Read This First, Heuristics (1), Glossary (A-H), Mini Lessons (4)
1. A couple of words change media hype to journalism, 2. Prima facie climate, 3. Microbiome and climate change, 4. Energy transition model and the Anthropocene, 5. Robocalls for marketing kills, 6. Symbol of transformation, water on fire, 6.1. Mass grief events, 7. The process of planning to mitigate plans failing, 7.1. Stop talking to communicate, 8. Over simplification of political issues, 9. Quarantine fiction, <ADDED >1. Laughter is the best, >2. Additions to the consistent parademic behaviors list, >3. Killing from beyond the grave, >4. Western Interior Seaway and desert, >5. Game of climate allusions, >6. Aggressive metastasizing drug approval, >7. Bleaching medical misinformation, >8. Venezuela Graves and Fleeing, >9. ASF still spreading, >10. Ebola outbreak ¿#?. 190623-Vaccine. 190623-Polemic.
Other Topics: BioPolitics, Vaccine, Biosphere, Disaster, Humor, Climate Change, Anthropocene, Anthropogenic, Communication, One Health, Environmental Change, Human Factors, Social Dimensions, Narratives, Infectious Disease, Chernobyl, Game of Thrones, Autism, Bleach, Plastic, Cancer, Pauses, Placebo, Ocean Circulation, Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), Dunning-Kruger, Simpilism, Cities, Political Cartoon, Epidemic Disease Tracking, War of the Newts, Climate Fiction
-1. Replacing Plastic: Can Bacteria Help Us Break the Habit. Entrepreneurs are eager to find substitutes for plastic that naturally degrade. One option is a natural plastic made by microbes and then eaten by them, but the process is still in early days. Besides being an interesting technology to watch to see what develops, the few words in the underlined part significantly changes this from premature hype to a possibility to be aware of. Where Does Your Plastic Go. Global Investigation Reveals America's Dirty Secret, on the other hand is an example of hype with a few words, though what it reports is accurate (but not the whole story). 190616-5. There Is No Escaping the Reach of Microplastic Pollution. ¶ Words to Describe Distress Differ Across the World. What We Found in Kenya. People Growing Horns. – More Bad Science Reporting, No, Using a Cellphone Isn't Causing You to Grow a Horn.
-2. In Courtrooms, Climate Change Is No Longer Up for Debate. Increasingly, global warming science is going unchallenged in lawsuits seeking to curb fossil fuel use and hold companies to account. Unlike vaccine related law and DNA evidence that are still open to challenge in the legal system, climate science is now solid. This doesn’t mean less climate resistance but more circumvention of law with extra legal means, Trump’s New Climate Plan Involves a Guy Who Compared Pollution to ‘Jews Under Hitler’. <ADDED 190602-190224-1‡>8, 190602-Vaccine-3, Trump Administration Puts Offshore Drilling Plan On Hold After Setback In Court, Court Orders EPA to Reevaluate Obama Era Power Plant Wastewater Rule, The Real Reason the Trump Administration Is Constantly Losing in Court. However the administration doesn’t always lose, Supreme Court Overturns Precedent in Property Rights Case. A Sign of Things to Come. The Climate Change Lawsuit That Could Stop the U.S. Government from Supporting Fossil Fuels.
-3. Leaving Microbes out of Climate Change Conversation Has Major Consequences. Stop ignoring an 'unseen majority' in Earth's biodiversity and ecosystem when addressing climate change. Microbes can influence climate change and how they will be impacted by it. Microorganisms, which include bacteria and viruses, are the lifeforms that you don't see on the conservation websites. They support the existence of all higher lifeforms and are critically important in regulating climate change. However, they are rarely the focus of climate change studies and not considered in policy development. Don't Be Oblivious to Risks. Why Tiny Microbes May Be a Big Factor in How Climate Change Unfolds. The concept of ecoregions -7↓ is perhaps a better way to create health and environment jurisdictions that state and/or county political borders, [Map].
-4. New Study Shows How Environmental Disruptions Affected Ancient Societies. Over the past 10,000 years, humanity has experienced a number of foundational transitions, or bottlenecks. During these periods of transition, the advance or decline of societies was related to energy availability in the form of a benign climate and other factors. Though sort of accurate, this is not new. It‘s well known that increases in human population size is always associated with tapping into new energy sources and more consumption of energy, in fact it is a seminal archaeological theory that has continued to stand with decades to testing. The associate with climate is a context, but often time it was in marginal areas that were forced to tap into a new energy and they ended up becoming more powerful that those in more benign climates. The other factors were more important. Synchronous Environmental and Cultural Change in the Prehistory of the Northeastern United States, Synchronization of Energy Consumption by Human Societies Throughout the Holocene. Energy Transitions in History. Study Shows Synchronous Human Energy Consumption over the past 10,000 Years. The biggest leap in energy consumption has the last 200 years [Chart], which also corresponds to accelerating human population growth [Chart, Chart], (BTW that is an accelerating biocalamity), the exploitation of fossil fuels [Chart] (another biocalamity), the start of the Anthropocene as a geological formation. If we as a species are to avoid a rapid population crash we need to transition to different energy (renewable), [Chart]. Humans' Amazing Evolution from Hunter Gatherer to Safeway Shopper. World Will Get Half of its Power from Wind and Solar by 2050, Are There Potential Downsides of Going to 100 Percent Renewable Energy. One of the World’s Most Ancient Cities Experienced Surprisingly Modern Problems: founded over 9,000 years ago, it had infectious diseases, dental decay, overcrowding, violence, and environmental degradation exacerbated by climate change.
-5. Robocalls Are Overwhelming Hospitals and Patients, Threatening a New Kind of Health Crisis. doctors, administrators and other hospital staff struggled to contain a much different kind of epidemic one April morning last year: a wave of thousands of robocalls that spread like a virus from one phone line to the next, disrupting communications for hours. For most Americans, such robocalls represent an unavoidable digital age nuisance, resulting in seemingly constant interruptions targeting their phones. For hospitals, though, the spam calls amount to a literal life or death challenge, one that increasingly is threatening doctors and patients in a setting where every second can count.
-6. The Cuyahoga River Caught Fire at Least a Dozen Times, but No One Cared Until 1969 -2-. Despite being much smaller than previous fires, the river blaze in Cleveland 50 years ago became a symbol for the nascent environmental movement. “The river was a scary little thing. There was a general rule that if you fell in, God forbid, you would go immediately to the hospital”. The water was nearly always covered in oil slicks, and it bubbled like a deadly stew. Sometimes rats floated by, their corpses so bloated they were practically the size of dogs. It was disturbing, but it was also just one of the realities of the city. For more than a century, the Cuyahoga River had been prime real estate for various manufacturing companies. Everyone knew it was polluted, but pollution meant industry was thriving, the economy was booming, and everyone had jobs. To the surprise of no one who worked on the Cuyahoga, an oil slick on the river caught fire the morning of Sunday, June 22, 1969. The blaze only lasted about 30 minutes, extinguished by land based battalions and one of the city’s fireboats. The fire was so small and short lived that no one managed to get a single photo of it. What happened next was the real surprise. Time magazine published an article on the fire – with an accompanying photo from an incident in 1952. National Geographic featured the river in their December 1970 cover story “Our Ecological Crisis” (but managed to get the date of the fire wrong). Congress established the Environmental Protection Agency in January 1970, for the first time creating a federal bureau to oversee pollution regulations. In April 1970, 1000 students marched down to the river for the country’s first Earth Day. The nation, it seemed, had suddenly woken up to the realities of industrial pollution, and the Cuyahoga River was the symbol of calamity. But on the day of the fire, it had meant nothing to the masses. Only in the following months and years did the fire gain its strange significance. The fire took on mythic status, and errors of fact became unimportant to the story’s obvious meaning. Clearly this transformative fire must have been massive; the nation must have seen the flames and been appropriately moved. Neither is true. The Shocking River Fire That Fueled the Creation of the EPA. How a Burning River Helped Create the Clean Water Act. [Icon, Icon, Icon, 190616-6K] -190616-6↓.
-6.1. Hope and Mourning in the Anthropocene: Understanding Ecological Grief. Ecological Mourning Is a Unique Form of Grief. My guess is that ecological grieving is a hidden plague and that many people around the world are suffering feelings of loss that they have not articulated to others, perhaps not even to themselves. Many of us may feel paralyzed by panic over climate change and overwhelmed by the pace and scale of ecological losses. Mourning Nature does a great service by giving a name to this grief, setting us all within a community of others who mourn alongside us, and by guiding us to respond not with despair but with hope and courage. #Book Mourning Nature: Hope at the Heart of Ecological Loss and Grief [Cover]. We are facing unprecedented environmental challenges, including global climate change, large scale industrial development, rapidly increasing species extinction, ocean acidification, and deforestation – challenges that require new vocabularies and new ways to express grief, 190616-6G, and sorrow over the disappearance, degradation, and loss of nature. Seeking to redress the silence around ecologically based anxiety in academic and public domains, and to extend the concepts of sadness, anger, and loss, Mourning Nature creates a lexicon, 190616-6I, for the recognition and expression of emotions related to environmental degradation. Exploring the ways in which grief is experienced in numerous contexts, this groundbreaking collection draws on classical, philosophical, artistic, 190616-6J, and poetic elements to explain environmental melancholia. Understanding that it is not just how we mourn but what we mourn that defines us, the authors introduce new perspectives on conservation, sustainability, and our relationships with nature. Tackling Climate Change: How Lawmakers Are Facing Environmental Injustice. Will Climate Change Cause Humans to Go Extinct.
-7. The Not Flashy, Essential Part of Outbreak Preparedness and Response, 190623-Polemic-5.1. Characteristics of Effective Emergency Managers (Part 1) 1) Technical and substantive knowledge of key emergency concepts and theories. 2) Professionalism with training, education and ability to function well under stress. 3) Interpersonal skills of gaining (and maintaining) trust and relationships. 4) Management of balancing a program during a crisis are different skills. 5) Leadership with forward thinking and ability to translate into a common vision and objectives. 6) Legal and ethical behavior in the face of disruptions. 7) Problem solving with judgment for effective decision making. 8) Communications -7.1↓ with the public and internally with other organizations. 9) Cultural and physical environment awareness. (Part 2) which are redundant supporting competencies of the above: 1) Adapt to changing conditions. 2) Make agile decisions. 3) Function interoperably. 4) Mobilize resources 5) Scale programs, policies, and procedures. 6) Develop robust collaborative networks. 7). Build redundant emergency management systems. An Empirical Study on Approaches to Ambiguity in Emergency and Disaster Response Decision Making. Tolerance of Uncertainty: A Systematic Review of Health and Healthcare Related Outcomes. | This looks like a useful website, Metabiota Epidemic Tracker, tracks ongoing epidemics and structures epidemic data for analysis across events. Wonder if GIS layers of ecoregions (biomes) -3↑, anthromes and disease outbreaks would provide any interesting correlations. Ebola [Map] appears to happen in Tropical & subtropical dry forests that are next to large bodies of water [Map], in dense settlements next to populated forests [Map], and correlated with bat populations that may be the reservoir [Map]. There is also the correlation with violence [Map], which is likely a hindering parademic to containment and control. -180513-1.1>10↓.
-7.1. 9 Ways to Improve Your Presentation, know when to stop talking, -7↑. 1) The make sense pause, 2) Transition, 3) Dramatic, 4) Reflective, 5) For effect, 6) Spontaneity, 7) To relinquish control, 8) Sensory, 9) Emphasis. 190331-5.
-8. We Know a Lot less than We Think about the World – Which Explains the Allure of “Simplism”. From how a zip(per) works to Brexit, we often pretend we understand complex problems. But simplism has become a doctrine – and it is ruining our politics. Reality is annoying: at every level of examination, it raises more questions than answers. There are always details that don’t fit, exceptions to rules, consequences that can’t be predicted. That’s why humans, who famously cannot bear too much reality, have evolved a method of coping with all this complexity. We lie to ourselves about how much we understand. The Dunning-Kruger Effect and the Climate Debate, GMO Opposition 190120-8, antivax.
-9. In February 1961 a science fiction writer considered the problem that disease do not know borders, which are merely time and distance on the microscopic scale. Even parsecs are not insurmountable with the desires of humans to survive versus their logical fallacy that barriers (quarantine) provide safety from existential threats, making them unwilling to risk the costs of problem solving. Doctor -190616-6O↓. #Book Quarantine [Cover]. While we are on the topic of science fiction, one of the earliest CliFi 190421-1Quote, and a satirical take on colonialism and sea level rise is #Book The War with the Newts, Review -2- -3- [Cover].
-Quotes: People never regard anything that serves and benefits them as mysterious; only the things which damage or threaten them are mysterious. • Must Nature always be asked to straighten out the mess that man has made. • If only the Newts were fighting men, then perhaps something might be done; but men against men - that, my friend, can't be stopped. • The earth will probably sink and drown; but at least it will be the result of generally acknowledged political and economic ideas, at least it will be accomplished with the help of the science, industry, and public opinion, with the application of all human ingenuity. No cosmic catastrophy, nothing but state, official, economic, and other causes. Nothing can be done to prevent it. • It is worth nothing that their neologisms, pronounciations and simplified grammar was quickly adopted by ... people. • We regret the loss of human life. We have no wish to cause you unnecessary harm. We wish only that you evacuate those areas of coast which we will notify you of in advance. If you do as we say you will avoid anything regrettable. In future we will give you at least fourteen days notice of the places where we wish to extend our sea. Remain calm. We wish you no harm. We merely need more water, more coastline, more shallows in which to live. There are too many of us. Your coastlines are already too limited for our needs. For this reason we need to demolish your continents. We will convert them into bays and islands. In this way, the length of coastline can be increased five fold. We will construct new shallows. We cannot live in deep ocean. We will need your continents as materials to fill in the deep waters. We wish you no harm, but there are too many of us. You will be free to migrate inland. You will not be prevented from fleeing to the hills. The hills will be the last to be demolished. We are here because you wanted us. You have distributed us over the entire world. Now you have us. We wish that you collaborate with us ... in the demolition of your world. Thank you. • The newspapers, according to their political colour, urged punishment, eradication, colonisation or a crusade against the newts, a general strike, resignation of the government, the arrest of newt owners, the arrest of communist leaders and agitators and many other protective measures of this sort. People began frantically to stockpile food when rumours of the shores and ports being closed off began to spread, and the prices of goods of every sort soared; riots caused by rising prices broke out in the industrial cities; the stock exchange was closed for three days. • Today you still have the opportunity to sell the world while it is still its present size; when there is nothing left above water but the ruins of a few mountains no one will want to pay you a penny for it. – Karel Čapek, War with the Newts
<ADDED 190623>
-190616-3>1. [Cartoon, Cartoon, Foto, Cartoon, Cartoon]. Laughter is the Best Medicine. Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine. In Many Ways, That’s No Joke$. -190616-6G↓.
-190616-6>2. These are all interconnected as a system, not actually separate topics. [Diagram, Alternatives].
-A, F and I. May all be artefacts 190310-10 of a larger phenomena of questioning assumptions, paradigm shift.
-G Humor would also fall into the idea of taking a different perspective. -A, -190616-3↑, -F, -190519-6↓.
-C and D. Cooperation and Competition, altruism and self interest, stewardship and exploitation, may actually be a continuum rather than separate concepts.
-F. Mass grief, -6.1↑. THEPA-6.3 may be an example with people yearning to return to a non existent, idealized past. -C & D↑ and may likewise be different expression of grief, with the addition both are expressions of freeze, fight, flight. -G↑ also correlates with grief but I am still unsure of the relation, but I am certain it isn’t just gallows humor. -190616-3↑.
-O. Remote logical fallacy. Belief that because something is on the other side of a political border, is a “far” distance away, is something in the past or the future, that the remoteness means in will not directly AEIffect oneself. Logical fallacies, which are also rhetoric (language change) and magical thinking, are constantly observed in parademic, but this is the only one that is consistently noted. -9↑.
-190616-8>3. A parademic legal issue not considered before. What to do about estates of the deceased that harm health and environment. Dead People Leave Billions in Their Wills. How Long Do We Have to Listen to Them.
-190609-7>4. The Midwest's Farms Face an Intense, Crop Killing Future. [Cartoon, Cartoon]. Iowa Homes, Businesses Still Flooded after 100 Days. | 12 Photos Show the Extreme Drought Wrecking Havoc in Chennai, India, Where One of the Biggest Cities Is Almost out of Water. Climate Breakdown to Trigger Debate over Which Cities to Protect from Rising Sea Levels, we’re just not going to protect a lot of these places; 190616-1, Protecting US from Rising Sea Levels Will Cost $400 Billion over next 20 Years, Climate Change Is a Fourfold Tragedy$, 2100, Extreme Sea Level Rise [Gif, Gif]. Note that images of sea level rise are urban areas. This puts it on a human scale but misses the devastation that occurs in rural areas, wild areas, and intertidal water biomes. Has anyone asked what happens to the sea floor and earth mantle if there is an additional 20 meters adding tons of water on the surface pressing down, and millions of tons of ice missing from land surfaces and not bearing down on them. At the very least I would anticipate changes in seismic and volcanic activity, to include release of toxic gases, 190616-1‡, [Slide + Photo + Pascal’s Law = *A]. There are already explorations of the impact of more water that is warmer on ocean currents and how that impacts on climate, How Climate Change Could Jam The World’s Ocean Circulation 2016. In fact there may be changes to the whole water cycle, 190616-4.
-*A.
-190519-6>5. <ADDED 190616>5. ‘Chernobyl’ Provided the Climate Change Metaphor That ‘Game of Thrones’ Failed to Deliver. Despite the medieval fantasy setting, the premise of Game of Thrones felt oddly relatable; a divided nation, too busy infighting to acknowledge the icy armageddon steadily approaching from the North, the deadly invasion of weather shifting White Walkers. The characters are fighting their individual battles over power and status and wealth. These stuggles are so distracting them that they’re ignoring the threat of ‘winter is coming’, which has the potential to destroy all of them and to destroy their world”. Even when faced with concrete proof, some strategies were to simply ignore the problem and hope that it resolved itself. Maddenly, the strategy worked - the climate change metaphor shattered, quite literally, a well aimed blade instantly put an end to the Long Night. If the winter is coming denialsist had a Twitter account, they would surely be gloating that the fear mongering had all been for nothing - SAD. Much like the climate crisis we face today, Chernobyl’s conflict wasn’t really about facts; the terrible nuclear accident was right there for the world to see. But the scale of the problem was deliberately concealed, the well being of not only the citizens of the Soviet Union, but of Europe and beyond, completely disregarded in favor of maintaining the illusion of control. Disagree with the author that GOT was the only metaphor, there are a number of climate change fiction, to include Godzilla <ADDED 190616-190519-6>5. The author also assumes that only one metaphor is needed to sway public opinion. It takes hundreds of stories, article, studies, competing narratives, artistic renderings, humor*, civil protests, et cetera, over a long period of time, to sway a public. In fact one knows a message is persuasive if others pick it up and share the same message. Could a Chernobyl Level Nuclear Disaster Happen in the US Video. *Political Cartoonists Are out of Touch – It’s Time to Make Way for Memes. Disagree. Memes are simply the joining of words to give meaning to a picture, sort of like defacing and vandalism of posters. Valuable as another form of communicating but hardly a replacement for the political cartoon. -190616-3↑.
-190203-3>6. <ADDED 190609>6. Accelerated Approval for Cancer Drugs: The FDA Failing to Protect Patients. Biden Wants to Cure Cancer. Now Trump Does, Too. But Cancer, like Health Care, Is Complicated, Curing Cancer: Easy Politics, Difficult Science. [Cartoon].
-190526-4>7. Fake Science Led a Mom to Feed Bleach to Her Autistic Sons — and Police Did Nothing to Stop Her. Fake Autism Treatments Show the Lengths Parents Will Go to Cure Their Kids. Generation Rescue: Rebranding in Service of Autism Grift. | Autism's Trendiest Alternative Treatment Has No Plausible Explanation, chiropractors claim they can correct autism by manipulating the spine.
-181209-4>8. <ADDED 190616>7. Venezuela’s Misery Doesn’t Even Spare the Dead in Maracaibo. Venezuelans Take Risky Voyage to Curaçao to Flee Crisis. 190623-Polemic-3.1.
-181118-VCP-China>9. <ADDED 190616>. Asian Nations Scramble to Contain Pig Disease Outbreaks. Laos Confirms First Cases of African Swine Fever. Millions of Pigs Culled as Swine Fever Spreads Through Asia. China Reports New African Swine Fever Outbreaks in Guizhou Province, and yet is a political issue trumping food needs China Suspending Pork Imports from Third Canadian Firm as Dispute with Ottawa Deepens.
-180513-1.1>10. <ADDED 190616>9. Ebola in North Kivu: More Labour Trouble with Doctors. Last week mentioned that it was premature to equate a decline in cases as an indication the outbreak was ending, Ebola Case Counts Spike Again in DRC. Uganda No New Confirmed Cases of Ebola, Says Health Ministry; Kenya Ebola Scare Brings out the Worst in Kericho, Kenya Responded Fast to Ebola Scare, but Cross Border Risk Remains High. More than One Million IDPs Registered Throughout the Ituri According to Civil Society, DR Congo Exodus of 300,000 May Hamper Ebola Battle. Ebola Funds Won't Help Congo Until the Disease Spreads. Time Is Running out to Stop an Ebola Epidemic. Why Ebola Is Continuing to Spread in the Congo Video, social issues are as important as scientific advances in controlling disease outbreaks. Myths and Misinformation First Obstacle When Combating Ebola in DRC. Will 1 of These 4 Experimental Treatments Cure Ebola. Scrambling to Reset the Ebola Response. The Politics of PHEIC, for the third time since August, 2018 WHO decided not declared a PHEIC. The decision has been met mostly with surprise. The decision appears more political than technical and that is a mistake. How Misinformation Is Making It Almost Impossible to Contain the Ebola Outbreak in DRC. With More Deaths in a Younger Population, Measles Is Affecting the Democratic Republic of Congo Worse Than Ebola. -3, -7↑, 190623-Polemic-3.2. 190623-Vaccine-3.↑. 190623-BRET-5.
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