Tuesday, June 07, 2022
Stephen Colbert Names And Shames Rep. Louie Gohmert As ‘Dumbest Man Alive’
Ed Mazza
Tue, June 7, 2022
Stephen Colbert doled out a rare honor on Monday night, giving one Republican lawmaker a new title, but it’s one he probably won’t be putting on a resume anytime soon.
The “Late Show” host tore into Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), who last week complained that Republicans get treated unfairly when they lie and pointing specifically to the arrest of former Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro. Navarro was indicted on contempt charges after refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
But Gohmert saw it from another perspective.
“It actually puts an exclamation point on the fact that we have a two-tired justice system. If you’re a Republican, you can’t even lie to Congress or lie to an FBI agent or they’re coming after you,” he griped.
“Wait! Hold on a second, we’re getting more breaking news!” Colbert interjected. “This is just in. Is this confirmed? He’s just confirmed it: Louie Gohmert remains the dumbest man alive.”
Colbert’s monologue also featured an “EW!” moment about Gohmert:
See more of Colbert’s takedown of Navarro and Gohmert in his Monday night monologue:
Ed Mazza
Tue, June 7, 2022
Stephen Colbert doled out a rare honor on Monday night, giving one Republican lawmaker a new title, but it’s one he probably won’t be putting on a resume anytime soon.
The “Late Show” host tore into Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), who last week complained that Republicans get treated unfairly when they lie and pointing specifically to the arrest of former Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro. Navarro was indicted on contempt charges after refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
But Gohmert saw it from another perspective.
“It actually puts an exclamation point on the fact that we have a two-tired justice system. If you’re a Republican, you can’t even lie to Congress or lie to an FBI agent or they’re coming after you,” he griped.
“Wait! Hold on a second, we’re getting more breaking news!” Colbert interjected. “This is just in. Is this confirmed? He’s just confirmed it: Louie Gohmert remains the dumbest man alive.”
Colbert’s monologue also featured an “EW!” moment about Gohmert:
See more of Colbert’s takedown of Navarro and Gohmert in his Monday night monologue:
Fertilizers Piling Up at Brazil Ports Signal Further Price Drop
Tatiana Freitas and Tarso Veloso
Tue, June 7, 2022,
(Bloomberg) -- A glut of fertilizers at the biggest Brazilian ports signals that the price of the nutrients may have to drop further before farmers start buying.
In Paranagua, private warehouses reached their maximum storage capacity of 3.5 million tons, according to Luiz Teixeira da Silva, Paranagua’s operations director. A terminal operated by VLI Logistics, one of the two at Santos port that store fertilizers, is also full, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named as the information isn’t public.
Fertilizer prices soared to records after the war in Ukraine sparked fears of a shortage. Brazil imports nearly 85% of its fertilizer and Russia is the main origin. As supplies have normalized, prices have declined over the past weeks, but farmers still aren’t buying. They are waiting for further price cuts, according to Marina Cavalcante, an analyst at Bloomberg’s Green Markets.
“Farmers have the expectation that prices will keep falling after declines last week and in the previous one,” she said. “So they’ll wait for further decreases to buy.”
Brazil is the world’s biggest shipper of several crops, including soybeans. Farmers can delay their purchases until the eve of the soybean seeding in September. But if they all wait too long, a last-minute rush could lead to inland transportation bottlenecks that may leave some of them empty-handed.
Tatiana Freitas and Tarso Veloso
Tue, June 7, 2022,
(Bloomberg) -- A glut of fertilizers at the biggest Brazilian ports signals that the price of the nutrients may have to drop further before farmers start buying.
In Paranagua, private warehouses reached their maximum storage capacity of 3.5 million tons, according to Luiz Teixeira da Silva, Paranagua’s operations director. A terminal operated by VLI Logistics, one of the two at Santos port that store fertilizers, is also full, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named as the information isn’t public.
Fertilizer prices soared to records after the war in Ukraine sparked fears of a shortage. Brazil imports nearly 85% of its fertilizer and Russia is the main origin. As supplies have normalized, prices have declined over the past weeks, but farmers still aren’t buying. They are waiting for further price cuts, according to Marina Cavalcante, an analyst at Bloomberg’s Green Markets.
“Farmers have the expectation that prices will keep falling after declines last week and in the previous one,” she said. “So they’ll wait for further decreases to buy.”
Brazil is the world’s biggest shipper of several crops, including soybeans. Farmers can delay their purchases until the eve of the soybean seeding in September. But if they all wait too long, a last-minute rush could lead to inland transportation bottlenecks that may leave some of them empty-handed.
What’s the Crypto Regulation Endgame?
When the crypto crisis hits (and it soon will), the U.S. will be forced to strip away the cloak of anonymity that facilitates criminal acts and which gives crypto its allure
Kenneth Rogoff -
MarketWatch
© Getty Images/iStockphoto
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Project Syndicate)—With cryptocurrency prices plummeting as central banks start to raise interest rates, many are wondering if this is the beginning of the end of the bubble.
Perhaps not yet. But a higher opportunity cost of money disproportionately drives down the prices of assets whose main uses lie in the future. Ultralow interest rates flattered crypto, and young investors are now getting a taste of what happens when interest rates go up.
A more interesting question is what will happen when governments finally get serious about regulating bitcoin and its brethren. Of the major economies, only China has so far begun to do so. Most policy makers have instead tried to change the topic by talking about central bank-issued digital currencies (CBDCs).
But this is something of a non sequitur.President Biden’s cryptocurrency executive order may have produced more questions than it’s answered: What’s a central bank digital currency? How is it different from crypto? And why hasn’t the Fed introduced a digital dollar? WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains. Photo composite: David Fang A growing problem
Although CBDCs are likely to include privacy features for small transactions, larger transactions will almost certainly require individuals to reveal their identity. In contrast, one of the biggest attractions of private cryptocurrencies is the opportunity they offer to bypass governments. True, cryptocurrency transactions are completely traceable through the blockchain ledger, but users typically set up accounts under pseudonyms and are therefore difficult to identify without other information, which is expensive to obtain.
Some economists naively argue that there is no particular urgency to regulate bitcoin and the like, because cryptocurrencies are difficult and costly to use for transactions. Try telling that to policy makers in developing economies, where crypto has become a significant vehicle for avoiding taxes, regulations, and capital controls.
Investing in some advanced-economy crypto vehicles is in a sense no different from investing in conflict diamonds.
For poorer countries with limited state capacity, crypto is a growing problem. Citizens don’t need to be computer whizzes to circumvent the authorities. They can just access one of several simple “off-chain” exchanges. Although cryptocurrency transactions intermediated by a third party are in principle traceable, the exchanges are based in advanced economies. In practice, this makes the information virtually inaccessible to poor-country authorities under most circumstances.Money laundering, tax evasion
But isn’t this just crypto fulfilling its promise of helping citizens bypass corrupt, inefficient, and untrustworthy governments? Maybe, but, just like $100 bills, cryptocurrencies in the developing world are as likely to be used by malign actors as by ordinary citizens.
For example, Venezuela is a major player in crypto markets, partly because expatriates use them to send money back and forth without it being seized by the country’s corrupt regime. But crypto is also surely used by the Venezuelan military in its drug-smuggling operations, not to mention by wealthy, politically connected individuals subject to financial sanctions.
Given that the United States currently maintains financial sanctions on more than a dozen countries, hundreds of entities, and thousands of individuals, crypto is a natural refuge.
One reason why advanced-economy regulators have been slow to act is the view that as long as cryptocurrency-related problems mainly affect the rest of the world, these problems are not their concern. Apparently buying into the idea that cryptocurrencies are essentially assets in which to invest—and that any transaction’s value is unimportant—the regulators are more worried about domestic investor protection and financial stability.Crypto = conflict diamonds
But economic theory has long demonstrated that the value of any money ultimately depends on its potential underlying uses. The biggest investors in crypto may be in advanced economies, but the uses—and harms—have so far been mainly in emerging markets and developing economies. One might even argue that investing in some advanced-economy crypto vehicles is in a sense no different from investing in conflict diamonds.
Advanced-economy governments will most likely find that the problems with cryptocurrencies eventually come home to roost. When that happens, they will be forced to institute a broad-based ban on digital currencies that do not permit users’ identities to be easily traced (unless, that is, technological advances ultimately strip away all vestiges of anonymity, in which case cryptocurrencies’ prices will collapse on their own). The ban would certainly have to extend to financial institutions and businesses, and would likely also include some restrictions on individuals.
Such a step would sharply undercut today’s cryptocurrency prices by reducing liquidity. Of course, restrictions will be more effective the more countries apply them, but universal implementation is not required for significant local impact.Stiff lobbying to prevent regulation
Can some version of a ban be implemented? As China has demonstrated, it is relatively easy to shutter the crypto exchanges that the vast majority of people use for trading digital currencies. It is more difficult to prevent “on-chain” transactions, as the underlying individuals are harder to identify. Ironically, an effective ban on 21st-century crypto might also require phasing out (or at least scaling back) the much older device of paper currency, because cash is by far the most convenient way for people to “on-ramp” funds into their digital wallets without being easily detected.
Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that all blockchain applications should be constrained. For example, regulated stablecoins, underpinned by a central-bank balance sheet, can still thrive, but there needs to be a straightforward legal mechanism for tracing a user’s identity if needed.
When, if ever, might stiffer cryptocurrency regulation actually happen? Absent a crisis, it could take many decades, especially with major crypto players pouring huge sums into lobbying, much as the financial sector did in the run-up to the 2008 global financial crisis. But it probably won’t take nearly that long. Unfortunately, the crypto crisis is likely to come sooner rather than later.
Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University, was the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003. He is co-author of “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly” (Princeton University Press, 2011) and author of “The Curse of Cash” (Princeton University Press, 2016).More on crypto regulation
Bipartisan crypto bill would have CFTC oversee bitcoin, ether and most other digital assets
Consumers report losing $1 billion in crypto to scammers since 2021, FTC study says
From Baron’s: Crypto’s Wild West Days May Be Coming to an End With New Bipartisan Senate Bill
When the crypto crisis hits (and it soon will), the U.S. will be forced to strip away the cloak of anonymity that facilitates criminal acts and which gives crypto its allure
Kenneth Rogoff -
MarketWatch
© Getty Images/iStockphoto
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Project Syndicate)—With cryptocurrency prices plummeting as central banks start to raise interest rates, many are wondering if this is the beginning of the end of the bubble.
Perhaps not yet. But a higher opportunity cost of money disproportionately drives down the prices of assets whose main uses lie in the future. Ultralow interest rates flattered crypto, and young investors are now getting a taste of what happens when interest rates go up.
A more interesting question is what will happen when governments finally get serious about regulating bitcoin and its brethren. Of the major economies, only China has so far begun to do so. Most policy makers have instead tried to change the topic by talking about central bank-issued digital currencies (CBDCs).
But this is something of a non sequitur.President Biden’s cryptocurrency executive order may have produced more questions than it’s answered: What’s a central bank digital currency? How is it different from crypto? And why hasn’t the Fed introduced a digital dollar? WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains. Photo composite: David Fang A growing problem
Although CBDCs are likely to include privacy features for small transactions, larger transactions will almost certainly require individuals to reveal their identity. In contrast, one of the biggest attractions of private cryptocurrencies is the opportunity they offer to bypass governments. True, cryptocurrency transactions are completely traceable through the blockchain ledger, but users typically set up accounts under pseudonyms and are therefore difficult to identify without other information, which is expensive to obtain.
Some economists naively argue that there is no particular urgency to regulate bitcoin and the like, because cryptocurrencies are difficult and costly to use for transactions. Try telling that to policy makers in developing economies, where crypto has become a significant vehicle for avoiding taxes, regulations, and capital controls.
Investing in some advanced-economy crypto vehicles is in a sense no different from investing in conflict diamonds.
For poorer countries with limited state capacity, crypto is a growing problem. Citizens don’t need to be computer whizzes to circumvent the authorities. They can just access one of several simple “off-chain” exchanges. Although cryptocurrency transactions intermediated by a third party are in principle traceable, the exchanges are based in advanced economies. In practice, this makes the information virtually inaccessible to poor-country authorities under most circumstances.Money laundering, tax evasion
But isn’t this just crypto fulfilling its promise of helping citizens bypass corrupt, inefficient, and untrustworthy governments? Maybe, but, just like $100 bills, cryptocurrencies in the developing world are as likely to be used by malign actors as by ordinary citizens.
For example, Venezuela is a major player in crypto markets, partly because expatriates use them to send money back and forth without it being seized by the country’s corrupt regime. But crypto is also surely used by the Venezuelan military in its drug-smuggling operations, not to mention by wealthy, politically connected individuals subject to financial sanctions.
Given that the United States currently maintains financial sanctions on more than a dozen countries, hundreds of entities, and thousands of individuals, crypto is a natural refuge.
One reason why advanced-economy regulators have been slow to act is the view that as long as cryptocurrency-related problems mainly affect the rest of the world, these problems are not their concern. Apparently buying into the idea that cryptocurrencies are essentially assets in which to invest—and that any transaction’s value is unimportant—the regulators are more worried about domestic investor protection and financial stability.Crypto = conflict diamonds
But economic theory has long demonstrated that the value of any money ultimately depends on its potential underlying uses. The biggest investors in crypto may be in advanced economies, but the uses—and harms—have so far been mainly in emerging markets and developing economies. One might even argue that investing in some advanced-economy crypto vehicles is in a sense no different from investing in conflict diamonds.
Advanced-economy governments will most likely find that the problems with cryptocurrencies eventually come home to roost. When that happens, they will be forced to institute a broad-based ban on digital currencies that do not permit users’ identities to be easily traced (unless, that is, technological advances ultimately strip away all vestiges of anonymity, in which case cryptocurrencies’ prices will collapse on their own). The ban would certainly have to extend to financial institutions and businesses, and would likely also include some restrictions on individuals.
Such a step would sharply undercut today’s cryptocurrency prices by reducing liquidity. Of course, restrictions will be more effective the more countries apply them, but universal implementation is not required for significant local impact.Stiff lobbying to prevent regulation
Can some version of a ban be implemented? As China has demonstrated, it is relatively easy to shutter the crypto exchanges that the vast majority of people use for trading digital currencies. It is more difficult to prevent “on-chain” transactions, as the underlying individuals are harder to identify. Ironically, an effective ban on 21st-century crypto might also require phasing out (or at least scaling back) the much older device of paper currency, because cash is by far the most convenient way for people to “on-ramp” funds into their digital wallets without being easily detected.
Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that all blockchain applications should be constrained. For example, regulated stablecoins, underpinned by a central-bank balance sheet, can still thrive, but there needs to be a straightforward legal mechanism for tracing a user’s identity if needed.
When, if ever, might stiffer cryptocurrency regulation actually happen? Absent a crisis, it could take many decades, especially with major crypto players pouring huge sums into lobbying, much as the financial sector did in the run-up to the 2008 global financial crisis. But it probably won’t take nearly that long. Unfortunately, the crypto crisis is likely to come sooner rather than later.
Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University, was the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003. He is co-author of “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly” (Princeton University Press, 2011) and author of “The Curse of Cash” (Princeton University Press, 2016).More on crypto regulation
Bipartisan crypto bill would have CFTC oversee bitcoin, ether and most other digital assets
Consumers report losing $1 billion in crypto to scammers since 2021, FTC study says
From Baron’s: Crypto’s Wild West Days May Be Coming to an End With New Bipartisan Senate Bill
As the Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Utah Faces 'An Environmental Nuclear Bomb'
The Great Salt Lake
The Great Salt Lake
LONG READ
Christopher Flavelle
Tue, June 7, 2022
SALT LAKE CITY — If the Great Salt Lake, which has already shrunk by two-thirds, continues to dry up, here’s what’s in store:
The lake’s flies and brine shrimp would die off — scientists warn it could start as soon as this summer — threatening the 10 million migratory birds that stop at the lake annually to feed on the tiny creatures. Ski conditions at the resorts above Salt Lake City, a vital source of revenue, would deteriorate. The lucrative extraction of magnesium and other minerals from the lake could stop.
Most alarming, the air surrounding Salt Lake City would occasionally turn poisonous. The lake bed contains high levels of arsenic and as more of it becomes exposed, windstorms carry that arsenic into the lungs of nearby residents, who make up three-quarters of Utah’s population.
“We have this potential environmental nuclear bomb that’s going to go off if we don’t take some pretty dramatic action,” said Joel Ferry, a Republican state lawmaker and rancher who lives on the north side of the lake.
As climate change continues to cause record-breaking drought, there are no easy solutions. Saving the Great Salt Lake would require letting more snowmelt from the mountains flow to the lake, which means less water for residents and farmers. That would threaten the region’s breakneck population growth and high-value agriculture — something state leaders seem reluctant to do.
Utah’s dilemma raises a core question as the country heats up: How quickly are Americans willing to adapt to the effects of climate change, even as those effects become urgent, obvious, and potentially catastrophic?
The stakes are alarmingly high, according to Timothy D. Hawkes, a Republican lawmaker who wants more aggressive action. Otherwise, he said, the Great Salt Lake risks the same fate as California’s Owens Lake, which went dry decades ago, producing the worst levels of dust pollution in the United States and helping to turn the nearby community into a veritable ghost town.
“It’s not just fearmongering,” he said of the lake vanishing. “It can actually happen.”
A Modern Oasis, Under Threat
Say you climbed into a car at the edge of the Pacific and started driving east, tracing a line across the middle of the United States. After crossing the Klamath and Cascade mountains in Northern California, green and lush, you would reach the Great Basin Desert of Nevada and western Utah. In one of the driest parts of America, the landscape is a brown so pale, it’s almost gray.
But keep going east, and just shy of Wyoming you would find a modern oasis: a narrow strip of green, stretching some 100 miles from north to south, home to an uninterrupted metropolis beneath snow-capped mountains, sheltered under maple and pear trees. At the edge of that oasis, between the city and the desert, is the Great Salt Lake.
Utahns call that metropolis the Wasatch Front, after the 12,000-foot Wasatch Range above it. Extending roughly from Provo in the south to Brigham City in the north, with Salt Lake City at its center, it is one of the fastest-growing urban areas in America — home to 2.5 million people, drawn by the natural beauty and relatively modest cost of living.
That megacity is possible because of a minor hydrological miracle. Snow that falls in the mountains just east of Salt Lake City feeds three rivers — the Jordan, Weber, and Bear — which provide water for the cities and towns of the Wasatch Front, as well as the rich cropland nearby, before flowing into the Great Salt Lake.
Until recently, that hydrological system existed in a delicate balance. In summer, evaporation would cause the lake to drop about 2 feet; in spring, as the snowpack melted, the rivers would replenish it.
Now two changes are throwing that system out of balance. One is explosive population growth, diverting more water from those rivers before they reach the lake.
The other shift is climate change, according to Robert Gillies, a professor at Utah State University and Utah’s state climatologist. Higher temperatures cause more snowpack to transform to water vapor, which then escapes into the atmosphere, rather than turning to liquid and running into rivers. More heat also means greater demand for water for lawns or crops, further reducing the amount that reaches the lake.
And a shrinking lake means less snow. As storms pass over the Great Salt Lake, they absorb some of its moisture, which then falls as snow in the mountains. A vanishing lake endangers that pattern.
“If you don’t have water,” Gillies said, “you don’t have industry, you don’t have agriculture, you don’t have life.”
‘At the Precipice’
Last summer, the water level in the Great Salt Lake reached its lowest point on record, and it’s likely to fall further this year. The lake’s surface area, which covered about 3,300 square miles in the late 1980s, has since shrunk to less than 1,000, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The salt content in the part of the lake closest to Salt Lake City used to fluctuate between 9-12%, according to Bonnie Baxter, a biology professor at Westminster College. But as the water in the lake drops, its salt content has increased. If it reaches 17% — something Baxter says will happen this summer — the algae in the water will struggle, threatening the brine shrimp that consume it.
While the ecosystem hasn’t collapsed yet, Baxter said, “we’re at the precipice. It’s terrifying.”
The long term risks are even worse. One morning in March, Kevin Perry, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, walked out onto land that used to be underwater. He picked at the earth, the color of dried mud, like a beach whose tide went out and never came back.
The soil contains arsenic, antimony, copper, zirconium and other dangerous heavy metals, much of it residue from mining activity in the region. Most of the exposed soil is still protected by a hard crust. But as wind erodes the crust over time, those contaminants become airborne.
Clouds of dust also make it difficult for people to breathe, particularly those with asthma or other respiratory ailments. Perry pointed to shards of crust that had come apart, lying on the sand like broken china.
“This is a disaster,” Perry said. “And the consequences for the ecosystem are absolutely, insanely bad.”
Running Out Of Water, But Growing Fast
In theory, the fix is simple: Let more water from melting snowpack reach the lake, by sending less toward homes, businesses and farms.
But metropolitan Salt Lake City has barely enough water to support its current population. And it is expected to grow almost 50% by 2060.
Laura Briefer, director of Salt Lake City’s public utilities department, said the city can increase its water supply in three ways: Divert more water from rivers and streams, recycle more wastewater, or draw more groundwater from wells. Each of those strategies reduces the amount of water that reaches the lake. But without those steps, demand for water in Salt Lake City would exceed supply around 2040, Briefer said.
The city is trying to conserve water. Last December, it stopped issuing permits for businesses that require significant water, such as data centers or bottling plants.
But city leaders have shied away from another potentially powerful tool: higher prices.
Of major U.S. cities, Salt Lake has among the lowest per-gallon water rates, according to a 2017 federal report. It also consumes more water for residential use than other desert cities — 96 gallons per person per day last year, compared with 78 in Tucson, Arizona, and 77 in Los Angeles.
Charge more for water and people use less, said Zachary Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council. “Pricing drives consumption,” he said.
Through a spokesperson, Mayor Erin Mendenhall, elected in 2019 on a pledge to address climate change and air quality, declined an interview. In a statement, she said the city will consider pricing as a way “to send a stronger conservation signal.”
Homes around Salt Lake boast lush, forest-green lawns, despite the drought. And not always by choice.
In the suburb of Bluffdale, when Elie El kessrwany stopped watering his lawn in response to the drought, his homeowners’ association threatened to fine him. “I was trying to do the right thing for my community,” he said.
State Rep. Robert Spendlove, a Republican, introduced a bill this year that would have blocked communities from requiring homeowners to maintain lawns. He said local governments lobbied against the bill, which failed.
In the state legislative session that ended in March, lawmakers approved other measures that start to address the crisis. They funded a study of water needs, made it easier to buy and sell water rights, and required cities and towns to include water in their long-term planning. But lawmakers rejected proposals that would have had an immediate impact, such as requiring water-efficient sinks and showers in new homes or increasing the price of water.
What the Future May Hold
The worst-case scenario for the Great Salt Lake is neither hypothetical nor abstract. Rather, it’s on display 600 miles southwest, in a narrow valley at the edge of California, where what used to be a lake is now a barely contained disaster.
In the early 1900s, Los Angeles, growing fast and running out of water, bought land along either side of the Owens River, then built an aqueduct diverting the river’s water 230 miles south to Los Angeles.
The river had been the main source of water for what was once Owens Lake, which covered more than 100 square miles. The lake dried up, and then for much of the 20th century it was the worst source of dust pollution in America, according to a 2020 study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
When windstorms hit the dried lake bed, they kick up PM10 — particulate matter 10 micrometers or smaller, which can lodge in the lungs when inhaled and has been linked to worsened asthma, heart attacks and premature death. The amount of PM10 in the air around Owens Lake has been as much as 138 times higher than deemed safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Local officials successfully sued Los Angeles, arguing it had violated the rights of nearby communities to clean air. A judge ordered Los Angeles to reduce the dust. That was 25 years ago. Since then, Los Angeles has spent $2.5 billion trying to keep wind from blowing dust off the lake bed.
The city has tried different strategies: Covering the lake bed in gravel. Spraying just enough water on the dust to hold it in place. Constantly tilling the dry earth, creating low ridges to catch restive dust particles before they can become airborne.
The result is a mix between an industrial site and a science experiment. On a recent morning, workers scurried across the vast area, checking valves and sprinklers that continually get plugged with sand. Nearby, inside a complex that resembles a bunker, walls of screens monitored data to alert the operation’s 70-person staff if something goes wrong. If the carefully calibrated flow of sprinklers is disrupted, for example, dust could quickly start to fly off again.
Dust levels near the lake still sometimes exceed federal safety rules. Among Utah’s coterie of nervous advocates for the Great Salt Lake, Owens Lake has become shorthand for the risks of failing to act quickly enough and the grave damage if the lake dries up, the contents of its bed spinning into the air.
On what used to be the shore of what used to be Owens Lake is what’s left of the town of Keeler. When the lake still existed, Keeler was a boom town. Today it consists of an abandoned school, an abandoned train station, a long-closed general store, a post office that’s open from 10 a.m. to noon, and about 50 remaining residents who value their space, and have lots of it.
“Cheap land,” said Jim Macey, when asked why he moved to Keeler in 1980. He described that period, before Los Angeles began trying to hold down the lake bed, as “the time of dust.” He recalled watching entire houses vanish from sight when the wind blew in.
“We called it the Keeler Death Cloud,” Macey said.
—
BY THE NUMBERS
16%: Salt content of the lake last summer. The salt content used to fluctuate between 9-12%. If the salt content reaches 17%, the algae in the lake will struggle to survive, threatening the entire ecosystem.
> 50%: The population of Salt Lake City is expected to grow by more than 50% over the next 50 years.
© 2022 The New York Times Company
Christopher Flavelle
Tue, June 7, 2022
SALT LAKE CITY — If the Great Salt Lake, which has already shrunk by two-thirds, continues to dry up, here’s what’s in store:
The lake’s flies and brine shrimp would die off — scientists warn it could start as soon as this summer — threatening the 10 million migratory birds that stop at the lake annually to feed on the tiny creatures. Ski conditions at the resorts above Salt Lake City, a vital source of revenue, would deteriorate. The lucrative extraction of magnesium and other minerals from the lake could stop.
Most alarming, the air surrounding Salt Lake City would occasionally turn poisonous. The lake bed contains high levels of arsenic and as more of it becomes exposed, windstorms carry that arsenic into the lungs of nearby residents, who make up three-quarters of Utah’s population.
“We have this potential environmental nuclear bomb that’s going to go off if we don’t take some pretty dramatic action,” said Joel Ferry, a Republican state lawmaker and rancher who lives on the north side of the lake.
As climate change continues to cause record-breaking drought, there are no easy solutions. Saving the Great Salt Lake would require letting more snowmelt from the mountains flow to the lake, which means less water for residents and farmers. That would threaten the region’s breakneck population growth and high-value agriculture — something state leaders seem reluctant to do.
Utah’s dilemma raises a core question as the country heats up: How quickly are Americans willing to adapt to the effects of climate change, even as those effects become urgent, obvious, and potentially catastrophic?
The stakes are alarmingly high, according to Timothy D. Hawkes, a Republican lawmaker who wants more aggressive action. Otherwise, he said, the Great Salt Lake risks the same fate as California’s Owens Lake, which went dry decades ago, producing the worst levels of dust pollution in the United States and helping to turn the nearby community into a veritable ghost town.
“It’s not just fearmongering,” he said of the lake vanishing. “It can actually happen.”
A Modern Oasis, Under Threat
Say you climbed into a car at the edge of the Pacific and started driving east, tracing a line across the middle of the United States. After crossing the Klamath and Cascade mountains in Northern California, green and lush, you would reach the Great Basin Desert of Nevada and western Utah. In one of the driest parts of America, the landscape is a brown so pale, it’s almost gray.
But keep going east, and just shy of Wyoming you would find a modern oasis: a narrow strip of green, stretching some 100 miles from north to south, home to an uninterrupted metropolis beneath snow-capped mountains, sheltered under maple and pear trees. At the edge of that oasis, between the city and the desert, is the Great Salt Lake.
Utahns call that metropolis the Wasatch Front, after the 12,000-foot Wasatch Range above it. Extending roughly from Provo in the south to Brigham City in the north, with Salt Lake City at its center, it is one of the fastest-growing urban areas in America — home to 2.5 million people, drawn by the natural beauty and relatively modest cost of living.
That megacity is possible because of a minor hydrological miracle. Snow that falls in the mountains just east of Salt Lake City feeds three rivers — the Jordan, Weber, and Bear — which provide water for the cities and towns of the Wasatch Front, as well as the rich cropland nearby, before flowing into the Great Salt Lake.
Until recently, that hydrological system existed in a delicate balance. In summer, evaporation would cause the lake to drop about 2 feet; in spring, as the snowpack melted, the rivers would replenish it.
Now two changes are throwing that system out of balance. One is explosive population growth, diverting more water from those rivers before they reach the lake.
The other shift is climate change, according to Robert Gillies, a professor at Utah State University and Utah’s state climatologist. Higher temperatures cause more snowpack to transform to water vapor, which then escapes into the atmosphere, rather than turning to liquid and running into rivers. More heat also means greater demand for water for lawns or crops, further reducing the amount that reaches the lake.
And a shrinking lake means less snow. As storms pass over the Great Salt Lake, they absorb some of its moisture, which then falls as snow in the mountains. A vanishing lake endangers that pattern.
“If you don’t have water,” Gillies said, “you don’t have industry, you don’t have agriculture, you don’t have life.”
‘At the Precipice’
Last summer, the water level in the Great Salt Lake reached its lowest point on record, and it’s likely to fall further this year. The lake’s surface area, which covered about 3,300 square miles in the late 1980s, has since shrunk to less than 1,000, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The salt content in the part of the lake closest to Salt Lake City used to fluctuate between 9-12%, according to Bonnie Baxter, a biology professor at Westminster College. But as the water in the lake drops, its salt content has increased. If it reaches 17% — something Baxter says will happen this summer — the algae in the water will struggle, threatening the brine shrimp that consume it.
While the ecosystem hasn’t collapsed yet, Baxter said, “we’re at the precipice. It’s terrifying.”
The long term risks are even worse. One morning in March, Kevin Perry, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, walked out onto land that used to be underwater. He picked at the earth, the color of dried mud, like a beach whose tide went out and never came back.
The soil contains arsenic, antimony, copper, zirconium and other dangerous heavy metals, much of it residue from mining activity in the region. Most of the exposed soil is still protected by a hard crust. But as wind erodes the crust over time, those contaminants become airborne.
Clouds of dust also make it difficult for people to breathe, particularly those with asthma or other respiratory ailments. Perry pointed to shards of crust that had come apart, lying on the sand like broken china.
“This is a disaster,” Perry said. “And the consequences for the ecosystem are absolutely, insanely bad.”
Running Out Of Water, But Growing Fast
In theory, the fix is simple: Let more water from melting snowpack reach the lake, by sending less toward homes, businesses and farms.
But metropolitan Salt Lake City has barely enough water to support its current population. And it is expected to grow almost 50% by 2060.
Laura Briefer, director of Salt Lake City’s public utilities department, said the city can increase its water supply in three ways: Divert more water from rivers and streams, recycle more wastewater, or draw more groundwater from wells. Each of those strategies reduces the amount of water that reaches the lake. But without those steps, demand for water in Salt Lake City would exceed supply around 2040, Briefer said.
The city is trying to conserve water. Last December, it stopped issuing permits for businesses that require significant water, such as data centers or bottling plants.
But city leaders have shied away from another potentially powerful tool: higher prices.
Of major U.S. cities, Salt Lake has among the lowest per-gallon water rates, according to a 2017 federal report. It also consumes more water for residential use than other desert cities — 96 gallons per person per day last year, compared with 78 in Tucson, Arizona, and 77 in Los Angeles.
Charge more for water and people use less, said Zachary Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council. “Pricing drives consumption,” he said.
Through a spokesperson, Mayor Erin Mendenhall, elected in 2019 on a pledge to address climate change and air quality, declined an interview. In a statement, she said the city will consider pricing as a way “to send a stronger conservation signal.”
Homes around Salt Lake boast lush, forest-green lawns, despite the drought. And not always by choice.
In the suburb of Bluffdale, when Elie El kessrwany stopped watering his lawn in response to the drought, his homeowners’ association threatened to fine him. “I was trying to do the right thing for my community,” he said.
State Rep. Robert Spendlove, a Republican, introduced a bill this year that would have blocked communities from requiring homeowners to maintain lawns. He said local governments lobbied against the bill, which failed.
In the state legislative session that ended in March, lawmakers approved other measures that start to address the crisis. They funded a study of water needs, made it easier to buy and sell water rights, and required cities and towns to include water in their long-term planning. But lawmakers rejected proposals that would have had an immediate impact, such as requiring water-efficient sinks and showers in new homes or increasing the price of water.
What the Future May Hold
The worst-case scenario for the Great Salt Lake is neither hypothetical nor abstract. Rather, it’s on display 600 miles southwest, in a narrow valley at the edge of California, where what used to be a lake is now a barely contained disaster.
In the early 1900s, Los Angeles, growing fast and running out of water, bought land along either side of the Owens River, then built an aqueduct diverting the river’s water 230 miles south to Los Angeles.
The river had been the main source of water for what was once Owens Lake, which covered more than 100 square miles. The lake dried up, and then for much of the 20th century it was the worst source of dust pollution in America, according to a 2020 study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
When windstorms hit the dried lake bed, they kick up PM10 — particulate matter 10 micrometers or smaller, which can lodge in the lungs when inhaled and has been linked to worsened asthma, heart attacks and premature death. The amount of PM10 in the air around Owens Lake has been as much as 138 times higher than deemed safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Local officials successfully sued Los Angeles, arguing it had violated the rights of nearby communities to clean air. A judge ordered Los Angeles to reduce the dust. That was 25 years ago. Since then, Los Angeles has spent $2.5 billion trying to keep wind from blowing dust off the lake bed.
The city has tried different strategies: Covering the lake bed in gravel. Spraying just enough water on the dust to hold it in place. Constantly tilling the dry earth, creating low ridges to catch restive dust particles before they can become airborne.
The result is a mix between an industrial site and a science experiment. On a recent morning, workers scurried across the vast area, checking valves and sprinklers that continually get plugged with sand. Nearby, inside a complex that resembles a bunker, walls of screens monitored data to alert the operation’s 70-person staff if something goes wrong. If the carefully calibrated flow of sprinklers is disrupted, for example, dust could quickly start to fly off again.
Dust levels near the lake still sometimes exceed federal safety rules. Among Utah’s coterie of nervous advocates for the Great Salt Lake, Owens Lake has become shorthand for the risks of failing to act quickly enough and the grave damage if the lake dries up, the contents of its bed spinning into the air.
On what used to be the shore of what used to be Owens Lake is what’s left of the town of Keeler. When the lake still existed, Keeler was a boom town. Today it consists of an abandoned school, an abandoned train station, a long-closed general store, a post office that’s open from 10 a.m. to noon, and about 50 remaining residents who value their space, and have lots of it.
“Cheap land,” said Jim Macey, when asked why he moved to Keeler in 1980. He described that period, before Los Angeles began trying to hold down the lake bed, as “the time of dust.” He recalled watching entire houses vanish from sight when the wind blew in.
“We called it the Keeler Death Cloud,” Macey said.
—
BY THE NUMBERS
16%: Salt content of the lake last summer. The salt content used to fluctuate between 9-12%. If the salt content reaches 17%, the algae in the lake will struggle to survive, threatening the entire ecosystem.
> 50%: The population of Salt Lake City is expected to grow by more than 50% over the next 50 years.
© 2022 The New York Times Company
Canada's historic sites get Indigenous voices, stronger protection in new bill
OTTAWA — Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says a new bill he introduced Tuesday gives legal protection to Canada's historic sites for the first time and ensures Indigenous Peoples have a stronger voice in identifying and protecting places of historic significance in Canada.
There are more than 300 federal historic places in Canada but it is the only G7 country without legislation to protect them.
The Historic Places of Canada Act intends to change that, while also fulfilling a Truth and Reconciliation Commission call to action to include Indigenous Peoples in the decision-making around which sites are designated as historic and how they are protected.
A decision to designate a person, place or event as historic rests with the environment minister but those decisions are based on advice from an advisory board.
The new bill designates three seats on that board specifically for First Nations, Métis and Inuit representatives.
The act also includes Indigenous knowledge as one of the sources of information the board must rely on when making its recommendations, along with community, scientific and academic knowledge.
Canada's historic places include everything from famous lighthouses like the one in Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, to military forts, canals, museums, and the homes of former prime ministers. Most of the buildings on Parliament Hill, and 24 Sussex Drive, the official home of the sitting prime minister that is currently not considered safe to inhabit, are also on the list.
Guilbeault said the bill ensures for the first time that all Canadian historic sites are "protected by legislation and any changes to the sites would require that Parks Canada be consulted in order to preserve their heritage value."
He said the bill is also "an important step in advancing the government's commitment to recognize Indigenous history and to implement the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada."
Call to action No. 79 from the TRC requested that the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada include First Nations, Inuit, and Métis representation and that Indigenous history, heritage values and knowledge be incorporated into decisions about commemoration.
The existing Historic Sites and Monuments Act outlines in more vague terms than the new bill how the minister can both designate and mark the existence of historic sites, and sets up the advisory board.
The new bill repeals that existing legislation and expands upon it immensely, including more specific requirements to protect and conserve the heritage value of historic places, undertake scientific studies to understand and defend against threats to the sites.
In addition to the three Indigenous representatives, the advisory board will continue to have one member for each province and territory and a member from Parks Canada. But instead of appointing Canada's chief librarian and archivist, and someone from the Canadian Museum of History, the board can appoint two members from any federal institutions with relevant expertise.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 7, 2022.
Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says a new bill he introduced Tuesday gives legal protection to Canada's historic sites for the first time and ensures Indigenous Peoples have a stronger voice in identifying and protecting places of historic significance in Canada.
There are more than 300 federal historic places in Canada but it is the only G7 country without legislation to protect them.
The Historic Places of Canada Act intends to change that, while also fulfilling a Truth and Reconciliation Commission call to action to include Indigenous Peoples in the decision-making around which sites are designated as historic and how they are protected.
A decision to designate a person, place or event as historic rests with the environment minister but those decisions are based on advice from an advisory board.
The new bill designates three seats on that board specifically for First Nations, Métis and Inuit representatives.
The act also includes Indigenous knowledge as one of the sources of information the board must rely on when making its recommendations, along with community, scientific and academic knowledge.
Canada's historic places include everything from famous lighthouses like the one in Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, to military forts, canals, museums, and the homes of former prime ministers. Most of the buildings on Parliament Hill, and 24 Sussex Drive, the official home of the sitting prime minister that is currently not considered safe to inhabit, are also on the list.
Guilbeault said the bill ensures for the first time that all Canadian historic sites are "protected by legislation and any changes to the sites would require that Parks Canada be consulted in order to preserve their heritage value."
He said the bill is also "an important step in advancing the government's commitment to recognize Indigenous history and to implement the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada."
Call to action No. 79 from the TRC requested that the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada include First Nations, Inuit, and Métis representation and that Indigenous history, heritage values and knowledge be incorporated into decisions about commemoration.
The existing Historic Sites and Monuments Act outlines in more vague terms than the new bill how the minister can both designate and mark the existence of historic sites, and sets up the advisory board.
The new bill repeals that existing legislation and expands upon it immensely, including more specific requirements to protect and conserve the heritage value of historic places, undertake scientific studies to understand and defend against threats to the sites.
In addition to the three Indigenous representatives, the advisory board will continue to have one member for each province and territory and a member from Parks Canada. But instead of appointing Canada's chief librarian and archivist, and someone from the Canadian Museum of History, the board can appoint two members from any federal institutions with relevant expertise.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 7, 2022.
Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press
'Bewitched' statue in Salem vandalized with red paint
SALEM, Mass. (AP) — In the wiggle of a nose, a man covered the “Bewitched” statue in Salem, Massachusetts with red paint, police said.
© Provided by The Canadian Press
Witnesses called police at about 5 p.m. Monday to report someone spray painting the bronze statue, Capt. John Burke said Tuesday. The statue depicts actor Elizabeth Montgomery — as lead character Samantha Stephens in the 1960s sitcom — sitting on a broomstick in front of a crescent moon.
An officer in the area spotted a man fitting witness descriptions of the vandal and after a brief chase arrested a 32-year-old city resident on charges of defacing property, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, Burke said.
![]()
His motivation remains unclear.
“In between meetings, was disappointed to hear the Bewitched Samantha statute downtown was vandalized,” Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll tweeted Monday night. “I’m grateful to (Salem police) for their quick work apprehending the individual responsible. We’ll work to get the statue cleaned, as fast as a twitch of Samantha’s nose.”
Red paint on the upper half of the statue has already been cleaned off, Burke said.
The statue was erected in the city famous for the 1692 witch trials in 2005, despite protests from some who said it trivializes the tragedy of the trials.
The Associated Press
SALEM, Mass. (AP) — In the wiggle of a nose, a man covered the “Bewitched” statue in Salem, Massachusetts with red paint, police said.
© Provided by The Canadian Press
Witnesses called police at about 5 p.m. Monday to report someone spray painting the bronze statue, Capt. John Burke said Tuesday. The statue depicts actor Elizabeth Montgomery — as lead character Samantha Stephens in the 1960s sitcom — sitting on a broomstick in front of a crescent moon.
An officer in the area spotted a man fitting witness descriptions of the vandal and after a brief chase arrested a 32-year-old city resident on charges of defacing property, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, Burke said.
His motivation remains unclear.
“In between meetings, was disappointed to hear the Bewitched Samantha statute downtown was vandalized,” Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll tweeted Monday night. “I’m grateful to (Salem police) for their quick work apprehending the individual responsible. We’ll work to get the statue cleaned, as fast as a twitch of Samantha’s nose.”
Red paint on the upper half of the statue has already been cleaned off, Burke said.
The statue was erected in the city famous for the 1692 witch trials in 2005, despite protests from some who said it trivializes the tragedy of the trials.
The Associated Press
Farms damaged in southeast Alberta following suspected funnel cloud
Adam Toy GLOBAL NEWS
© Courtesy Judy Dunsmore
Adam Toy GLOBAL NEWS
© Courtesy Judy Dunsmore
Damage on a farm near Enchant, Alta., is shown following what is suspected to be a funnel cloud on June 6, 2022.
Environment and Climate Change Canada is looking into reports of funnel clouds in southeast Alberta on Monday.
The federal agency received multiple reports of funnel clouds and damage in two possible areas. Part of their investigation includes contacting area residents and people who may have been impacted by the weather.
One of those areas with reports of damage was near Enchant, Alta., a hamlet in the municipal district of Taber.
Read more:
Funnel clouds reported in southern Saskatchewan over the weekend
Judy Dunsmore told Global News most of the damage on the family’s property about 10 kilometres east of Enchant was to farm buildings and corrals.
“It picked up a wooden grain bin and took it through gates and into a pen. It moved a steel bin off its floor and blew another one over,” Dunsmore said.
Enchant is about an hour northeast of Lethbridge and two hours southeast of Calgary.
The weather conditions for such an event were in place at the time.
“On Monday, we had enough instability and convergence across southern Alberta to support severe thunderstorms and funnel clouds,” Global Calgary chief meteorologist Tiffany Lizee said.
“There was certainly potential for a landspout tornado, but there wasn't enough atmospheric uplift to produce supercells.”
Funnel clouds are rotating columns that extend from clouds, but don’t reach the ground. Tornadoes are funnels that interact with the ground, picking up dust or debris.
Video: Supercell vs Landspout Tornado
Environment and Climate Change Canada is looking into reports of funnel clouds in southeast Alberta on Monday.
The federal agency received multiple reports of funnel clouds and damage in two possible areas. Part of their investigation includes contacting area residents and people who may have been impacted by the weather.
One of those areas with reports of damage was near Enchant, Alta., a hamlet in the municipal district of Taber.
Read more:
Funnel clouds reported in southern Saskatchewan over the weekend
Judy Dunsmore told Global News most of the damage on the family’s property about 10 kilometres east of Enchant was to farm buildings and corrals.
“It picked up a wooden grain bin and took it through gates and into a pen. It moved a steel bin off its floor and blew another one over,” Dunsmore said.
Enchant is about an hour northeast of Lethbridge and two hours southeast of Calgary.
The weather conditions for such an event were in place at the time.
“On Monday, we had enough instability and convergence across southern Alberta to support severe thunderstorms and funnel clouds,” Global Calgary chief meteorologist Tiffany Lizee said.
“There was certainly potential for a landspout tornado, but there wasn't enough atmospheric uplift to produce supercells.”
Funnel clouds are rotating columns that extend from clouds, but don’t reach the ground. Tornadoes are funnels that interact with the ground, picking up dust or debris.
Video: Supercell vs Landspout Tornado
Plans for Taser-equipped drone halted as 9 on ethics board resign
Kathryn Mannie - Yesterday
© Axon A conceptual rendering of Axon's paused Taser-equipped drone project.
Axon, the maker of Taser-brand stun guns, announced Monday that it is halting plans to develop weaponized drones intended to stop school shootings after nine of its ethics board members resigned.
Axon made its plans for Taser-equipped drones public last Thursday, proposing to use a system of cameras and sensors to detect shooters. First responders would then pilot the pre-installed drones with the aim of “incapacitating an active shooter in less than 60 seconds."
Mere hours after the announcement, Axon’s ethics board made a statement condemning the project, saying that it gave them “considerable pause.”
The ethics board wrote that Axon came to them a year ago with the idea for Taser-equipped drones, but the project was much more limited and would have only been used by police.
“A majority of the ethics board last month ultimately voted against Axon moving forward, even on those limited terms,” wrote the board. “Now, Axon has announced it would not limit the technology to policing agencies, but would make it more widely available. And the surveillance aspect of this proposal is wholly new to us.”
But in the aftermath of a school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 students and two teachers dead, Axon's CEO and founder Rick Smith decided to move forward with the project
Smith told the Associated Press last week he bypassed the ethics board and made the idea public in part because he was “catastrophically disappointed” in the response by police who didn’t move in to kill the Texas school shooting suspect for more than an hour.
But in the wake of the resignation of the majority of its ethics board — which is made up of privacy advocates, former police chiefs, civil rights advocates and computer scientists — Axon has decided to halt the controversial project.
Smith wrote in a news release that Axon announced the drone project in order to "initiate a conversation on this as a potential solution" to the rise in mass shootings in the U.S.
"It did lead to considerable public discussion that has provided us with a deeper appreciation of the complex and important considerations relating to this matter," Smith wrote. "However, in light of feedback, we are pausing work on this project and refocusing to further engage with key constituencies to fully explore the best path forward."
Nine of 12 of Axon's ethics board members resigned on Monday, the same day that Axon announced that development of the Taser-equipped drone would be halted. Those who resigned issued a statement saying they had “lost faith in Axon’s ability to be a responsible partner" and that the proposed drone is "distracting society from real solutions to a tragic problem."
“We wish it had not come to this,” the statement reads. “Each of us joined this Board in the belief that we could influence the direction of the company in ways that would help to mitigate the harms that policing technology can sow and better capture any benefits.”
In response to the resignations on Axon's ethics board, Smith wrote that "It is unfortunate that some members of Axon’s ethics advisory panel have chosen to withdraw from directly engaging on these issues before we heard or had a chance to address their technical questions."
"We respect their choice and will continue to seek diverse perspectives to challenge our thinking and help guide other technology options that we should be considering."
Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor and former member of Axon's ethics board, told Reuters why he left his position.
"I’m not going to stay on an advisory board for a company that departs so far from expectation and protocol or, frankly, who believes ubiquitous surveillance coupled with remote non-lethal weapons is a viable response to school shootings," he said.
Giles Herdale, one of the board members who decided to stay, told Reuters that he didn't resign because he could have more influence "in the tent than outside it."
— With a file from the Associated Press
Video: Calgary student receives award at Canada-wide Science Fair for medical drone
Kathryn Mannie - Yesterday
© Axon A conceptual rendering of Axon's paused Taser-equipped drone project.
Axon, the maker of Taser-brand stun guns, announced Monday that it is halting plans to develop weaponized drones intended to stop school shootings after nine of its ethics board members resigned.
Axon made its plans for Taser-equipped drones public last Thursday, proposing to use a system of cameras and sensors to detect shooters. First responders would then pilot the pre-installed drones with the aim of “incapacitating an active shooter in less than 60 seconds."
Mere hours after the announcement, Axon’s ethics board made a statement condemning the project, saying that it gave them “considerable pause.”
The ethics board wrote that Axon came to them a year ago with the idea for Taser-equipped drones, but the project was much more limited and would have only been used by police.
“A majority of the ethics board last month ultimately voted against Axon moving forward, even on those limited terms,” wrote the board. “Now, Axon has announced it would not limit the technology to policing agencies, but would make it more widely available. And the surveillance aspect of this proposal is wholly new to us.”
But in the aftermath of a school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 students and two teachers dead, Axon's CEO and founder Rick Smith decided to move forward with the project
Smith told the Associated Press last week he bypassed the ethics board and made the idea public in part because he was “catastrophically disappointed” in the response by police who didn’t move in to kill the Texas school shooting suspect for more than an hour.
But in the wake of the resignation of the majority of its ethics board — which is made up of privacy advocates, former police chiefs, civil rights advocates and computer scientists — Axon has decided to halt the controversial project.
Smith wrote in a news release that Axon announced the drone project in order to "initiate a conversation on this as a potential solution" to the rise in mass shootings in the U.S.
"It did lead to considerable public discussion that has provided us with a deeper appreciation of the complex and important considerations relating to this matter," Smith wrote. "However, in light of feedback, we are pausing work on this project and refocusing to further engage with key constituencies to fully explore the best path forward."
Nine of 12 of Axon's ethics board members resigned on Monday, the same day that Axon announced that development of the Taser-equipped drone would be halted. Those who resigned issued a statement saying they had “lost faith in Axon’s ability to be a responsible partner" and that the proposed drone is "distracting society from real solutions to a tragic problem."
“We wish it had not come to this,” the statement reads. “Each of us joined this Board in the belief that we could influence the direction of the company in ways that would help to mitigate the harms that policing technology can sow and better capture any benefits.”
In response to the resignations on Axon's ethics board, Smith wrote that "It is unfortunate that some members of Axon’s ethics advisory panel have chosen to withdraw from directly engaging on these issues before we heard or had a chance to address their technical questions."
"We respect their choice and will continue to seek diverse perspectives to challenge our thinking and help guide other technology options that we should be considering."
Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor and former member of Axon's ethics board, told Reuters why he left his position.
"I’m not going to stay on an advisory board for a company that departs so far from expectation and protocol or, frankly, who believes ubiquitous surveillance coupled with remote non-lethal weapons is a viable response to school shootings," he said.
Giles Herdale, one of the board members who decided to stay, told Reuters that he didn't resign because he could have more influence "in the tent than outside it."
— With a file from the Associated Press
Video: Calgary student receives award at Canada-wide Science Fair for medical drone
CHICKEN AND RICE MAIN DISH IN ASIA
Which came first, the chicken or the rice? New research suggests riceThe cliché about oysters is that it was a brave soul who first ate one, and maybe so (no matter if it was Jonathan Swift or Benjamin Franklin who first said it), but it was a braver one still who first ate a chicken.
Joseph Brean -National Post
Which came first, the chicken or the rice? New research suggests rice
That’s one curious suggestion in a pair of new scholarly research papers about the origin of the domesticated chicken, based on radiocarbon dating and hundreds of archeological digs worldwide, published Monday in Antiquity and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It was brave to kill a chicken in Iron Age Europe, even as late as the time of Homer in the 800s BC, because chickens were more like pets, exotica that were too rare or important to be slaughtered for meat, this research concludes. Chickens had become almost venerated since they were lured down from trees by southeast Asian rice farmers, spreading through trade to the Mediterranean and Africa. Eat a chicken in Iron Age Europe, and you risked the anger of some prehistoric Joe Exotic who had been feeding it, maybe even named it.
But the reward was high, two main sections of different but equally tasty meat, light and dark, delicate and robust, plus other bits like liver, heart, feet, brain and a thin skin that roasts into candy.
The scientists from British and European universities report that the domestication of chickens took place in southeast Asia and coincided with rice cultivation, but not for the obvious reason, that they make a meal.
Rather, the reclamation of land for rice growing, with its slash and burn agricultural cycle, “may have attracted red junglefowl to human settlements and their immediate catchment,” the PNAS paper suggests . They call this the “Chicken-Rice Dispersal” theory.
From there, chickens were spread by humans to central China and Mesopotamia no earlier than the late-second millennium BC, and Mediterranean Europe and Ethiopia by the first. Previous theories about a more ancient origin in the Indus Valley or northeast China are not backed by these new findings.
So, before it became a near-universal meat option and the most numerous and widely distributed domestic animal on Earth, chicken was an exotic curiosity, and prized as such. Remains of Gallus gallus domesticus are found unbutchered and uneaten in prehistoric tombs from Thailand, dated as far back as 1650 BC, to Italy, perhaps 700 years later. In several places across Europe, chickens appear individually buried, often as older animals. One hen found on Weston Down in England had a healed leg fracture, suggesting care. In England as in other places, chickens seem to have been kept for 800 years before people started eating them, encouraged it seems by Roman practices.
It really caught on. Today, a chicken in every pot is a mark of healthy civilization. It is as the late British restaurant critic AA Gill once wrote in a 2016 report from the refugee camp at Calais, France, at the peak of broader European migrant crisis, which he found was “beginning to become a place, with churches and theatres and art and restaurants. It is germinating into that collective home. But then, isn’t this how all places once began? With refugees stopping at a river, a beach, a crossroads and saying, we’ll just pause here for a bit. Put on the kettle, kill a chicken.”
Turns out, though, killing chickens as a mark of domesticity is a relatively new development in human culture, at least compared to what anthropologists used to think. Most curiously, the original purpose for their domestication does not seem to be for food.
The Antiquity paper reports on radiocarbon dating of 23 chicken bones at 16 different Bronze and Iron Age sites in Europe, Britain and North Africa, as far east as Turkey, as far north as Scotland, as far south and west as Morocco. It showed modern chickens grow much faster and have larger bones in every dimension. Most were far younger than their stratigraphic context suggested, some just a few hundred years old. Others were legitimately ancient, like a chicken bone from Stonehenge from about the late-fifth century BC. Two Italian chicken bones were older still. But none dated further back than the first millennium BC.
Like the PNAS paper, it places chicken domestication later than previously thought, and notes a “consistent time-lag” between when chickens arrived and when people started eating them, suggesting a sort of veneration.
Early Greek, Etruscan or Phoenician sailors probably brought chickens into Europe, first into Italy, where the earliest identified chicken is from a ninth or tenth century BC tomb. It took another thousand years for chickens to reach the colder regions of Scotland and Scandinavia.
The chicken crossed many roads before it became the safe option on so many menus, suffering as a result, so much so that a popular National Post feature once ran under the headline, “Death to the chicken finger.”
Chickens don’t have fingers. They do, however, have oysters, two little nuggets tucked into the back at the top of the thighs. It was a plucky soul who first ate one, as this research suggests, but in the long run it paid off.
That’s one curious suggestion in a pair of new scholarly research papers about the origin of the domesticated chicken, based on radiocarbon dating and hundreds of archeological digs worldwide, published Monday in Antiquity and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It was brave to kill a chicken in Iron Age Europe, even as late as the time of Homer in the 800s BC, because chickens were more like pets, exotica that were too rare or important to be slaughtered for meat, this research concludes. Chickens had become almost venerated since they were lured down from trees by southeast Asian rice farmers, spreading through trade to the Mediterranean and Africa. Eat a chicken in Iron Age Europe, and you risked the anger of some prehistoric Joe Exotic who had been feeding it, maybe even named it.
But the reward was high, two main sections of different but equally tasty meat, light and dark, delicate and robust, plus other bits like liver, heart, feet, brain and a thin skin that roasts into candy.
The scientists from British and European universities report that the domestication of chickens took place in southeast Asia and coincided with rice cultivation, but not for the obvious reason, that they make a meal.
Rather, the reclamation of land for rice growing, with its slash and burn agricultural cycle, “may have attracted red junglefowl to human settlements and their immediate catchment,” the PNAS paper suggests . They call this the “Chicken-Rice Dispersal” theory.
From there, chickens were spread by humans to central China and Mesopotamia no earlier than the late-second millennium BC, and Mediterranean Europe and Ethiopia by the first. Previous theories about a more ancient origin in the Indus Valley or northeast China are not backed by these new findings.
So, before it became a near-universal meat option and the most numerous and widely distributed domestic animal on Earth, chicken was an exotic curiosity, and prized as such. Remains of Gallus gallus domesticus are found unbutchered and uneaten in prehistoric tombs from Thailand, dated as far back as 1650 BC, to Italy, perhaps 700 years later. In several places across Europe, chickens appear individually buried, often as older animals. One hen found on Weston Down in England had a healed leg fracture, suggesting care. In England as in other places, chickens seem to have been kept for 800 years before people started eating them, encouraged it seems by Roman practices.
It really caught on. Today, a chicken in every pot is a mark of healthy civilization. It is as the late British restaurant critic AA Gill once wrote in a 2016 report from the refugee camp at Calais, France, at the peak of broader European migrant crisis, which he found was “beginning to become a place, with churches and theatres and art and restaurants. It is germinating into that collective home. But then, isn’t this how all places once began? With refugees stopping at a river, a beach, a crossroads and saying, we’ll just pause here for a bit. Put on the kettle, kill a chicken.”
Turns out, though, killing chickens as a mark of domesticity is a relatively new development in human culture, at least compared to what anthropologists used to think. Most curiously, the original purpose for their domestication does not seem to be for food.
The Antiquity paper reports on radiocarbon dating of 23 chicken bones at 16 different Bronze and Iron Age sites in Europe, Britain and North Africa, as far east as Turkey, as far north as Scotland, as far south and west as Morocco. It showed modern chickens grow much faster and have larger bones in every dimension. Most were far younger than their stratigraphic context suggested, some just a few hundred years old. Others were legitimately ancient, like a chicken bone from Stonehenge from about the late-fifth century BC. Two Italian chicken bones were older still. But none dated further back than the first millennium BC.
Like the PNAS paper, it places chicken domestication later than previously thought, and notes a “consistent time-lag” between when chickens arrived and when people started eating them, suggesting a sort of veneration.
Early Greek, Etruscan or Phoenician sailors probably brought chickens into Europe, first into Italy, where the earliest identified chicken is from a ninth or tenth century BC tomb. It took another thousand years for chickens to reach the colder regions of Scotland and Scandinavia.
The chicken crossed many roads before it became the safe option on so many menus, suffering as a result, so much so that a popular National Post feature once ran under the headline, “Death to the chicken finger.”
Chickens don’t have fingers. They do, however, have oysters, two little nuggets tucked into the back at the top of the thighs. It was a plucky soul who first ate one, as this research suggests, but in the long run it paid off.
Two studies lay out how the birds went from wild fowl in Southeast Asia to the dinner plate
Modern chickens originated around 3,500 years ago in Southeast Asia, later than previously thought, scientists say. Rice cultivation apparently spurred the transformation of wild fowl into a global menu item.
By Bruce Bower
It turns out that chicken and rice may have always gone together, from the birds’ initial domestication to tonight’s dinner.
In two new studies, scientists lay out a potential story of chicken’s origins. This poultry tale begins surprisingly recently in rice fields planted by Southeast Asian farmers around 3,500 years ago, zooarchaeologist Joris Peters and colleagues report. From there, the birds were transported westward not as food but as exotic or culturally revered creatures, the team suggests June 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Cereal cultivation may have acted as a catalyst for chicken domestication,” says Peters, of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
The domesticated fowl then arrived in Mediterranean Europe no earlier than around 2,800 years ago, archaeologist Julia Best of Cardiff University in Wales and colleagues report June 6 in Antiquity. The birds appeared in northwest Africa between 1,100 and 800 years ago, the team says.
Researchers have debated where and when chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) originated for more than 50 years. India’s Indus Valley, northern China and Southeast Asia have all been touted as domestication centers. Proposed dates for chickens’ first appearance have mostly ranged from around 4,000 to 10,500 years ago. A 2020 genetic study of modern chickens suggested that domestication occurred among Southeast Asian red jungle fowl. But DNA analyses, increasingly used to study animal domestication, couldn’t specify when domesticated chickens first appeared (SN: 7/6/17).
Using chicken remains previously excavated at more than 600 sites in 89 countries, Peters’ group determined whether the chicken bones had been found where they were originally buried by soil or, instead, had moved downward into older sediment over time and thus were younger than previously assumed.
After establishing the timing of chickens’ appearances at various sites, the researchers used historical references to chickens and data on subsistence strategies in each society to develop a scenario of the animals’ domestication and spread.
The new story begins in Southeast Asian rice fields. The earliest known chicken remains come from Ban Non Wat, a dry rice–farming site in central Thailand that roughly dates to between 1650 B.C. and 1250 B.C. Dry rice farmers plant the crop on upland soil soaked by seasonal rains rather than in flooded fields or paddies. That would have made rice grains at Ban Non Wat fair game for avian ancestors of chickens.
These fields attracted hungry wild birds called red jungle fowl. Red jungle fowl increasingly fed on rice grains, and probably grains of another cereal crop called millet, grown by regional farmers, Peters’ group speculates. A cultivated familiarity with people launched chicken domestication by around 3,500 years ago, the researchers say.
Chickens did not arrive in central China, South Asia or Mesopotamian society in what’s now Iran and Iraq until nearly 3,000 years ago, the team estimates.
Peters and colleagues have for the first time assembled available evidence “into a fully coherent and plausible explanation of not only where and when, but also how and why chicken domestication happened,” says archaeologist Keith Dobney of the University of Sydney who did not participate in the new research.
But the new insights into chickens don’t end there. Using radiocarbon dating, Best’s group determined that 23 chicken bones from 16 sites in Eurasia and Africa were generally younger, in some cases by several thousand years, than previously thought. These bones had apparently settled into lower sediment layers over time, where they were found with items made by earlier human cultures.
A researcher points to chicken bones from England that are more than 2,000 years old (middle), which lie between bones of larger modern chickens.
JONATHAN REES AND CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
Archaeological evidence indicates that chickens and rice cultivation spread across Asia and Africa in tandem, Peters’ group says. But rather than eating early chickens, people may have viewed them as special or sacred creatures. At Ban Non Wat and other early Southeast Asian sites, partial or whole skeletons of adult chickens were placed in human graves. That behavior suggests chickens enjoyed some sort of social or cultural significance, Peters says.
In Europe, several of the earliest chickens were buried alone or in human graves and show no signs of having been butchered.
The expansion of the Roman Empire around 2,000 years ago prompted more widespread consumption of chicken and eggs, Best and colleagues say. In England, chickens were not eaten regularly until around 1,700 years ago, primarily at Roman-influenced urban and military sites. Overall, about 700 to 800 years elapsed between the introduction of chickens in England and their acceptance as food, the researchers conclude. Similar lag times may have occurred at other sites where the birds were introduced.
CITATIONS
J. Peters et al. The biocultural origins and dispersal of domestic chickens. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published June 6, 2022. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2121978119.
J. Best et al. Redefining the timing and circumstances of the chicken’s introduction to Europe and north-west Africa. Antiquity. Published June 6, 2022. doi: 10.15184/aqy.2021.90.
M.-S. Wang et al. 863 genomes reveal the origin and domestication of chicken. Cell Research. Vol. 30, June 25, 2020, p. 693. doi: 10.1038/s41422-020-0349-y.
Archaeological evidence indicates that chickens and rice cultivation spread across Asia and Africa in tandem, Peters’ group says. But rather than eating early chickens, people may have viewed them as special or sacred creatures. At Ban Non Wat and other early Southeast Asian sites, partial or whole skeletons of adult chickens were placed in human graves. That behavior suggests chickens enjoyed some sort of social or cultural significance, Peters says.
In Europe, several of the earliest chickens were buried alone or in human graves and show no signs of having been butchered.
The expansion of the Roman Empire around 2,000 years ago prompted more widespread consumption of chicken and eggs, Best and colleagues say. In England, chickens were not eaten regularly until around 1,700 years ago, primarily at Roman-influenced urban and military sites. Overall, about 700 to 800 years elapsed between the introduction of chickens in England and their acceptance as food, the researchers conclude. Similar lag times may have occurred at other sites where the birds were introduced.
CITATIONS
J. Peters et al. The biocultural origins and dispersal of domestic chickens. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published June 6, 2022. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2121978119.
J. Best et al. Redefining the timing and circumstances of the chicken’s introduction to Europe and north-west Africa. Antiquity. Published June 6, 2022. doi: 10.15184/aqy.2021.90.
M.-S. Wang et al. 863 genomes reveal the origin and domestication of chicken. Cell Research. Vol. 30, June 25, 2020, p. 693. doi: 10.1038/s41422-020-0349-y.
About Bruce BowerE-mail
Bruce Bower has written about the behavioral sciences for Science News since 1984. He writes about psychology, anthropology, archaeology and mental health issues.
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