented changes.”

Those changes include a 40-50 percent reduction in emissions by 2030, and a carbon-neutral world—one with no net additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—by 2050. There are numerous ways to take carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere, such as growing more forests, or better yet, halting the destruction of the ones we have. Another is burning biomass, such as waste wood and agricultural material, to make electricity instead of using fossil fuels, but that’s expensive and not politically engaging. There are experimental methods now that can take CO2 directly out of the air, after which it could be buried. But as pointed out by Howard Herzog, an engineer at MIT who specializes in these “carbon capture” technologies, billions of tons of CO2 would have to come out, and these techniques now cost as much as $1,000 to extract a single ton of CO2. In his book Carbon Capture, Herzog says rhetorically: “The best way to remove CO2 from the air, [is] to not release it into the air in the first place.”

Steve Bannon Overstays His European Vacation (all he ever wanted):Far-right leaders Marine Le Pen of France and Matteo Salvini of Italy joined forces at a joint press conference in Rome Monday. Le Pen said she wanted to put “lots of conjectures” to rest about President Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon’s plans to set up a Europe-wide network to boost the chances of populist parties ahead of elections to the European parliament in May 2019. Le Pen said Bannon would not play a leading role in a nationalist drive to “save the real Europe” as he is “American, not European”. (Guardian)

The Trolls Lose Their Bridge: The electronics and personal items confiscated by Dutch authorities from the four Russian spies they arrested last April who were trying to hack the chemical weapons’ watchdog in The Hague, have revealed an additional treasure trove of useful information about Russian spying exploits and tactics. Even better, on Thursday, the Dutch defense minister presented this plethora of documents, scans, photographs and screenshots on large slides at a lengthy news conference. Within seconds, the images spread around the world; within hours, Bellingcat, the independent research group that pioneered the new science of open source investigation, had checked the men’s names against several open Russian databases, which in turn unearthed much more information. This could be the largest security breach the GRU has ever experienced, and potentially represents a turning point in the fight against Russian disinformation. (WaPo)

– “Romania spent over $40 million on a referendum to ban same-sex marriage. Few bothered to vote.” (WaPo)

– “Alphabet to shut Google+ social site after user data exposed: private profile data of at least 500,000 users may have been exposed to hundreds of external developers.” (Reuters)

This is the War That Never Ends. Yes, It Goes On and On … Some People Started Fighting it Not Knowing What it Was … : On October 7, 2001, US forces invaded Afghanistan with the goal of overthrowing the Taliban regime. 17 years to the day later, at least 54 people were killed across the country, including 35 Afghan security force members, and 19 civilians. Afghan officials said a large number of Taliban fighters were also killed in attacks carried out in 14 of the country’s 34 provinces. The exact toll is difficult to verify. Altogether it is a reminder that, in what continues to be the longest war in US history, the violence has only grown deadlier with time. On average, 30 to 40 Afghan forces and at least 13 civilians die every day. There are no signs suggesting the possibility of peace talks with the Taliban.

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t (But Probably The Latter):The Trump administration released a 500-page environmental impact statement last month that contained the assumption that, on its current course, the planet will heat up a disastrous seven degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. However rather than using this dire prediction as an argument to combat climate change by encouraging continued efforts to cut greenhouse gasses, the analysis concluded the planet’s fate is already sealed. The draft statement, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was written to justify President Trump’s decision to freeze federal fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. In other words, while Trump’s decision would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement argues it won’t really make any difference. (WaPo)

San Francesspool: In the heart of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood lies the dirtiest street in the city. The 300 block of Hyde Street received 2,227 complaints over the past decade. Piles of heroin needles and excrement, the chronically homeless, mentally ill and drug-addled exist alongside Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, coin laundromats and organizations dedicated to helping the indigent. For half of this year, Daily Pnut’s office was 4 blocks located from this area. San Francisco oftentimes feels like Gotham City in Dark Knight Rises in regards to the extreme disparities between the incredibly wealthy and the practically 3rd world conditions in certain small pockets of the city. Unfortunately Marc Benioff isn’t Bruce Wayne and fortunately there is no Bane (yet). (NYT)

– “‘She just ended her career’: Taylor Swift foray into politics sparks praise and fury.” Maybe she’s singing: “And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate … I shake it off, I shake it off.” (Guardian)

– “Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Unlikely Path to the Supreme Court: Before she became a hero to feminists, she had to overcome their distrust.” (New Yorker)

– “Sleep: how much do we really need?: The optimum amount of sleep is supposed to be eight hours a night. Why is shuteye so important – and what happens if we don’t get enough?” Sleep is a competitive advantage, and it’s also an evolutionary-survival advantage: “Drowsy driving is dangerous because sleep deprivation can have similar effects on your body as drinking alcohol.” Maybe much of the madness & chaos in the world today is driven by our collective lack of sleep? (Guardian)

– “America’s new aristocracy lives in an accountability-free zone:Accountability is for the little people, immunity is for the ruling class. If this ethos seems familiar, that is because it has preceded some of the darkest moments in human history” (Guardian)

– “Risk Management: Risk management starts with what Jeff Bezos calls the ‘regret minimization framework.’ Project yourself to age 80, or age 90. ‘Looking back on your life, you want to minimize the number of regrets you have,’ he says.” There aren’t many people who probably lay in their deathbed thinking: I wish had spent more time working for big company (Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc…). Alternatively, there’s likely more people who wish they had spent more time with their family. (Collaborative Fund)

– “It’s Time to Become a Time Realist: Time realists look at a task and break down the math of it … “Take a pause before committing to anything. Don’t automatically say yes, no matter who is asking. (NYT)

– “My Great-Grandfather the Bundist: the Bund was a sometimes-clandestine political party whose tenets were humane, socialist, secular, and defiantly Jewish. Bundists fought the Tsar, battled pogroms, educated shtetls, and ultimately helped lead the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Though the Bund was largely obliterated by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the group’s opposition to Zionism better explains their absence from current consciousness. Though the Bund celebrated Jews as a nation, they irreconcilably opposed the establishment of Israel as a separate Jewish homeland in Palestine. The diaspora was home, the Bund argued.” Fascinating. The Bund remind me of the Yazidis. My time in Iraq made me sympathize with the Yazidis. A small ethnic group that is so easy for the world to forget. It’s great to see Nadia Murad win the Nobel Prize. (NY Books & Vox)

“I can’t afford to hate anyone. I don’t have that kind of time.” – Akira Kurosawa

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