Said Doc....

"It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”

-- John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

Spike in Tube Ties and Vasectomies

In the US. From "Changes in Permanent Contraception Procedures Among Young Adults Following the Dobbs Decision," JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), April 12, 2024: 

Conservatives in America want to outlaw abortion, but they also want more babies being born. Go figure.

Recordbreaking Atmospheric & Ocean Heat is Unexplained

 From the NY Times:

Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS has an article in a recent issue of Nature about how scientists can't explain the recordbreaking temperatures seen in the last nine months (or so), and about why that's a problem. I don't think it's paywalled. He wrote that he doesn't think it's a decrease in aerosols (which cool the planet), as James Hansen has been speculating in recent months. Gavin writes:

Much of the world’s climate is driven by intricate, long-distance links — known as teleconnections — fuelled by sea and atmospheric currents. If their behaviour is in flux or markedly diverging from previous observations, we need to know about such changes in real time. We need answers for why 2023 turned out to be the warmest year in possibly the past 100,000 years. And we need them quickly.

I don't understand how teleconnections could cause an increase in global heat. Regional, sure. But the entire planet? How does that work?

The Solar Eclipse From Here #eclipse2024

We were slated to get a peak solar eclipse of 22.4% blockage. Instead we got this:

The nice thing about the 2017 total eclipse here in Oregon was that it happened in August, and in summer here pretty much every day has perfectly blue skies.

Hope the weather is better elsewhere in the path of totality (and outside it, too).

Player's Respect for Injured Referee

There was a scary but touching moment in yesterday's Pittsburgh Penguins vs Tampa Bay Lightning hockey game. A referee and a Tamba Bay player collided head-on and blind, and both went down on the ice. The player, Haydn Fleury, stayed down for a while but got up and with assistance skated to the locker room entrance, holding a bloody towel. But the referee, Steve Kozari, stayed down and needed to be taken off on a backboard and stretcher.

The moment was also touching, because as he was being wheeled off the ice, the arena was silent and all players from both benches came onto the ice to look on and give him their respect. I've never seen such a thing in any sport, but I don't know a lot about hockey culture so perhaps this is a standard response. The only thing I can compare it to is lacrosse, where all the players on the field take a knee when a player from either side is down. At first I thought this let them take a rest, but my nephew, an all-conference defenseman, told me they do it out of respect.

The players come on the ice at about the 2:45 mark. Kozari is expected to make a full recovery.

Penguins won, 5-4, and are on an amazing comeback in their attempt to make the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Countries That Have Uncoupled CO2 Emissions and Economic Growth

They used to say this couldn't be done.

Though I would like to see the same numbers if you count production and service these countries have outsourced to other, less wealthy, more polluted countries, both in terms of CO2 emissions and economic productivity.

 

Things Are Listening

I just asked Siri (my iPhone) "when was Memorial Day in 1996?"

She gave one of these "here are some options, check it out" useless responses so I quickly typed into Google on my PC's browser "Memorial Day" and before I got any farther the first autofill it gave me was "1996."

Is that a coincidence? Of all the years before now it went to 1996? I don't think "Memorial Day 1996" could have been in my browser's history. But I've been writing about some things that went on around then so maybe it was. If not, it seems weird and uncanny and I don't like it, even if I know it was all done without any human intervention and no actual human behind the curtain cares what I was searching for.

POP cp When I Was Born

Just calculated that, when I was born, US population was only 54% of what it is today. 

World population was 38% of today's.

Not really sure why, but these numbers make me kind of nostalgic and kind of sad.

The Greenhouse Effect Strikes Again

From an article about ice fishers in New England having to pull their bobhouses off the ice earlier than in the past:

“I had to help pull out a bob-house out that fell in three years ago,” said Cutter, adding that a friend had built that house with a glass roof, which ended up turning it into a heating greenhouse that melted a hole in the ice beneath it.

BREAKING: Michael Mann Wins Defamation Suit, Awarded Over $1 million

$1 in compensatory damages from Steyn, $1 M in punitive damages.

$1 in compensatory damages from Simberg, $1 K in punitive damages.

NY Times: 

Michael Mann, a Leading Climate Scientist, Wins His Defamation Suit: The researcher had sued two writers and their publishers for libel and slander over comments about his work. The jury found “spite” and “deliberate intent to harm.”

“The six-person jury announced its unanimous verdict after a four-week trial in District of Columbia Superior Court and one full day of deliberation. They found both Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn guilty of defaming Dr. Mann with multiple false statements and awarded the scientist $1 in compensatory damages from each writer.

“The jury also found the writers had made their statements with “maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm,” and levied punitive damages of $1,000 against Mr. Simberg and $1 million against Mr. Steyn in order to deter others from doing the same….

“In 2021, Judge Irving, along with another D.C. Superior Court judge, decided that the Competitive Enterprise Institute and National Review could not be held liable. The publishers did not meet the bar of “actual malice” imposed on public figures suing for defamation, the judges ruled, meaning employees of the two organizations did not publish Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn’s posts knowing them to be false, nor did they have “reckless disregard” for whether the posts were false.

“Dr. Mann’s attorneys have indicated that they will appeal this previous decision.”