The First Arctic Blue Ocean Event: What Computer Simulations and Statistical Trend Analysis Tells Us

Paul Beckwith

Apr 6, 2020

In this video and the next, I continue my examination of Arctic sea ice data which gives us a clear picture of its present state and clearly shows the relentless downward trends in extent, thickness, and volume that allows each of us to draw our own conclusions about when it will vanish in a Blue Ocean Event (BOE). It is just a matter of time before the ice vanishes, but how much time are we talking about? I give my own educated opinion (guess), and draw on some recent peer-reviewed scientific papers that attempt narrow down the timing of the first BOE, from both computer modelling simulations and statistical trend analysis.

Wall Street Wins, Again: Bailouts in the Time of Coronavirus | Common Dreams Views

 

Central banks remain the dealers of choice for addicted big corporations, private banks, and markets. In other words, given congressional (and Trumpian) sponsored bailouts and practically unlimited access to money from the Fed, Wall Street will, in the end, be fine. (Photo: Phillipp/cc/flickr)

To say that these are unprecedented times would be the understatement of the century. Even as the United States became the latest target of Hurricane COVID-19, in “hot spots” around the globe a continuing frenzy of health concerns represented yet another drop down the economic rabbit hole.

Stay-at-home orders have engulfed the planet, encompassing a majority of Americans, all of India, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe. A second round of cases may be starting to surface in

China. Meanwhile, small- and medium-sized businesses, not to speak of giant corporate entities, are already facing severe financial pain.

I was in New York City on 9/11 and for the weeks that followed. At first, there was a sense of overriding panic about the possibility of more attacks, while the air was still thick with smoke. A startling number of lives were lost and we all did feel that we had indeed been changed forever.

Nonetheless, the shock was momentary. Small businesses, even in the neighborhood of the Twin Towers, reopened quickly enough while, in the midst of psychic chaos, President George W. Bush urged Americans to continue to fly, shop, and even go to Disney World.

Think of the coronavirus, then, as a different kind of 9/11. After all, the airlines are all but grounded, restaurants and so many other shops closed, Disney World shut tight, and the death toll is already well past that of 9/11 and multiplying fast. The concept of “social distancing” has become omnipresent, while hospitals are overwhelmed and medical professionals stretched thin. Pandemic containment efforts have put the global economy on hold. This time, we will be changed forever.

Figures on job cuts and business closures could soon eclipse those from the aftermath of the financial collapse of 2008. The U.S. jobless rate could hit 30% in the second quarter of 2020, according to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard, which would mean that we’re talking levels of

unemployment not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Many small companies will be unable to reopen. Others could default on their debts and enter bankruptcy.

…(read more)

‘A Really Chilling Moment’: Trump Refuses to Allow Dr. Fauci to Answer Question on Dangers of Hydroxychloroquine | Common Dreams News

 

During a press briefing Sunday night purportedly aimed at providing the U.S. public with crucial information amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump refused to allow the nation’s top infectious disease expert to answer a reporter’s question about the efficacy of an anti-malaria drug that the president has recklessly touted as a possible COVID-19 treatment despite warnings from medical professionals.

Before Dr. Anthony Fauci could respond to the question about hydroxychloroquine, Trump—who was standing back and off to the side of the podium—complained that Fauci had already spoken about the drug “15 times.”

“You don’t have to ask the question again,” said Trump, stepping forward and moving closer to Fauci as another reporter began asking a separate question.

“This is a really chilling moment from a science standpoint, with Trump having just pushed an unproven COVID treatment and Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the U.S., getting muzzled on live TV,” tweeted Andrew Freedman, a climate reporter for the Washington Post. “Was clear Trump didn’t want to be contradicted.”

Dr. Lucky Tran, a biologist, said Trump’s interruption was “unacceptable.”

“Dr. Fauci, one of the world’s top infectious disease scientists, was just censored live at a White House press conference,” tweeted Tran.

The exchange came just hours after Fauci, in an appearance on CBS‘ “Face the Nation” Sunday morning, said that “in terms of science, I don’t think we could definitively say [hydroxychloroquine] works.”

“The data are really just at best suggestive,” said Fauci. “There have been cases that show there may be an effect and there are others to show there’s no effect.”

During a press briefing Saturday evening, Trump said “I really think they should they should take it,” referring to coronavirus patients and hydroxychloroquine. Three people in Nigeria overdosed on the drug last month after the president said, without evidence, that the drug may be able to combat the novel coronavirus.

In a joint statement on March 25, the American Medical Association, American Pharmacists Association, and American Society of Health-System Pharmacists said “there is no incontrovertible evidence to support off-label use of medications for COVID-19.”

“What do I know?” Trump asked during the press briefing Sunday night. “I’m not a doctor.”

…(read more).

WHO slams ‘racist’ calls for Africa to be vaccine testing ground

FRANCE 24 English

Apr 6, 2020

In tonight’s edition: The World Health Organization chief angrily slammed recent comments made by scientists suggesting a vaccine for the new coronavirus should be tested in Africa as “racist” and a hangover from the “colonial mentality”. Ivory Coast police on Monday clashed with protesters who had begun dismantling a half-builtcoronavirus testing centre, afraid that people using the facility would spread the epidemic through their district. And finally children in Burkina Faso are being encouraged to watch TV as school lessons are broadcast on the small screen.

Minimizing Fear

Commonwealth Club

Apr 6, 2020

Monday Night Philosophy understands that we have explained life to ourselves in ways that have scared us silly for so long that it has become an engrained habit. Ironically, it’s a habit we rather enjoy because fear often keeps us more alert than we’d otherwise be. But there are other ways to remain intellectually alert to the nuances of life that are not so debilitating. So tonight, join us via live stream, and we’ll sort through those fears with the goal of understanding how unlikely it is that these fears are justified, eliminating those that are highly irrational and minimizing those that are merely ridiculous.

Speakers:
George Hammond
Author, Rational Idealism and Conversations with Socrates

Massachusetts governor gives coronavirus update — April 6, 2020

PBS NewsHour

Streamed live 3 hours ago

UK PM Boris Johnson taken to intensive care after health worsens

FRANCE 24 English

Apr 6, 2020

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was moved to the intensive care unit of a London hospital after his coronavirus symptoms worsened Monday, just a day after he was admitted for what were said to be routine tests.

Tyranny comes home: How the ‘boomerang effect’ impacts civilian life in the U.S. | Abigail Blanco

Big Think

Apr 6, 2020

Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo
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Methods used in foreign intervention often resurface domestically, whether that’s in the form of skills or technology.

University of Tampa professor Abigail Blanco calls this the boomerang effect. It’s a consequence not often thought about when we discuss foreign intervention.

The three channels to consider when examining the boomerang effect include human capital in the form of skills, administrative dynamics, and physical capital in the form of tools and technology.

This video was made possible thanks to Big Think’s partnership with the Institute for Humane Studies. https://theihs.org/

ABIGAIL BLANCO:

Abigail Blanco is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Tampa. She is the co-author of Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism (2018, Stanford University Press). She is also an Affiliated Scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, an Affiliated Scholar with the Foundation for Economic Education and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.

Check Abigail Blanco’s latest book Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism at https://amzn.to/2QcEEAq

TRANSCRIPT:

ABIGAIL BLANCO: So what a lot of people don’t think about with respect to foreign intervention is the idea that the tools and processes that are developed as a part of foreign intervention can come to be used domestically. So people might not associate, for example, things like the use of drones domestically within the United States or unmanned aerial vehicles, torture in U.S. prisons, or things like the militarization of domestic police as consequences of foreign intervention. But these are the exact types of tools developed as a part of intervention abroad that then wind up being used back home. My coauthor, Chris Coyne, and I term this phenomenon the boomerang effect.

So the big question or what it is that we seek to do is to identify how it is that those tools, which were once exclusively used abroad come to be used back home. So we do this by looking at or identifying what we call the three channels of the boomerang effect. The first of these channels is what we call the human capital channel. You can think about human capital simply as the skill sets that an individual possesses or develops as part of their job. So students, for instance, are hopefully developing human capital as they go through their course of study. People, when they go and they take different jobs, are adding to their human capital. This is no different than when individuals are involved in the preparation for or execution of a foreign intervention. The critical piece is that once that intervention or that person’s part of the intervention is concluded those skills that they’ve developed don’t magically disappear. They stay with them.

And so those skills are then brought back with that person and integrated into their future endeavors whether those are in the public sector or in the private sector. The second channel that we identify is what we refer to as the administrative dynamics channel. So perhaps the easiest way to think about this is to think about the different organizational structures in which people have operated throughout their life. So people might be familiar with the administrative dynamics of education for instance. They know that overarching structure and how it works. Or if you go to work at a variety of different companies those have different administrative dynamics. The administrative dynamics that are often associated with foreign intervention so those that are highly bureaucratic, those that are very militaristic again become a part or people get used to operating within those dynamics and then are able to import those types of administrative structures into again a number of domestic institutions.

The last channel that we talk about as part of the boomerang effect is what’s referred to as the physical capital channel. So if human capital are the skills that a person develops, physical capital are just those actual physical like tools that people develop as a part of foreign intervention. So these might be things like surveillance techniques. They might also be things like unmanned aerial vehicles or particular types of weapons. So again when individuals are completed or they’re finished with their part of the foreign intervention they like to use or continue to use those tools that they’ve developed. And so we see an integration of the tools of foreign intervention into domestic operations.

New Great Depression looming? Americans buy up firearms

RT

Apr 6, 2020

More than 9,600 Americans have died in #COVID19 crisis. And there has been a brutal economic impact, with unemployment at its highest since the Great Depression.

Boris Johnson in ICU | Dominic Raab takes over as PM deputy

RT

Apr 6, 2020

Boris Johnson has been moved into intensive care after his Covid-19 worsened, a spokesperson for No. 10 Downing Street said on Monday, a day after the PM was hospitalized for further tests. “Over the course of this afternoon, the condition of the Prime Minister has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital,” the spokesman said. “The PM remains conscious at this time.”

Johnson has asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to stand in for him where necessary.

MORE: https://on.rt.com/aebq