SUPERSPREADER EVENT NINE DAYS OF DRUNK BIKERS NO MASKS

Harleys everywhere, masks nowhere: Sturgis draws thousands

 NOT JUST HELLS ANGELS

AMERICAN BIKERS R A DEATH CULT

NOT JUST THEIR REFUSAL TO WEAR HELMETS

“Screw COVID,” read the design on one T-shirt being hawked. “I went to Sturgis.”

Stephen Groves, Associated Press , Friday, August 7, 2020

Photo: Stephen Groves, AP
Thousands of bikers rode through the streets for the opening day of the 80th annual Sturgis Motorcycle rally Friday, Aug. 7, 2020, in Sturgis, S.D.


STURGIS, S.D. (AP) — Thousands of bikers poured into the small South Dakota city of Sturgis on Friday as the 80th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally rumbled to life despite fears it could lead to a massive coronavirus outbreak.

The rally could become one of the largest public gatherings since the pandemic began, with organizers expecting 250,000 people from all over the country to make their way through Sturgis during the 10-day event. That would be roughly half the number of previous years, but local residents — and a few bikers — worry that the crowds could create a “super-spreader” event.

Many who rode their bikes into Sturgis on Friday expressed defiance at the rules and restrictions that have marked life in many locales during the pandemic. People rode from across the country to a state that offered a reprieve from coronavirus restrictions, as South Dakota has no special limits on indoor crowds, no mask mandates and a governor who is eager to welcome visitors and the money they bring.


“Screw COVID,” read the design on one T-shirt being hawked. “I went to Sturgis.”

Bikers rumbled past hundreds of tents filled with motorcycle gear, T-shirts and food. Harley Davidson motorcycles were everywhere but masks were almost nowhere to be seen, with an Associated Press reporter counting fewer than 10 in a crowd of thousands over a period of several hours.
For Stephen Sample, who rode his Harley from Arizona, the event was a break from the routine of the last several months, when he's been mostly homebound or wearing a mask when he went to work as a surveyor.

“I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to be cooped up all my life either,” he said.

Still, Sample, who is 66, feared what could happen if he caught COVID-19 at the rally. He said he was trying to avoid indoor bars and venues, where he felt the risk of infection was greater. But on the opening day of the rally, he said he ate breakfast at an indoor diner.

As Sample weighed the risks of navigating the crowds, the same thrill-seeking that attracted him to riding motorcycles seemed to win out.

“I think we’re all willing to take a chance,” he said.

Republican Gov. Kristi Noem has taken a largely hands-off approach to the pandemic, avoiding a mask mandate and preaching personal responsibility. She supported holding the Sturgis rally, pointing out that no virus outbreak was documented from the several thousand people who turned out to see President Donald Trump and fireworks at Mount Rushmore last month.

Daily virus cases have been trending upward in South Dakota, but the 7-day average is still only around 84, with fewer than two deaths per day.

The rally attracted crowds of retirees and people in age ranges considered to be at higher risk from the coronavirus. But for many who see the rally as an annual pilgrimage, the camaraderie and atmosphere couldn’t be missed.

“I fell in love with the rally. I love the sound of the bikes,” said Bill Sudkamp, who was making his 20th consecutive rally appearance.

He and his wife, who declined to give their ages but said they were at elevated risk for COVID-19, were among the handful of people seen wearing masks in downtown Sturgis, a community of about 7,000 that's roughly 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of Rapid City. They were also planning to avoid bars. Sudkamp felt it was inevitable that infections would spread in the packed bars and concert venues.

“It looked like South Dakota was plateauing mostly,” Sudkamp said. “It will be interesting to see what it looks like in two weeks.”

Marsha Schmid, who owns the Side Hack Saloon in Sturgis, was trying to keep her bar and restaurant from becoming a virus hot spot by spacing out indoor tables and offering plenty of hand sanitizer. She also scaled back the number of bands hired for the rally, hoping the crowds would stay thin but still spend the cash that keeps her business viable for the rest of the year.

She pointed out that many of her employees depend on the rally and the tips they can make.

“You’ve got people coming from all over the world,” she said. “I just hope they are being responsible and if they don’t feel good, they stay away.”

Several locals said they would be spend the rally hunkered down at home. Carol Fellner stocked up on groceries and planned to stay away from any gatherings. Her husband suffers from bouts of pneumonia and kidney problems, and COVID-19 would be a “death sentence” for him, she said.

Fellner felt that the risk of an outbreak would be felt long after the bikers leave. The city plans to mass test residents to try to detect and halt outbreaks, but the area’s largest hospital system is already burdened with the influx of tourists and bikers who inevitably need hospital care during this time.

Sample was aware his trip to the rally could end in the hospital, which seemed to weigh on him.

“This is a major experiment,” he said. “It could be a major mistake.”


‘Screw COVID’: 250,000 Bikers to Defy Common Sense for Nine Days at Sturgis Rally

‘I AIN’T SCARED’

As the coronavirus rages around the nation, a quarter of a million motorcyclists are descending on Sturgis, South Dakota, where money seems to have trumped sense.

Michael Daly
Special Correspondent
Updated Aug. 07, 2020

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty

Friday is the official start of the 80th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, where 250,000 people are expected to gather in the South Dakota town of that name for nine days of defying proven precautions against the spread of COVID-19.

“Nobody is social distancing and none of them are wearing masks,” local psychologist Michael Fellner told The Daily Beast. “None.”

Fellner is originally from Brooklyn in New York City, which was once the nation’s COVID-19 epicenter but has just reported three straight days without a single death from the virus. The transformation is almost certainly the result of the same precautions the bikers in Sturgis are ignoring.

The Sturgis Rally’s own official website has a “COVID tracker” tab that links to the South Dakota Health Department site, where offerings include a risk assessment for public gatherings.

“Highest risk: Large, in-person gatherings where it is difficult for individuals to remain spaced at least 6 feet apart and attendees travel from multiple areas,” it advises.

Only motorcycles are allowed into the center of tiny town of Hulett, WY which is overun by cyclists from the 61st annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, August 8, 2001, held in Sturgis, SD.
David McNew/Getty

As the rally’s Facebook page attests, the bikers come from across the country.

“Leaving from NH today. See ya soon!” posted Howard Saborn of New Hampshire.

“Coming for the 1st time on Saturday from Virginia,” Vickie Farmer announced.

“On our way now. Stopped in Missouri to sleep. Be there Thursday night,” Jesse Robison of Georgia posted.

“Be there Friday from San Angelo Tx.,” David Buckner said.

“On my way I ain’t scared of the media flue or as we call it round here election flue see ya soon sd,” J.F. Watson of Ohio said.

“Just call it a big protest !! And it be A-Ok!!” J. Toothman, also of Ohio, suggested.

Rod Florquest of Wyoming was among the thousands who had arrived early.

“You really have to look to see someone wearing a mask,” he reported, as though this was a good thing.

And, having come from seemingly everywhere with whatever virus they might happen to carry, they will all mingle and return home with any virus they happen to pick up. Some will have purchased one of the souvenir T-shirts that retired school counselor Linda Chaplin of Sturgis saw a street vendor selling. The front reads:

“Screw COVID-19

I came to Sturgis”

David McNew/Getty

That is far from what the 70-year-old Chaplin imagined when she initially learned of the pandemic.

“One of my first thoughts was, ‘Oh, we won’t have the rally this year,’” she told The Daily Beast.

She allows that she is “not a rally person,” having in the past hopped on a bicycle to negotiate the annual gridlock of Harleys. But she understands the economic importance of the event to the town, having in past years picked up some extra money sewing patches on jackets. She nonetheless did not expect her town to prize livelihoods over lives.

“I was rather aghast that our little town was still planning to go ahead with the rally,” she said.

Chaplin was among the citizens who addressed Mayor Mark Carstensen and the City Council at a June 10 hearing about the rally. Chaplin was not speaking to strangers. She used to change the mayor’s diapers when he was a toddler and childhood friend of her daughter.

“It is my deepest conviction that this is a huge, foolish mistake to make to host the rally this year," Chaplin said at the hearing. “The government of Sturgis needs to care most for its citizens.”

She offered a solution to the rally problem: “Have a bigger one next year.”

Other speakers included ICU nurse Linda Janovy, who said the regional medical facilities are not equipped to handle an outbreak.

“We have freedom, but we also have responsibility,” she said. “You are not going to make everybody happy. Your responsibility is to keep the public safe, as safe as you can.”

Then came Lynn Burke, a nurse at the local VA facility.

“What’s the price of human life?” she asked. “I hear a lot of people saying we’re going to lose money. What about the lives we’re going to lose?”

But several local business people spoke of how dependent they are on the revenue generated by the rally. And there were also folks such as a lifelong Sturgis resident named Bob Davis.

“Freedom, God, and Donald Trump,” he said.

The City Council had never considered whether or not to approve the rally because that had never been a question. There had only been the formality of approving the necessary road closures. The council did so again on June 15 even though a survey showed that 60 percent of Sturgis residents favored canceling this year's rally.

Sturgis officials sought to calm rally opponents by saying the city was seeking to reduce the turnout by curtailing the usual advertising. The official Sturgis website nonetheless listed various exciting events for anyone tempted to attend. There was this:

“JOIN US AUGUST 10TH, 2020 FOR THE 18TH ANNUAL MAYOR’S RIDE!! The City of Sturgis is excited to be hosting the 18th Annual Sturgis Mayor’s Ride during the 80th Annual City of Sturgis Motorcycle Rally! This ride has been a special part of the City of Sturgis Motorcycle Rally; not only for the amazing beauty of the Black Hills but that it brings people together from all over the word [world].”

America’s Biggest Biker Bar Burns Down
STURGIS LEGEND
M.L. Nestel


The ultimate justification offered by the mayor and other city officials was that the hordes of bikers were going to come anyway. They noted that Rod Woodruff, owner of the Buffalo Chip campground and concert venue, had announced his intention to be open for a 39th consecutive rally. The campground’s Facebook page had this posting with a message from a Hollywood actor:

“Hey there, Tom Berenger here. Have you heard? Well, my friend Rod Woodruff at the Buffalo Chip let me know that Sturgis 2020, the 80th anniversary, is ON! I don’t know about you, but I’m packin’ her up here. I hope to see ya out there. God bless America. And God bless the Buffalo Chip.”

The Buffalo Chip is the area’s biggest, a biker mecca. It is also just outside the city limits and an incorporated town unto itself. Sturgis could do nothing to regulate it.

“We’re just celebrating good old American freedom,” Woodruff told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.

He said he had unfolded the world’s largest American flag on July 3, so Trump could see it while flying over on the way to the event at nearby Mount Rushmore.


Even though the rally did not officially begin until Friday, bikes had started to arrive mid-week.

“What a release to hear the sound of Harley-Davidson engines in the campground again,” Woodruff said. “Just marvelous.”

He figured the turnout would at least equal—maybe exceed—last year’s. He has had several bands cancel on him in recent weeks as a result of COVID-19 concerns, but others had signed on. And he had additional events such as the Lingerie Fighting Championship.

The producer of the all-woman lingerie event, Sean Donnelly, assured The Daily Beast that the participants had been offered a chance to opt out of the rally. He added that they would be staying at a hotel 30 miles away in Rapid City and would be bused in two hours before the bouts, returning directly to the hotel afterwards. They would have custom-designed masks.

“Not a bad look,” Donnelly said. “Of course, they won’t be fighting in them.”

Few of the quarter-million people expected to attend the rally will likely be doing anything in masks. A shopkeeper friend of Chaplin’s made an attempt at humor on Facebook.

“Welcome rally goers, we’re dying to serve you,” the shopkeeper posted.

“Not funny,” Chaplin replied.

The 2003 Sturgis rally.
Scott Olson/Getty

Chaplin and her husband usually leave town during the rally and decided to depart two days early this year. She will return to a county where there have been only 82 COVID-19 cases, but there is no telling what the rally will leave behind besides piles of garbage by which the city estimates the number of attendees. She has a son and a daughter who teach in the Sturgis schools and grandchildren who attend them.

To add to her worries, Gov. Kristi Noem has declared that all South Dakota families should send their kids back to school without masks.

“We believe that when it comes to children, masks have the potential to do more harm than good,” Noem wrote in a fundraising email.

During an appearance on The Ingraham Angle on Fox News, Noem voiced support for the rally.

“We know we could have these events, get people information, let them protect their health, but still enjoy their way of life and enjoy events like the Sturgis motorcycle rally,” she said.

Michael Fellner and his wife, Carol, will wait out the rally in self-quarantine on their eight acres just outside of town.

“I think this year we are on the road to making a super-spreading event,” she said. “Not just for your state, not just for your region, but for your country. That’s my statement.”

Michael said of the rally, “The sad thing is that you find common sense is not as common as people believe.”

He suggested what deprived Sturgis of that sense.

“I hate to put it that way, but it’s the smell of money.”

Michael noted that one of his daughters and her husband are Broadway actors. The daughter had already taken a break to concentrate on being a mom. The son-in-law lost a starring role when Broadway shut down.

“He’s now selling insurance,” Michael said.

The consolation is that the virus has been brought under control in New York, as it likely could be everywhere if everyone followed the city’s example.

But COVID can just as easily spike anywhere that example is ignored. And the virus might be spreading across the country on motorcycles by the end of next week.

“This is going to be just the start of it,” Linda Chaplin said.

“Kanye West Indicates That His Spoiler Campaign is Indeed Designed to Hurt Biden”

AND IN REALITY HE HURT HIMSELF AND KIM KARDASHIAN'S RELATIONSHIP 

FOOL

Posted on August 7, 2020 7:30 am by Rick Hasen

Forbes:

Amid various reports that Republican and Trump-affiliated political operatives are trying to get Kanye West onto various state ballots for November’s presidential election, the billionaire rap superstar indicated, in an interview by text today, that he was in fact running to siphon votes from the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.

Asked about that directly, West said that rather than running for president, he was “walking,” quickly adding that he was “walking . . . to win.”

When it was pointed out that he actually can’t win in 2020—that he won’t be on enough ballots to yield 270 electoral votes, and that a write-in campaign isn’t feasible—and thus was serving as a spoiler, West replied: “I’m not going to argue with you. Jesus is King.”

West rebuffed various attempts to clarify who was driving his ballot access or strategy and whether it’s being coordinated by or with Republican-affiliated officials. He does, however, appear to have a continuing relationship with the Trump White House. West says that he’s “designing a school within the next month” and that “I’m meeting with Betsy DeVos about the post-Covid curriculum.” (The Secretary of Education’s press office hadn’t responded to a request for comment by the time we published.)

IT IS REPUBLICAN OPERATIVES PUTTING HIM ON THE BALLOT

Louisiana man serving life for $30 drug sale set to be freed

 Friday, August 7, 2020

ABBEVILLE, La. (AP) — Prosecutors in Louisiana have agreed to release a Black veteran serving a life sentence in prison without parole over a $30 marijuana sale, according to his defense attorneys.

The decision reached Thursday in Vermilion Parish will allow Derek Harris to be freed after nine years in state prison, news outlets reported.

Harris was convicted under Louisiana's habitual offender law after selling less than a gram of marijuana to an undercover agent in 2008, news outlets have reported. He had prior nonviolent convictions for theft and drug-related offenses, records showed.

At Harris’ initial sentencing in 2012, a judge suggested he receive a 15-year sentence instead of the 30-year maximum. But Vermilion Parish prosecutors invoked the habitual offender law, and the judge changed course, saying he had no choice but to sentence Harris to the maximum time, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate said.

The Louisiana Supreme Court granted Harris a new hearing last month, and his legal team argued that his first attorney failed him by not challenging the sentence.

The district attorney’s office agreed Thursday that Harris received ineffective assistance of counsel, according to Cormac Boyle, an attorney with the Promise of Justice Initiative who represented Harris. He was resentenced to 9 years, which he already served, according to a statement from the organization.

Boyle said Harris was set to be released and would move to be near family in Kentucky.

The attorney added that it was time to rethink how Louisiana uses its habitual offender law, arguing it disproportionately affects Black defendants.

“While in theory such a law may be fine, in practice it perpetuates and exposes some of the worst aspects of the criminal justice system," The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate quoted Boyle as saying.

Why Donald Trump’s Tiktok and WeChat ban sets a bad precedent for gaming 

ROBERT N. ADAMS Friday, August 07, 2020

RELATED GAMES:
FORTNITE


Donald Trump’s Tiktok ban has been elevated to the next level. He’s effectively given both Tiktok and WeChat 45 days to sell the U.S. branch of their companies to a company that doesn’t have any Chinese ownership. Tencent is mentioned by name in the ban — and that could soon spell trouble for the gaming world.

The White House letter regarding President Donald Trump’s Tiktok ban reads:

“[The] spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China (China) continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. To protect our Nation, I took action, in an Executive Order of August 6, 2020 […] to address the threat posed by one mobile application, TikTok. I have now taken further action to address a similar threat posed by another mobile application, WeChat.”

At the moment, this ban is targeting Chinese-owned social media applications like Tiktok and WeChat. However, it sets a precedent that a day could soon come that gaming companies will be faced with a similar decree.
Why is the President banning Tiktok and WeChat?



The reasons for the ban are outlined in the White House letter detailing President Trump’s new executive order.

“Like TikTok, WeChat automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users — threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information,” the letter reads.

This wasn’t the only concern, though. The White House letter notes that both companies censor content the Chinese government considers “politically sensitive” and that this information could be used to track former or current Chinese citizens living in the United States.

These actions are being undertaken through the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). In short, this law allows the President to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.” Such an emergency has been declared, allowing President Donald Trump’s Tiktok ban to go forward.
How President Donald Trump’s Tiktok and WeChat ban could affect gaming



A plain reading of the White House letter shows that it doesn’t involve gaming whatsoever. Instead, this ban is solely focused on two social media apps. It does, however, mention one company by name — a company that has been gaining influence in the gaming world through investments and outright purchases of various publishers, developers, and related services. That company is, of course, Tencent.

The Executive Order mentioned by the White House letter prohibits any financial transactions with Tencent by name. This doesn’t affect gaming just yet. The E.O. is specifically focused on dealings in relation to WeChat. Additionally, Los Angeles Times tech reporter Sam Dean further confirmed that the gaming world is safe for the moment.


Video game companies owned by Tencent will NOT be affected by this executive order!

White House official confirmed to the LA Times that the EO only blocks transactions related to WeChat

So Riot Games (League of Legends), Epic Games (Fortnite), et al are safe

(pending updates)

— Sam Dean

 

(@SamAugustDean) August 7, 2020



“Video game companies owned by Tencent will NOT be affected by this executive order!” Sam Dean said on Twitter. “White House official confirmed to the LA Times that the EO only blocks transactions related to WeChat[.] So Riot Games (League of Legends), Epic Games (Fortnite), et al are safe[.]”

However, Tencent has invested in many gaming companies over the last few years. This includes an investment in Platinum Games earlier this year, millions in funding to Discord in 2018, and ownership of six of the ten largest mobile games in the world. Lest we forget, Tencent owns a significant minority stake in Epic Games (the owner of the blockbuster battle royale Fortnite), Riot Games (owners of League of Legends and Valorant), Ubisoft, and stakes in countless other gaming companies.

The concerns raised by President Donald Trump’s Tiktok ban can just as easily apply to gaming. Without independent audits of source code, we truly cannot say what information (if any) the various games and digital storefronts we use are quietly collecting in the background. We also don’t know what information is ultimately being collected and/or monitored by the Chinese government.

Given these concerns and the broad powers given to the President via the IEEPA, he may well make a broader executive order targeting Tencent itself. Should that happen, any companies that have been invested in by Tencent would likely have the same 45-day period to divest from their partial Chinese ownership. Such a move would likely be quite costly, potentially delaying or canceling goodness knows how many upcoming games and other projects.

For now, President Trump’s concerns are firmly focused on social media. We don’t have to be worried just yet, but a stronger action against Tencent is a possibility that game publishers, developers, and storefronts may soon have to contend with.

Marie Tharp pioneered mapping the bottom of the ocean 6 decades ago – scientists are still learning about Earth’s last frontier

Tharp with an undersea map at her desk. Rolled sonar profiles of the ocean floor are on the shelf behind her. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the estate of Marie Tharp
Despite all the deep-sea expeditions and samples taken from the seabed over the past 100 years, humans still know very little about the ocean’s deepest reaches. And there are good reasons to learn more.

Most tsunamis start with earthquakes under or near the ocean floor. The seafloor provides habitat for fish, corals and complex communities of microbes, crustaceans and other organisms. Its topography controls currents that distribute heat, helping to regulate Earth’s climate.  

Hand-painted rendition of Heezen-Tharp 1977 ‘World ocean floor’ map, by Heinrich Berann. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, CC BY-ND

July 30 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Marie Tharp, a geologist and oceanographer who created maps that changed the way people imagine two-thirds of the world. Beginning in 1957, Tharp and her research partner, Bruce Heezen, began publishing the first comprehensive maps that showed the main features of the ocean bottom – mountains, valleys and trenches.

As a geoscientist, I believe Tharp should be as famous as Jane Goodall or Neil Armstrong. Here’s why.

Traversing the Atlantic

Well into the 1950s, many scientists assumed the seabed was featureless. Tharp showed that it contained rugged terrain, and that much of it was laid out in a systematic way.

Her images were critical to the development of plate tectonic theory – the idea that plates, or large sections of Earth’s crust, interact to generate the planet’s seismic and volcanic activity. Earlier researchers – particularly Alfred Wegener – noticed how well the coastlines of Africa and South America fit together and proposed the continents had once been connected; Tharp identified mountains and a rift valley in the center of the Atlantic Ocean where the two continents could have been ripped apart.

Tharp’s East-West profiles across the North Atlantic. The Floors of the Ocean, 1959

Thanks to Tharp’s hand-drawn renditions of the ocean floor, I can imagine a walk across the Atlantic Ocean bottom from New York City to Lisbon. The journey would take me out along the continental shelf. Then downward towards the Sohm Abyssal Plain. I’d need to detour around underwater mountains, called seamounts. Then I’d start a slow climb up the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a submerged north-south mountain range.

After ascending to 8,200 feet (2,500 meters) below sea level to the ridge’s peak, I would descend several hundred feet, cross the ridge’s central rift valley and proceed up over the ridge’s eastern edge. Then back down to the ocean floor, until I began trekking up the European continental slope to Lisbon. The total walk would be about 3,800 miles (6,000 kilometers) – almost twice the length of the Appalachian Trail.
Mapping the unseen

Born in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Tharp studied English and music in college. But then in 1943 she enrolled in a University of Michigan master’s degree program designed to train women to be petroleum geologists during World War II. “Girls were needed to fill the jobs left open because the guys were off fighting,” Tharp later recalled.

After working for an oil company in Oklahoma, Tharp sought a geology job at Columbia University in 1948. Women couldn’t go on research ships, but Tharp could draft, and was hired to assist male graduate students.

Tharp worked with Bruce Heezen, a grad student who gave her seafloor profiles to draft. These are long paper rolls that show the depth of the seafloor along a linear path, measured from a ship using sonar. 

An illustration of Marie Tharp’s mapping process. (a) shows the position of two ship tracks (A, B) moving across the surface. (b) plots depth recordings as profiles, exaggerating their height to make features easier to visualize. (c) sketches features shown on the profiles. The Floors of the Ocean, 1959, Fig. 1

Starting with a large blank sheet of paper, Tharp marked lines of latitude and longitude. Then she’d carefully mark where the ship had traveled. Next she’d read the depth at each location off the sonar profile, mark it on the ship’s track and create her own condensed profile, showing the depth to the ocean floor versus the distance the ship had traveled.

One of her important innovations was creating sketches depicting what the seafloor would look like. These views made it easier to visualize the ocean floor’s topography and create a physiographic map.

Tharp’s careful plotting of six east-to-west profiles across the North Atlantic revealed something no one had ever described before: a cleft in the center of the ocean, miles wide and hundreds of feet deep. Tharp suggested that it was a rift valley – a type of long trough that was known to exist on land.

Heezen called this idea “girl talk” and told Tharp to recalculate and redraft. When she did, the rift valley was still there.

Another research assistant was plotting locations of earthquake epicenters on a map of the same size and scale. Comparing the two maps, Heezen and Tharp realized that the earthquake epicenters fell inside the rift valley. This discovery was critical to the development of plate tectonic theory: It suggested that movement was occurring in the rift valley, and that the continents might actually be drifting apart.

This insight was revolutionary. When Heezen, as a newly-minted Ph.D., gave a talk at Princeton in 1957 and showed the rift valley and epicenters, geology department chair Harry Hess replied, “You have shaken the foundations of geology.”
Exploring mid-ocean ridges provides vast amounts of information about life on Earth.
Tectonic resistance

In 1959 the Geological Society of America published “The Floors of the Oceans: I. The North Atlantic” by Heezen, Tharp and “Doc” Ewing, director of the Lamont Observatory, where they worked. It contained Tharp’s ocean profiles, ideas and access to Tharp’s physiographic maps.

Some scientists thought the work was brilliant, but most didn’t believe it. French undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau was determined to prove Tharp wrong. Sailing aboard his research vessel, the Calypso, he purposely crossed the mid-Atlantic Ridge and lowered an underwater movie camera. To Cousteau’s surprise, the film showed that a rift valley existed.

“There’s truth to the old cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words and that seeing is believing,” Tharp observed in a 1999 retrospective essay.

What could have created the rift? Princeton’s Hess proposed some ideas in a 1962 paper. It postulated that hot magma rose from inside the Earth at the rift, expanded as it cooled and pushed two adjoining plates further apart. This idea was a key contribution to plate tectonic theory, but Hess failed to reference the critical work presented in “The Floors of the Oceans” – one of the few publications that included Tharp as a co-author.


Marie Tharp in July 2001. Bruce Gilbert, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Still surveying

Tharp continued working with Heezen to bring the ocean floor to life. Their collaboration included an Indian Ocean map, published by National Geographic in 1967, and a 1977 World Ocean Floor map that is now held at the Library of Congress.

After Heezen died in 1977, Tharp continued her work until her death in 2006. In October 1978, Heezen (posthumously) and Tharp were awarded the Hubbard Medal, the National Geographic Society’s highest honor, joining the ranks of explorers and discoverers such as Ernest Shackleton, Louis and Mary Leakey and Jane Goodall.

Today ships use a method called swath mapping, which measures depth over a ribbon-like path rather than along a single line. The ribbons can be stitched together to create an accurate seafloor map.

Left. Detail of Canary Islands from Marie Tharp’s physiographic map of the North Atlantic. Right. Modern swath mapping depiction of the same area. Colors indicate depth. Vicki Ferrini, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

But because ships move slowly, it would take one ship 200 years to completely map the seafloor. An international effort to map the entire ocean floor in detail by 2030 is under way, using multiple ships, led by the Nippon Foundation and the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans.

This information is critical to beginning to understand what the seafloor looks like on a neighborhood scale. Marie Tharp was the first person to show the rich topography of the ocean floor and its different neighborhoods.

July 28, 2020 8.16am EDT
Author

Suzanne OConnell 
Suzanne OConnell is a Friend of The Conversation.
Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan University
Disclosure statement
Suzanne OConnell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Scientists have been drilling into the ocean floor for 50 years – here’s what they’ve found so far

September 26, 2018 



The scientific drilling ship JOIDES Resolution arrives in Honolulu after successful sea trials and testing of scientific and drilling equipment. IODP, CC BY-ND

It’s stunning but true that we know more about the surface of the moon than about the Earth’s ocean floor. Much of what we do know has come from scientific ocean drilling – the systematic collection of core samples from the deep seabed. This revolutionary process began 50 years ago, when the drilling vessel Glomar Challenger sailed into the Gulf of Mexico on August 11, 1968 on the first expedition of the federally funded Deep Sea Drilling Project.

I went on my first scientific ocean drilling expedition in 1980, and since then have participated in six more expeditions to locations including the far North Atlantic and Antarctica’s Weddell Sea. In my lab, my students and I work with core samples from these expeditions. Each of these cores, which are cylinders 31 feet long and 3 inches wide, is like a book whose information is waiting to be translated into words. Holding a newly opened core, filled with rocks and sediment from the Earth’s ocean floor, is like opening a rare treasure chest that records the passage of time in Earth’s history.

Over a half-century, scientific ocean drilling has proved the theory of plate tectonics, created the field of paleoceanography and redefined how we view life on Earth by revealing an enormous variety and volume of life in the deep marine biosphere. And much more remains to be learned.
Scientists have expanded human knowledge by drilling core samples from the world’s ocean basins, but their work is far from done.
Technological innovations

Two key innovations made it possible for research ships to take core samples from precise locations in the deep oceans. The first, known as dynamic positioning, enables a 471-foot ship to stay fixed in place while drilling and recovering cores, one on top of the next, often in over 12,000 feet of water.

Anchoring isn’t feasible at these depths. Instead, technicians drop a torpedo-shaped instrument called a transponder over the side. A device called a transducer, mounted on the ship’s hull, sends an acoustic signal to the transponder, which replies. Computers on board calculate the distance and angle of this communication. Thrusters on the ship’s hull maneuver the vessel to stay in exactly the same location, countering the forces of currents, wind and waves.

Another challenge arises when drill bits have to be replaced mid-operation. The ocean’s crust is composed of igneous rock that wears bits down long before the desired depth is reached.
The re-entry cone is welded together around the drill pipe, then lowered down the pipe to guide reinsertion before changing drill bits. IODP, CC BY-ND

When this happens, the drill crew brings the entire drill pipe to the surface, mounts a new drill bit and returns to the same hole. This requires guiding the pipe into a funnel shaped re-entry cone, less than 15 feet wide, placed in the bottom of the ocean at the mouth of the drilling hole. The process, which was first accomplished in 1970, is like lowering a long strand of spaghetti into a quarter-inch-wide funnel at the deep end of an Olympic swimming pool.
Confirming plate tectonics

When scientific ocean drilling began in 1968, the theory of plate tectonics was a subject of active debate. One key idea was that new ocean crust was created at ridges in the seafloor, where oceanic plates moved away from each other and magma from earth’s interior welled up between them. According to this theory, crust should be new material at the crest of ocean ridges, and its age should increase with distance from the crest.

The only way to prove this was by analyzing sediment and rock cores. In the winter of 1968-1969, the Glomar Challenger drilled seven sites in the South Atlantic Ocean to the east and west of the Mid-Atlantic ridge. Both the igneous rocks of the ocean floor and overlying sediments aged in perfect agreement with the predictions, confirming that ocean crust was forming at the ridges and plate tectonics was correct.
Part of a core section from the Chicxulub impact crater. It is suevite, a type of rock, formed during the impact, that contains rock fragments and melted rocks. IODP, CC BY-ND
Reconstructing earth’s history

The ocean record of Earth’s history is more continuous than geologic formations on land, where erosion and redeposition by wind, water and ice can disrupt the record. In most ocean locations sediment is laid down particle by particle, microfossil by microfossil, and remains in place, eventually succumbing to pressure and turning into rock.

Microfossils (plankton) preserved in sediment are beautiful and informative, even though some are smaller than the width of a human hair. Like larger plant and animal fossils, scientists can use these delicate structures of calcium and silicon to reconstruct past environments.

Thanks to scientific ocean drilling, we know that after an asteroid strike killed all non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago, new life colonized the crater rim within years, and within 30,000 years a full ecosystem was thriving. A few deep ocean organisms lived right through the meteorite impact.

Ocean drilling has also shown that ten million years later, a massive discharge of carbon – probably from extensive volcanic activity and methane released from melting methane hydrates – caused an abrupt, intense warming event, or hyperthermal, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. During this episode, even the Arctic reached over 73 degrees Fahrenheit.

The resulting acidification of the ocean from the release of carbon into the atmosphere and ocean caused massive dissolution and change in the deep ocean ecosystem.

This episode is an impressive example of the impact of rapid climate warming. The total amount of carbon released during the PETM is estimated to be about equal to the amount that humans will release if we burn all of Earth’s fossil fuel reserves. Yet, an important difference is that the carbon released by the volcanoes and hydrates was at a much slower rate than we are currently releasing fossil fuel. Thus we can expect even more dramatic climate and ecosystem changes unless we stop emitting carbon.Enhanced scanning electron microscope images of phytoplankton (left, a diatom; right, a coccolithophore). Different phytoplankton species have distinct climatic preferences, which makes them ideal indicators of surface ocean conditions. Dee Breger, CC BY-NC-ND
Finding life in ocean sediments

Scientific ocean drilling has also shown that there are roughly as many cells in marine sediment as in the ocean or in soil. Expeditions have found life in sediments at depths over 8000 feet; in seabed deposits that are 86 million years old; and at temperatures above 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

Today scientists from 23 nations are proposing and conducting research through the International Ocean Discovery Program, which uses scientific ocean drilling to recover data from seafloor sediments and rocks and to monitor environments under the ocean floor. Coring is producing new information about plate tectonics, such as the complexities of ocean crust formation, and the diversity of life in the deep oceans.

This research is expensive, and technologically and intellectually intense. But only by exploring the deep sea can we recover the treasures it holds and better understand its beauty and complexity.

In northern China, scientists have found what may be the 2 billion-year-old birthmarks of Earth’s first supercontinent


The present landscape near Dongshen, China. Wan et al., Author provided

August 5, 2020


Far beneath the city of Dongshen in northern China, we have discovered what may be the 2 billion-year-old birthmarks of Earth’s first supercontinent.

An ancient dipping structure in the planet’s crust appears to be a trace of an early collision between two continental masses like the one that created the Himalaya – and may record the origin of the global system of plate tectonics that persists today.

Read more: How Earth's continents became twisted and contorted over millions of years
When did plate tectonics begin?

The theory of plate tectonics is one of the key scientific advances of the past century. It explains how Earth’s crust is made of enormous rocky “plates” floating on the planet’s molten interior, which slowly move around. These movements are responsible for earthquakes and mountain ranges.

Earth is the only planet we know of with plate tectonics. The motion of the plates gradually cycles elements between the interior of the planet, the surface and the atmosphere, generating the resources and environment that make human life possible.

Read more: Does a planet need plate tectonics to develop life?

At some point in the deep past, plate tectonics began as Earth cooled. When this happened, however, has remained controversial. Dates spanning three-quarters of Earth’s history have been proposed, from the Hadean eon (between 4.5 billion and 4 billion years ago) to the late Proterozoic eon (less than a billion years ago).

Many of these dates come from isolated samples showing the existence of single plates. However, plate tectonics is a global phenomenon in which plates interact with each other. We studied one of these early interactions: a collision in what is now northern China, in which the edge of one plate was thrust upwards while the other was pushed down.
The dipping Moho

Our new study suggests plate tectonics began globally somewhere between 2 billion and 1.8 billion years ago. The research, published in Science Advances, was carried out by an international team from China, Germany and Australia, led by Wan, Bo from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS).

We studied an area geologists call the Ordos block, which is part of the North China craton, a very stable chunk of the Asian continent that takes in parts of northeastern China, Mongolia and North Korea.

In April 2019, we deployed 609 seismic recording stations spaced every 500 metres along a 300-kilometre line. By combining the earthquake data from these stations, we were able to form a detailed picture of Earth’s crust in this area.

Beneath the city of Dongsheng, we found a feature called a dipping Moho in which the bottom of Earth’s crust dips from around 35km deep to more than 50km deep over a horizontal distance of only 40km.

This dipping structure looks nearly identical to what is found beneath the Himalayan mountains, except it is around 2 billion years old.
A global patternThe global network of ancient collisions that show the creation of supercontinent Nuna. Wan et al. / Science Advances, Author provided

Next, we collected seismic evidence from other studies around the world for similar dipping Moho structures that are about the same age. Putting observations from six continents together, we can form a picture of the creation of the ancient supercontinent Nuna.

Nuna (sometimes also called Columbia) is believed to have been made up of parts of most of the continents that exist today. If Nuna was the first supercontinent, we can interpret these tectonic collisions that occurred around 2 billion years ago as the oldest evidence of plate tectonics in the global sense. Even though such collisions may have occurred here and there early on, it is likely that plate tectonics did not become a global network until this time.
Author
Huaiyu Yuan

Senior Research Fellow, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Macquarie University
Disclosure statement

Huaiyu Yuan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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‘Throat of fire’ volcano signalling imminent, devastating COLLAPSEGet short URL

Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano has been in an active state since October 1999. © REUTERS/Carlos Campana

Scientists are warning that the Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador is showing early signs of impending catastrophic collapse, after satellite data showed substantial internal damage from ongoing magma activity.

Tungurahua, has been persistently active since 1999 so wear and tear was inevitable, especially given that the 'Throat of fire,' or 'Black giant' as the Quechua indigenous people named it, has already collapsed twice before thousands of years ago.

Tungurahua erupting on November 2nd, 1999. © US Geological Survey

"Using satellite data we have observed very rapid deformation of Tungurahua's west flank, which our research suggests is caused by imbalances between magma being supplied and magma being erupted," says geophysical volcanologist James Hickey from the University of Exeter in the UK, whose worrying research was recently published.

Tungurahua previously collapsed at the end of the Late Pleistocene, after which it then rebuilt itself for thousands of years, before collapsing again about 3,000 years ago.

Such collapses can trigger massive landslides and pyroclastic flows, which can travel for tens of kilometers. For example, the collapse 3,000 years ago is thought to have laid waste to an area of roughly 80km sq (11,000 football fields).

Meanwhile, an eruption in 1999 forced the evacuation of some 25,000 people, so the impact on human life in the area should the volcano collapse again would be truly staggering.

The team admits, however, that magma supply is just one of many risk factors which should be closely monitored to mitigate risk and protect life in the area. 

"Magma supply is one of a number of factors that can cause or contribute to volcanic flank instability, so while there is a risk of possible flank collapse, the uncertainty of these natural systems also means it could remain stable," Hickey says.

HOW NOT TO LOSE THE LOCKDOWN GENERATION
Lessons from the New Deal point the way forward in the era of Covid-19.

Naomi Klein
August 6 2020,

PICTURE THIS: You live in rural Arkansas and tragedy strikes. A family member has fallen ill with that contagious respiratory illness that has already killed so many — but you don’t have enough space in your small home to quarantine them in a room of their own. Your relative’s case doesn’t appear to be life-threatening, but you are terrified that their persistent cough will spread the illness to more vulnerable family members. You call the local public health authority to see if there is room in local hospitals, and they explain that they are all stretched too thin with emergency cases. There are private facilities, but you can’t afford those.



Related
Escape From the Nuclear Family: Covid-19 Should Provoke a Rethink of How We Live

Not to worry, you are told: A crew will be by shortly to set up a sturdy, well-ventilated, portable, tiny house in your yard. Once installed, your family member will be free to convalesce in comfort. You can deliver home-cooked meals to their door and communicate through open windows — and a trained nurse will be by for regular examinations. And no, there will be no charge for the house.

This is not a dispatch from some future functional United States, one with a government capable of caring for its people in the midst of spiraling economic carnage and a public health emergency. It’s a dispatch from this country’s past, a time eight decades ago when it similarly found itself in the two-fisted grip of an even deeper economic crisis (the Great Depression), and a surging contagious respiratory illness (tuberculosis).

Yet the contrast between how U.S. state and federal government met those challenges in the 1930s, and how they are failing so murderously to meet them now, could not be starker. Those tiny houses are just one example, but they are a revelatory one for the sheer number of problems those humble structures attempted to solve at once.

Known as “isolation huts,” the little clapboard houses were distributed to poor families in several states. Small enough to fit on the back of a trailer, they had just enough space for a bed, chair, dresser, and stove, and were outfitted with large screened-in windows and shutters to maximize the flow of fresh air and sunshine — considered essential for TB recovery.

As physical structures, the TB huts were an elegant answer to the public health challenges posed by crowded homes on the one hand and expensive private sanatoriums on the other. If houses were unable to accommodate safe patient quarantines, then the state, with Washington’s help, would just bring an addition to those houses for the duration of the illness.

Read Our Complete CoverageThe Coronavirus Crisis


It’s worth letting that sink in, given the learned helplessness that pervades the U.S. today. For months, the White House hasn’t been able to figure out how to roll out free Covid-19 tests at anything like the scale required, let alone contact tracing, never mind quarantine support for poor families. Yet in the 1930s, during a much more desperate economic time for the country, state and federal agencies cooperated to deliver not just free tests but free houses.

And that is only the beginning of what makes it worth dwelling on the TB huts . The cabins themselves were built by very young men in their late teens and early 20s who were out of work and had signed up for the National Youth Administration. “The State Board of Health furnishes the materials for these cottages and NYA supplies the labor,” explained Betty and Ernest Lindley, authors of a 1938 history of the program. “The total average cost of one hut is $146.28,” or about $2,700 in today’s dollars.

The TB cabins were just one of thousands upon thousands of projects taken on by the 4.5 million young people who joined the NYA: a vast program started in 1935 that paired young people in economic need, who could not find jobs in the private sector, with publicly minded work that needed doing. They gained marketable skills, while earning money that allowed many to stay, or return to, high school or college. Other NYA projects including building some of the country’s most iconic urban parks, repairing thousands of dilapidated schools and outfitting them with playgrounds; and stocking classrooms with desks, lab tables, and maps the young workers had made and painted themselves. NYA workers built huge outdoor pools and artificial lakes, trained to be teaching and nursing aides, and even built entire youth centers and small schools from scratch, often while living together in “resident centers.”

A group of men planting trees during a Civilian Conservation Corps project on the Nett Lake Reservation in Minnesota.  
THESE WERE LABOUR CAMPS IN THE USA AND CANADA WHERE SINGLE MEN WERE TAKEN OUT OF THE HOSTELS AND SHIPPED TO WILDERNESS CAMPS AS THEY WERE. NO PREPARATION FOR WORK IN THE NORTH COUNTRY.
THIS WAS BECAUSE THERE WAS NO RELIEF OR WELFARE AT THE TIME OF HIGH
UNEMPLOYMENT.
 TAKE A LOOK AT THE TOP PICTURE AND THIS ONE. SAME PROGRAM WAS USED DURING WWI TO INTERN REDS AND HAVE THEM BUILD JASPER AN KANANASKIS NATIONAL PARKS IN CANADA 

Photo: MPI/Getty Images


The NYA served as a kind of urban complement to FDR’s better-known youth program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, launched two years earlier. The CCC employed some 3 million young men from poor families to work in forests and farms: planting more than 2 billion trees, shoring up rivers from erosion, and building the infrastructure for hundreds of state parks. They lived together in a network of camps, sent money home to their families, and put on weight at a time when malnutrition was epidemic. Both the NYA and the CCC served a dual purpose: directly helping the young people involved, who found themselves in desperate straights, and meeting the country’s most pressing needs, whether for reforested lands or more hands in hospitals.

Like all New Deal programs, the NYA and CCC were stained by racial segregation and discrimination. And the gender roles were — let’s just say that the girls discovered they could sew, can, and heal; and the boys discovered they could plant, build, and weld. Black girls in particular were streamed into domestic work.

Yet the scale of these two programs, which together altered the lives of well over 7 million young people over the course of a decade, puts contemporary governments to shame. Today, millions upon millions of young people are beginning their adulthood with the ground collapsing beneath their feet. The service jobs so many young adults depend on for rent and to pay off student debt have vanished. Many of the industries they had hoped to enter are firing, not hiring. Internships and apprenticeships have been canceled via mass emails, and promised job offers have been revoked.

These economic losses, combined with the decision of many colleges and universities to close residences and move online, have abruptly severed countless young adults from their support systems, pushed many into homelessness, and others back into their childhood bedrooms. Many of the homes young people now find themselves in are under severe economic strain and are not safe or welcoming, with LGBTQ youth at heightened risk.

All of this is layered on top of the pain of the virus itself, which has spread grief and loss through millions of families. And that is now mixing with the trauma of tremendous police violence directed at crowds of mostly young Black Lives Matter demonstrators, compounding the murderous events that precipitated the protests in the first place. In the background, as always, is the shadow of climate breakdown, not to mention the fact that when members of this generation first heard terms like “lockdown” and “shelter in place” related to the pandemic, many of their minds immediately turned to the terrorizing active shooter drills U.S. schools have had them practicing since early childhood.

It should be little wonder, then, that depression, anxiety, and addiction are ravaging young lives.

According to a survey conducted by National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau last month, 53 percent of people aged 18-29 reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. Fifty-three percent. That’s more than 13 percentage points higher than the rest of the population, which itself was off the charts compared with this time last year.

And that still may be a dramatic undercount. Mental Health America, part of the National Health Council, released a report in June based on surveys of nearly 5 million Americans. It found that “younger populations including teens and young adults (25<) are being hit particularly hard” by the pandemic, with 90 percent “experiencing symptoms of depression.”

Some of that suffering is finding expression in another invisible crisis of the Covid era: a dramatic increase in drug overdoses, with some parts of the country reporting increases over last year of 50 percent. It should all be a reminder that when we talk about being in the midst of a cataclysm on par with the Great Depression, it isn’t only GDP and employment rates that are depressed. Huge numbers of people are depressed as well, particularly young people.

This is, of course, a global crisis. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recently warned that the world faces “a generational catastrophe that could waste untold human potential, undermine decades of progress, and exacerbate entrenched inequalities.” In a video message, he said, “We are at a defining moment for the world’s children and young people. The decisions that governments and partners take now will have lasting impact on hundreds of millions of young people, and on the development prospects of countries for decades to come.”

As in the 1930s, this generation is already being referred to as a “lost generation” — but compared to the Great Depression, almost nothing is being done to find them, certainly not at the governmental level in the U.S. There are no ambitious and creative programs being designed to offer steady income beyond expanded summer job programs, and nothing designed to arm them with useful skills for the Covid and climate change era. All Washington has offered is a temporary break on student loan repayments, set to expire this fall.

Young people are discussed, of course. But it is almost exclusively to shame them for Covid partying. Or to debate (usually in their absence) the question of whether or not they will be permitted to learn in-person in classrooms, or whether they will have to stay home, glued to screens. Yet what the Depression era teaches us is that these are not the only possible futures we should be considering for people in their late teens and 20s, especially as we come to grips with the reality that Covid-19 is going to be reshaping our world for a long time to come. Young people can do more than go to school or stay home; they can also contribute enormously to the healing of their communities.

While guest hosting Intercepted this week, I dug into what it would take to launch youth employment programs on the scale on the NYA and CCC — programs that, like their predecessors, addressed broad social needs while giving young people cash, skills training, and opportunities to work and possibly live in each other’s company. Put another way: What are the modern day equivalents of the home-delivered, NYA-built tuberculosis isolation hut?

Delving back in the history of New Deal youth programs, I was struck by how many of its projects have direct application to today’s most urgent needs. For instance, the NYA made huge and historic contributions to the country’s educational infrastructure, with a particular emphasis on low-income school districts, while training many young women as teaching assistants. It also provided significant reinforcements for an ailing public health system, training battalions of young people to serve as nursing aides in public hospitals.

Two members of the Fire Department of New York’s Emergency Medical Team wheel in a patient with potentially fatal coronavirus to the Elmhurst Hospital Center in the Queens borough of New York City on March 30, 2020.
Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images


It’s easy to imagine how similar programs today could simultaneously address the youth unemployment crisis and play a significant role in battling the virus. As just one example: We sure could use some of those nursing aides if there is a new surge of the virus this winter. A New York Times investigation last month quoted several doctors and nurses who are convinced that significant numbers of the Covid-19 deaths that took place in New York’s public hospitals could have been prevented if they had been adequately staffed. In emergency rooms where the patient-to-nurse ratio should not have been higher than 4 to 1, one public hospital was trying to get by with 23 to 1; others weren’t doing much better. Nightmare stories have emerged of disoriented patients pulling themselves off of oxygen machines and other vital equipment, trying to get up, and with no one there to stop them, dying alone. More nurses would have made all the difference.

Then there are the public schools, similarly understaffed after decades of cutbacks, that will be trying to enforce social distancing this year. If we weren’t in such a rush to get back to a bleak and diminished version of “normal,” there would be time for a NYA-style program to train thousands of young adults to help reduce class sizes and supervise kids in outdoor education programs.

And since we know that the safest place to gather is still outdoors, some college-age students could pick up the work begun by the NYA and expand the national infrastructure of trails, picnic areas, outdoor pools, campsites, urban parks, and wilderness trails. Thousands more could be enrolled in a rebooted CCC to restore forests and wetlands, helping draw planet-warming carbon out of the atmosphere.

Creating these kinds of programs would be complex, and costly. But the individual and collective benefits would be immeasurable. And as was the case during the Great Depression, many young people would be given the chance to do something they desperately want and need to do right now: Get the hell out of their childhood homes and live with their peers.

On Intercepted, I spoke about this prospect with Neil Maher, professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark and the author of a definitive history of the Civilian Conservation Corps, “Nature’s New Deal.” He told me that in his research into the CCC, he came across many participants describing their time in the program as a kind of sleepaway camp or even an outdoor university: a unique chance to live collectively, away from their families and the city, and become adults. But unlike so many actual university campuses that can’t reopen safely — given the daily commutes of faculty, staff, and many students — modern-day CCC-inspired camps could be designed as Covid “bubbles.”

The program would have to test participants on the way in, quarantine anyone who tested positive for two weeks, and then everyone would stay at the camp until the job was done (or at least their part of it). It could be that rare triple win: Heal some of the damage done to our ravaged planet, offer an economic and social lifeline to people in need, and design what might be one of the most Covid-safe workplaces around.

In the panic about this “lost generation,” there has been a lot of talk about how there is no work for young people. But that is a lie. There is no end of meaningful work that desperately needs doing — in our schools, hospitals, and on the land. We just need to create the jobs.