Democrats appear to be limping their way toward passing a slimmed down version of the President’s agenda. I don’t think we should be overly distressed that the final number is around $2 trillion as opposed to $3.5 trillion. You never get everything you want. And we can’t run from the reality that Democrats control Congress by the most tenuous of margins – in fact, no margin at all in the Senate. But Democrats should be asking themselves why it is that over the last three to four months the President’s public approval has fallen roughly ten points. In a highly partisan and polarized age that is simply a massive drop.
I haven’t been reading all of the articles now coming out of the so-called “Facebook Papers”. But this article from the Post captures some important issues, ones that aren’t tied necessarily to the specific revelations getting the most attention but a general picture. There are two big focuses to the piece. The first is that for a company of its scale Facebook still has an extremely top-down management structure. Basically Zuckerberg is deep in the details and makes all the big decisions. The second is that he has repeatedly shot down internal ‘harm reduction’ proposals because they threaten core engagement metrics.
I noted a few weeks back that these tradeoffs get to the heart of Facebook’s problem and the heart of what the site is. The harm is inherent to Facebook’s business model. When you find ways to reduce harm they’re almost always at the expense of engagement metrics the maximization of which are the goal of basically everything Facebook does. The comparison may be a loaded or contentious one. But it is a bit like the Tobacco companies. The product is the problem, not how it’s used or abused. It’s the product. That’s a challenging place for a company to be.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation.
Fall foliage season is a calendar highlight in states from Maine south to Georgia and west to the Rocky Mountains. It’s especially important in the Northeast, where fall colors attract an estimated US$8 billion in tourism revenues to New England every year.
As a forestry scientist, I’m often asked how climate change is affecting fall foliage displays. What’s clearest so far is that color changes are occurring later in the season. And the persistence of very warm, wet weather in 2021 is reducing color displays in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. But climate change isn’t the only factor at work, and in some areas, human decisions about forest management are the biggest influences.
Longer growing seasons
Climate change is clearly making the Northeast warmer and wetter. Since 1980, average temperatures in the Northeast have increased by 0.66 degrees Fahrenheit (0.37 Celsius), and average annual precipitation has increased by 3.4 inches (8.6 centimeters) – about 8%. This increase in precipitation fuels tree growth and tends to offset stress on the trees from rising temperatures. In the West, which is becoming both warmer and drier, climate change is having greater physiological effects on trees.
My research in tree physiology and dendrochronology – dating and interpreting past events based on trees’ growth rings – shows that in general, trees in the eastern U.S. have fared quite well in a changing climate. That’s not surprising given the subtle variations in climate across much of the eastern U.S. Temperature often limits trees’ growth in cool and cold regions, so the trees usually benefit from slight warming.
In addition, carbon dioxide – the dominant greenhouse gas warming Earth’s climate – is also the molecule that fuels photosynthesis in plants. As carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere increase, plants carry out more photosynthesis and grow more.
More carbon dioxide is not automatically good for the planet – an idea often referred to as “global greening.” There are natural limits to how much photosynthesis plants can carry out. Plants need water and nutrients to grow, and supplies of these inputs are limited. And as carbon dioxide concentrations rise, plants’ ability to use it decreases – an effect known as carbon dioxide saturation.
For now, however, climate change has extended the growing season for trees in the Northeast by about 10-14 days. In my tree ring research, we routinely see trees putting on much more diameter growth now than in the past.
This effect is particularly evident in young trees, but we see it in old trees as well. That’s remarkable because old trees’ growth should be slowing down, not speeding up. Scientists in western states have even noted this acceleration in bristlecone pines that are over 4,000 years old – the oldest trees in the world.
Fall colors emerge when the growing season ends and trees stop photosynthesizing. The trees stop producing chlorophyll, the green pigment in their leaves, which absorbs energy from sunlight. This allows carotenoid (orange) and xanthophyll (yellow) pigments in the leaves to emerge. The leaves also produce a third pigment, anthocyanin, which creates red colors. A longer growing season may mean that fall colors emerge later – and it can also make those colors duller.
A changing mix of trees
Climate isn’t the only thing that affects fall colors. The types of tree species in a forest are an even bigger factor, and forest composition in the eastern U.S. has changed dramatically over the past century.
Notably, eastern forests today have more species such as red maple, black birch, tulip poplar and blackgum than they did in the early 20th century. These trees are shade-tolerant and typically grow in conditions that are neither extremely wet nor extremely dry. They also produce intense red and yellow displays in the fall.
This shift began in the 1930s, when federal agencies adopted policies that called for suppressing all wildfires quickly rather than letting some burn. At that time, much of the eastern U.S. was dominated by fire-adapted oak, pine and hickory. Without fires recurring once or twice a decade, these species fail to regenerate and ultimately decline, allowing more shade-tolerant, fire-sensitive trees like red maple to invade.
There is evidence that some tree species in the eastern U.S. are migrating to the north and west because of warming, increasing precipitation and fire suppression. This trend could affect fall colors as regions gain or lose particular species. In particular, studies indicate that the range of sugar maples – one of the best color-producing trees – is shifting northward into Canada. https://www.youtube.com/embed/4YAIq-Whttg?wmode=transparent&start=0 Intensive logging and forest clearance across the eastern U.S. through the mid-1800s altered forests’ mix of tree species.
Forests under pressure
So far it’s clear that warming has caused a delay in peak colors for much of the East, ranging from a few days in Pennsylvania to as much as two weeks in New England. It’s not yet known whether this delay is making fall colors less intense or shorter-lasting.
But I’ve observed over the past 35 years that when very warm and wet weather extends into mid- and late October, leaves typically go from green to either dull colors or directly to brown, particularly if there is a sudden frost. This year there are few intense red leaves, which suggests that warmth has interfered with anthocyanin production. Some classic red producers, such as red maple and scarlet oak, are producing yellow leaves.
Other factors could also stress eastern forests. Climate scientists project that global warming will make tropical storms and hurricanes more intense and destructive, with higher rainfall rates. These storms could knock down trees, blow leaves off those left standing and reduce fall coloration.
Maple leaves infected with a fungal pathogen that can lead to premature leaf loss. UMass Amherst, CC BY-ND
Forests shade the earth and absorb carbon dioxide. I am proud to see an increasing number of foresters getting involved in ecological forestry, an approach that focuses on ecosystem services that forests provide, such as storing carbon, filtering water and sheltering wildlife.
Foresters can help to slow climate change by revegetating open land, increasing forests’ biodiversity and using highly adaptable tree species that are long-lived, produce many seeds and migrate over time. Shaping eastern forests to thrive in a changing climate can help preserve their benefits – including fall color displays – well into the future.
The House Jan. 6 select committee has delayed its request to President Joe Biden’s team for about 50 pages worth of Trump-era White House documents that the National Archivist has already approved for the panel to obtain.
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.
Actually Yes I Did Try To Do An Election Steal
Former Trump legal adviser John Eastman told an undercover progressive activist on camera that he stood by his blueprint on how Mike Pence could subvert the 2020 election for Trump – despite insisting as recently as last week to the National Review that he totally didn’t believe those ideas could work.
Eastman told the activist that there was “no question” that his legal reasoning was solid.
Eastman also said that the reason why Pence ultimately didn’t go along with the lawyer’s plot was because the then-vice president was “establishment guy at the end of the day.”
EXCLUSIVE: Author of Jan 6 coup memo John Eastman told us Mike Pence didn't take his solid legal advice & overturn the election bc Pence is "an establishment guy"
(He previously told @NRO the memo was not “viable” and would have been “crazy” to pursue.)
So much for Eastman’s backtracking last week, when hetold the National Review that the memo’s main argument that Pence is the ultimate arbiter of certifying the Electoral College votes “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” and that the idea that House Republicans, upon theoretically being given the power to do so by Pence, could replace Biden electoral votes with Trump votes was “crazy.”
Jan. 6 Panel Plans To Subpoena Eastman
The House Jan. 6 select committee will subpoena the attorney, committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said yesterday.
Eastman told the Washington Post that the committee had previously reached out to him, and that he had “returned” their call and left a voicemail.
Eastman wouldn’t say on Tuesday whether he planned on cooperating with the panel.
Several Trump Aides Already Talking To Jan. 6 Panel
At least five people who worked at the Trump White House have voluntarily spoken to the committee, according to CNN.
Former top Homeland Security officials Ken Cuccinelli and Chad Wolf have also been contacted by the committee, CNN reported. They reportedly have not been subpoenaed, however.
Lawyers working in Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s (R) office made fun of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s (R) Supreme Court lawsuit that attempted to throw the 2020 election to Trump, according to internal emails obtained by the Tampa Bay Times – right before Moody signed onto the suit herself.
One of the attorneys called the lawsuit “batshit insane” and suggested that Paxton, who had been indicted for securities fraud, was only doing it to woo Trump into pardoning him.
Another attorney said Paxton’s argument for getting the court involved in a political dispute was “weird.”
It’s unclear if Moody knew that her team apparently thought the suit was a joke. The attorney general’s spokesperson told the Tampa Bay Times that the emails were just a “water cooler conversation by a few employees.”
Birx: Trump Could’ve Prevented 100K+ COVID Deaths
Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, told the House’s subcommittee on COVID-19 during a hearing earlier this month that Trump and his team were “distracted” by the 2020 elections and thus failed to take steps that could’ve saved more than a hundred thousand lives.
The Trump administration “probably could have decreased fatalities into the 30-percent-less to 40-percent-less range” if it had made serious efforts to mitigate the spread, Birx said in newly released excerpts of the transcripts of her testimony.
Birx also took a shot at Scott Atlas, Trump’s favorite pandemic adviser who kept pushing the “herd immunity” strategy. She told the committee that she would refuse to attend the same meetings as Atlas in order to “create a line in the sand.”
Facebook Actively Tried To Get You Pissed Off
The social media giant secretly created an algorithm that would weigh “angry” emoji reactions to posts five, then later 1.5, times more than “likes” in order to get more users to engage on the website, according to internal documents reported by the Washington Post.
Facebook finally cut the weight to zero last September after it became obvious the algorithm was amplifying toxic misinformation that was often weaponized by politicians, according to the documents.
GOPer Doesn’t Know What Pre-K Is For
Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) took to the House floor to argue yesterday that kids don’t need pre-K because “many stay-at-home parents” exist, and even if they don’t, “a lot of times kids stay with their grandparents or other relatives.”
Rep. Grothman argues that Pre-K isn’t needed because there are stay at home parents pic.twitter.com/S60XgkXzdV
Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) went off on an unhinged rant against the House’s bill to reauthorize the Family Violence and Prevention Services program yesterday, during which he accused Democrats of attacking “the very bedrock of our country, the moral principles and the traditional family that hold our families and communities together.”
Then Good argued that “nearly everything that plagues our society” can be attributed to “a failure to follow God’s laws for morality and his rules and definition of marriage and family.”
By the way, Good’s district director stood outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 with other Trump supporters as the insurrectionists broke into the building that day.
Today, both the House and Senate Democratic caucuses have their big meetings. As we’ve seen in recent weeks, these meetings can spur significant forward motion. We’ll be watching what comes out of them this week even more closely than usual — negotiations over the handful of unresolved issues in the reconciliation package have shrunk to, for the most part, include only leadership and the obstinate few (mainly Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema).
There are deadlines coming up at the end of the week that will make Democrats’ lives harder if reconciliation is still dragging by then. The October 31 expiration of the highway funding extension will set up another pressure point to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, like we saw at the end of September. And the White House really wants all of this finished up in time for President Joe Biden’s sojourn to Glasgow for the UN Climate Summit, which begins Nov. 1.
One of the many soft deadlines Democrats are facing as they trudge forward with their reconciliation package is the looming UN Climate Change summit in Glasgow. Last year’s Conference of Parties was postponed because of the pandemic, and, with the world now two years deeper into its worsening crisis, this year’s gathering is being heralded as the most important since the Paris Agreement was hammered out in 2015.
All that build-up comes as the U.S. Senate struggles to deliver the policies that would fulfill the President’s climate agenda.
We hear endlessly about the broken ‘supply chains’ that are causing product shortages and rising prices. Here is a pretty good overarching description of what exactly that means: the mix of radically changed consumer behaviors along with various knock-on effects from factory closures, retoolings and more that happened in the early months of the pandemic. I recommend it because it gives a good sense of just how intractable the issue is at least in the short term and how the different factors interact with each other.
These are rough days for Facebook. You don’t need me to tell you that. Here’s another article about how the Facebook algorithm was optimized to drive more provocative and emotion-laden content. Basically, it was refined to put stuff in front of you that makes you angry. When I read these articles I am reminded that most people have not really internalized how the social networks work. Even when people understand in some sense – and often even in detail – how the algorithms work they still tend to see these platforms as modern, digital versions of the town square. There have always been people saying nonsensical things, lying, unknowingly peddling inaccurate information. And our whole civic order is based on a deep skepticism about any authority’s ability to determine what’s true or accurate and what’s not. So really there’s nothing new under the sun, many people say.
