In determining what’s true, Americans consider the intentions of the information source

Boston College psychologists tested the roots of truth judgments in a so-called “post-truth” era

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BOSTON COLLEGE

Chestnut Hill, Mass. (7/17/2023)  – Putting truth to the test in the “post-truth era”, Boston College psychologists conducted experiments that show when Americans decide whether a claim of fact should qualify as true or false, they consider the intentions of the information source, the team reported recently in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

That confidence is based on what individuals think the source is trying to do – in this case either informing or deceiving their audience.

“Even when people know precisely how accurate or inaccurate a claim of fact is, whether they consider that claim to be true or false hinges on the intentions they attribute to the claim’s information source,” said Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Liane Young, an author of the report. “In other words, the intentions of information sources sway people’s judgments about what information should qualify as true.”

Lead author Isaac Handley-Miner, a PhD student and researcher in Young’s Morality Lab, said the so-called post-truth era has revealed vigorous disagreement over the truth of claims of fact — even for claims that are easy to verify.

“That disagreement has alarmed our society,” said Handley-Miner. “After all, it’s often assumed that the labels ‘true’ and ‘false’ should correspond to the objective accuracy of a claim. But is objective accuracy actually the only criterion people consider when deciding what should qualify as true or false? Or, even when people know how objectively accurate a given claim of fact is, might they be sensitive to features of the social context—such as the intentions of the information source? We set out to test whether the intentions of information sources affect whether people consider a claim of fact to be true or false even when they have access to the ground truth.”

The researchers showed participants a series of claims accompanied by the ground truth relevant to those claims, according to the report. In one experiment, the claims concerned politicized topics such as climate change, abortion, and gun violence. In another experiment, these claims concerned non-politicized topics such as the average lifespan of a car and the price of a pair of headphones. The researchers asked participants in both experiments to decide whether they would consider each claim of fact to be true or false. 

When presented with a claim of fact, study participants were presented with one of two scenarios about the source of the information they were assessing: the information source either wanted to deceive or inform them. To do this, the researchers swapped out the news outlet that allegedly published the claim. For example, one participant might be told that a claim about climate change came from Fox News, while another participant might be told that the same claim about climate change came from MSNBC, Handley-Miner said.

In the experiment with claims about non-politicized topics, the researchers told the participants whether the information source was trying to be informative or deceptive, he said.

“We presented participants with claims of fact and ensured that participants knew precisely how accurate or inaccurate those claims were,” Handley-Miner said. “Across participants, we varied whether the source of those claims intended to inform or deceive their audience. Participants reported whether they would consider the claims to be true or false given the supplied ground truth. We then evaluated whether participants were more likely to classify claims as true when the information source was trying to inform versus deceive their audience.”

The researchers worked with 1,181 participants and examined approximately 16,200 responses fielded during their experiments.

Although participants knew precisely how accurate the claims were, participants classified claims as false more often when they judged the information source to be intending to deceive them.

Similarly, they classified claims as true more often when they judged the information source to be intending to provide an approximate account rather than a precise one, according to the study. For instance, what if someone knows for certain that 114 people attended an event, but one source reports 109 people attended, and another source reports that 100 attended? An individual is likely to view the latter number as true because it’s assumed the source is providing an estimate, Young said.

The findings suggest that, even if people have access to the same set of facts, they might disagree about the truth of claims if they attribute discrepant intentions to information sources.

The results demonstrated that people are not merely sensitive to the objective accuracy of claims of fact when classifying them as true or false. While this study focused on the intent of the information source, Young and Handley-Miner say intent is probably not the only other feature people use to evaluate truth.

In future work, the researchers hope to develop an expanded understanding about how people think about truth. Moreover, given the rise in popularity of Artificial Intelligence models, such as ChatGPT, the researchers may investigate whether state-of-the-art AI models “think” about truth similarly to humans, or whether these models merely attend to objective accuracy when evaluating truth.

The research was supported by funding from John Templeton Foundation, the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and BC’s Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society’s Grants for Exploratory Collaborative Scholarship (SIGECS) program.

In addition to Young and Handley-Miner, co-authors of the report included doctoral candidate Michael Pope, Boston College Associate Professor of Philosophy Richard Atkins, Associate Professor of Communication Mo Jones-Jang, and Associate Professor of Philosophy Daniel McKaughan; and Dartmouth College’s Jonathan Phillips.

 

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-023-34806-4 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The intentions of information sources can affect what information people think qualifies as true

Political apathy spreads from parents to

adolescent children

Study identifies risks unique to families with close ties

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: IN MANY COUNTRIES IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA, THE YOUNGEST VOTERS HAVE THE LOWEST PARTICIPATION RATES. view more 

CREDIT: ALEX DOLCE, FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

Political apathy is growing in democracies around the world. Political apathy, also known as political alienation, describes feelings of separation and disaffection, a sense of powerlessness and an indifference to politics and political institutions. A hallmark of political alienation is a refusal to vote or participate in political activities. Adolescents and young adults are no exception to these trends. In many countries in Europe and North America, the youngest voters have the lowest participation rates.

Why are new voters so apathetic about politics? Many factors are at play. However, a new study from researchers at Florida Atlantic University focused on one of the most salient: parent attitudes about politics.

The study, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, indicates that political disaffection spreads from parents to children. Specifically, parent political alienation predicted subsequent increases in adolescent child political alienation one year later for youth who described relationships with parents as warm, but not for those who described relationships with parents as distant.

Put simply, in households where parents and adolescents are close, parents transmit political apathy to their adolescent children, which may have the unfortunate consequence of contributing to low political participation among young voters.

In this study, 571 German adolescents (314 girls, 257 boys), along with their mothers and their fathers, each completed questionnaires describing their own political alienation at two time points, approximately one year apart. In addition, adolescents completed questionnaires describing their perceptions of warmth in relationships with parents. Adolescents were in grades six, eight and 10 at the outset.

Mothers and fathers did not differ in terms of influence. Both were equally important in shaping adolescent attitudes about politics. Influence was a one-way street: adolescents did not contribute to the political alienation of either parent.

The findings from this new study are important because they point to a potentially promising new avenue of raising political participation among young voters: targeting the political attitudes of those with whom they are close, particularly their parents.

“The logic is straightforward,” said Brett Laursen, Ph.D., senior author and a psychology professor in FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. “Children who are close to their parents are more likely to identify with them and are more receptive to messages from them about politics. We listen to those we like, we engage them in dialogue, we identify with them and we emulate their behaviors.” 

Political alienation reflects distrust and a lack of confidence in political systems and political figures. Political disaffection can be challenging for democracies as politically alienated citizens tend not to vote. When elections are decided by a small portion of the electorate, disaffection grows, which can further drive down turnout in a vicious cycle. It is difficult to change attitudes about politics. Many politically disaffected young adults continue to refrain from voting and political participation as they get older.

Findings from this study also are a reminder that parent influence is a double-edged sword.

“The results of our study matter because despite the rising importance of friends and peers, many forms of adolescent behavior remain highly susceptible to parent influence,” said Laursen. “We like to think of parents as positive socialization agents, and typically they are. But bad habits and bad attitudes also can spread from parents to children, and parents should be alert to this possibility. Some parents underestimate their importance. Children are watching and listening, even during late adolescence. They take cues from parents, particularly in families that are close-knit and warm. Attitudes toward politics are just another example of the many ways that parents exert a profound and lasting impact on the lives of their children.”

- FAU -

About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, FAU embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. FAU is designated a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report and a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.

 

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Family Psychology

DOI

10.1037/fam0001098 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The Spread of Political Alienation From Parents to Adolescent Children

Cap top 20% of energy users to reduce carbon emissions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

Consumers in the richer, developed nations will have to accept restrictions on their energy use if international climate change targets are to be met, warn researchers.  

The big challenge is to identify the fairest and most equitable way that governments can curtail energy use, a process known as energy demand reduction.   

Writing in the journal Nature Energy, the research team - led by Milena Büchs, Professor of Sustainable Welfare at the University of Leeds - analysed several scenarios to identify a potential solution.   

One option is to cap the top 20% of energy users while allowing those people who use little energy and have poverty-level incomes to be able to increase their consumption levels and improve their quality of life.   

Setting the energy use cap 

Across any population there will be a range - or distribution - of values for how much energy individuals use. The values are sorted into 100 percentiles - for example, the 50th percentile represents the value that is exactly in the middle of the energy distribution, which half the population fail to reach and the other half exceeds.  

Under the energy demand reduction scheme, the top-level energy users would see their energy use restricted to the value of energy use at the 80th percentile. In the scenario modelled, that would be 170.2 Giga Joules (GJ) per person per year, compared to the mean energy use of the top 20% of consumers of 196.8 GJ per person per year.  

Using data from 27 European states, the researchers modelled how effective this energy demand reduction strategy would be. They found it would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 11.4% from domestic energy sources; 16.8% from transport and 9.7% from total energy consumption.   

Allowing people in poverty to increase their energy use would reduce these emissions savings by relatively small amounts - 1.2 percentage points for domestic energy; 0.9 for transport; and 1.4 for total energy consumption. It would enable the less well-off to meet unmet needs, perhaps where they may have been unable to adequately heat their home. 

Professor Büchs said: “Policymakers need to win public support for energy demand reduction mechanisms. The reality is decarbonisation on the supply side, where energy is generated and distributed, will not be enough to deliver the emission reductions that are needed.   

“So, energy demand will have to be reduced. That is the inescapable reality. Experts on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate that reducing energy demand could produce between 40% and 70% of the emissions reductions that need to be found by 2050.  

“Our research is indicating that public support for energy demand reduction is possible if the public see the schemes as being fair and deliver climate justice.”   

The data in the study was collected as part of the 2015 European Household Budget Survey from 275,614 households. Household expenditure and data from the Exiobase dataset were used as proxies for energy use and emissions.  

Public support   

As part of the study, the research team also held focus groups with the public to gauge people’s responses to different policy interventions to reduce energy use. Quotas on flights and car mileage were seen by some respondents as attacks on freedom and choice.   

Conversely, other people supported a ban on activities beyond a certain level, say for business or personal flights.    

There was a recognition that there is a climate emergency and the problem needs to be tackled urgently.    

Writing in the journal, the researchers noted: “Several participants acknowledged that regulations that limit ‘luxury’ energy use would treat everyone equally and therefore fairly, which can be conducive to acceptance if good reasons are provided, as travel and other restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic have demonstrated.”   

Targeting ‘luxury’ energy use would be seen to treat everyone fairly and equally and that could soften any opposition to energy demand mechanisms. 

The paper "Emissions savings from equitable energy demand reduction" can be downloaded from the Nature Energy website when the embargo lifts. The authors are: Milena Büchs, Noel Cass, Caroline Mullen, Karen Lucas and Diana Ivanova.  

END 

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JOURNAL

Nature Energy

DOI

10.1038/s41560-023-01283-y 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Cap top 20% of energy users to reduce carbon emissions

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jul-2023

UK

As interest rates soar, new study reveals insecure workers are ‘trapped’ and 42% fear job losses

Researchers from the Work Foundation at Lancaster University say the notion that people are choosing to stay in insecure work for the ‘perk’ of flexibility is flawed – as almost half (46%) would find another job if given the chance

Reports and Proceedings

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

Researchers from the Work Foundation at Lancaster University say the notion that people are choosing to stay in insecure work for the ‘perk’ of flexibility is flawed – as almost half (46%) would find another job if given the chance.

However, they feel trapped due to limiting factors such as the cost and availability of childcare and transport, as well as a lack of local job opportunities.

With persistent inflation, rising interest rates and the cost of food on the rise, the think-tank warns that millions of insecure workers in the UK are most vulnerable due to the volatility in their pay, working hours and a lack of core protections like sick and redundancy pay. And, its latest study now finds one in four insecure workers (28%) are struggling to get by – with women suffering most.

Its warning comes on the back of survey responses from 4,000 UK workers (2,000 in insecure work and 2,000 in secure work) conducted by the Work Foundation in March, and supported by UNISON. This data informs new research which aims to understand why people opt to work in ‘insecure’ jobs – or roles that have unpredictable pay, no guarantee of set hours or future work, and no access to employment rights and protection – and explores the factors that shape their choices.

Researchers say insecure workers are more than three times as likely as secure workers to perceive a risk of job loss – with 42% of insecure workers expecting to lose their jobs within the next 12 months, compared with just 13% of secure workers. Survey responses also suggest younger and older workers are significantly more likely to feel they have more limited choices when looking to move out of insecure work, along with those on low-incomes and people working part-time.

Women in insecure work are also impacted more than men. One in three women (32%) say they are struggling to get by financially, compared to less than one in four men (23%); and 16% of women in insecure employment say they are suffering from poor mental health, compared to 11% of men (this affects 10% of men and 11% of women in secure employment).

Ben Harrison, Director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, said: “As inflation continues to bite and interest rates rise, workers in insecure jobs are under enormous strain. While many might believe that the benefit of flexibility offered to workers on temporary, part time or zero-hour contracts outweigh the risks of this form of employment, our new research shows that nearly half of these workers disagree.

“The reality is they feel trapped in these jobs by circumstances out of their control – and, without Government intervention to overcome these obstacles, they’re likely to be prevented from accessing more secure work in future.

“As our living standards continue to decline and the UK teeters on the edge of another recession a stable and well-paid job has never been more important. Workers in more secure employment are better able to weather economic turbulence, but this isn’t the case for the millions of workers in this country trapped in severely insecure work. They are already struggling, and it isn’t just impacting on their pockets – it’s affecting their mental health, too.”

UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea, said: “The cost-of-living crisis is hitting those on the lowest incomes the hardest. 

"To make matters worse, many people on zero hours and other kinds of insecure contracts are also losing out on sick pay and other employment rights most workers take for granted.

“It's no surprise that precarious work has the greatest negative impact on disabled employees and women juggling jobs with caring commitments. They don't choose to work in this way.

"Many are stuck in an insecure rut because other opportunities simply aren't open to them.

"This has to change. The government should ensure everyone feels secure at work and is able to thrive in their jobs. 

"No-one should feel trapped or be exploited because of the circumstances in which they find themselves. Genuine choice and flexibility must become a part of every job."

The survey also reveals:

• One in three insecure workers are uncertain of how much they will earn in the next three months and are twice as likely (26%) to experience job related stress 4-6 days a week than those in secure employment (13%)
• Insecure workers are also over four times more likely to see their shifts change at the last minute, with over half saying this led to decreases in their pay
• Over 52% of insecure workers earn less than Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Minimum Income Standard of £25,500 – and more than one in four insecure workers (28%) say they are finding it difficult to get by
• Part-time insecure workers and freelancers are significantly more likely than other workers to indicate they are struggling financially, at around 34% from both groups, compared with 23% of full-time workers
• Workers are 3.7 times more likely to say they suffer from poor mental health when they also lack confidence in being able to afford an unexpected expense.

“A political battleground is opening up on the future of the UK labour market with both major political parties pledging tackle labour shortages and drive up the quality of jobs on offer to UK workers,” Ben Harrison continues. “This report provides crucial new evidence to inform these debates, shedding new light on the choices and experiences of those in insecure work, and outlines the interventions needed to support workers into better paid, more secure jobs in the future.”

The Work Foundation calls on Government to oblige employers to embed flexibility into all job roles from day one of employment, and make it available to all. It also encourages organisations to design campaigns to promote flexible working specifically to men and disabled workers.

Amongst the report recommendations it also urges the Government to increase the rate of pay for workers on maternity, paternity and parental leave and develop a long-term plan to bolster the childcare sector, in line with parents’ needs and ambitions.

To read the report and full recommendations, please visit: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/work-foundation

ENDS

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

Analysis: Most research on PFAS harms is unpublicized

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GREEN SCIENCE POLICY INSTITUTE

Though per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) make headlines daily, a new paper reveals that most studies finding links between PFAS exposure and human health harms are published without a press release and receive little or no media coverage. The peer-reviewed analysis, published today in the journal Environmental Health, found that studies without any press attention receive fewer scholarly citations as well.

“It’s a shame that only a small slice of this science is reaching the public,” said lead author Rebecca Fuoco, the director of science communications at the Green Science Policy Institute. “New studies finding strong associations between forever chemicals and serious harms like preterm birth and cancer are flying under the radar. Research tucked away in scientific journals has limited reach, and therefore, impact.”

The authors analyzed 273 peer-reviewed epidemiological studies on PFAS human health impacts with publication years 2018-2020, as collected by the PFAS-Tox Database. Of papers reporting a statistically significant association with health harm, those with a press release received 20 times more media attention (as assessed by Altmetric scores) than those that did not. However, less than 8% of the papers with statistically significant findings issued a press release.

Papers without press releases included studies reporting significant links between PFAS exposure and risks of preterm birth, ovarian and breast cancers, osteoporosis, and gestational diabetes. These studies received no or very little news coverage and social media posts.

Though the analysis focused on PFAS research, the authors expect that the results reflect the larger body of environmental health research as well as other fields of science.

One reason research teams may forego issuing a press release is a real or perceived lack of career incentive to pursue non-scholarly communications. However, in this analysis the mean age-adjusted citation count for papers with press releases was two-thirds higher than those without. There was also a positive correlation between citations and Altmetric scores.

Another barrier is a fear among scientists that press coverage of their research may be inaccurate or over-hyped. However, previous research has found that overstatements can often be traced back to university press releases. This suggests that the solution is for scientists to take a more active role in press release drafting and ensure their accuracy rather than not issue one at all. Other barriers include lack of time, resources, or media savvy as well as differing philosophical views about the role of scientists in society.

“I urge scientists and their institutions to embrace media outreach as a critical part of the research process,” said co-author Linda Birnbaum, scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and scholar in residence at Duke University. “As scientists we hold the key to information that can inform better policies, medical practices, industry innovation, and more. It’s our responsibility to unlock that potential by sharing our research with a wide audience.”

“Most scientific studies in our country are funded by the public who deserve to know the results of the research they’re paying for,” said Arlene Blum, executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute and a co-author of the study. “With a press release and straightforward plan, scientists can increase their media coverage, reach, and the impact of their work."  

The authors include recommendations for scientists who wish to get more media attention to their research and point to a webpage with videos, templates, and additional resources.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Health

DOI

10.1186/s12940-023-00997-6 

ARTICLE TITLE

Effective communications strategies to increase the impact of environmental health research

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Jul-2023

Drought-driven shift away from hydropower is costing the US West billions of dollars: study



Sharon Udasin
Mon, July 17, 2023 

Switching from hydropower to fossil fuels during periods of drought has cost Western U.S. states about $20 billion over the past two decades, according to new findings from Stanford University scientists.

When reservoir levels and river flows succumb to dry heat, hydropower plants can no longer operate — meaning that utilities must kindle facilities that burn coal and natural gas to meet rising electricity demand.

But the researchers found that with such a shift comes dramatic consequences.

This sharp transition from hydropower to fossil fuels results in surging carbon dioxide emissions, methane leakages, air quality-related deaths and enormous financial expenses, the scientists recently revealed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The impact on greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and human health could represent a large and unaccounted-for cost of climate change,” lead author Minghao Qiu, a postdoctoral scholar in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, said in a statement.

Qiu and his colleagues calculated that the total health and economic damages caused by drought-driven fossil fuel power generation in the U.S. was equivalent to about $20 billion between 2001 and 2021.

Carbon emissions were the biggest contributor to these damages, costing about $14 billion, while deaths associated with fine particle pollution accounted for about $5.1 billion and methane leakages were responsible for just under $1 billion, according to the study.

To draw their conclusions, the authors conducted their calculations based on widely accepted estimates for costs of carbon and methane emissions.

They assessed the statistical value of a human life based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s “mortality risk valuation” — a measure that considers how much people are willing to pay for small reductions in air pollution-related risks of death.

The authors also used best available estimates to ascertain how much methane leaks to the atmosphere during the production, processing and transportation of oil and gas: 2.3 percent per unit of gas consumed.

Under extreme drought conditions, electricity generation from individual fossil fuel plants can skyrocket up to 65 percent relative to average conditions, mostly due to the need to compensate for lost hydropower, according to the study.

And the resultant pollution does not respect state lines.

More than 54 percent of this drought-driven, fossil fuel-based electricity production is transboundary, with drought in one region leading to net imports of electricity — and therefore increasing emissions from power plants in other regions, the authors found.

“This is not a local story,” Qiu said. “A climate shock in one place can have serious ramifications for a totally different geographic area due to the interconnected nature of many energy systems.”

The total monetized costs of excess death and greenhouse gas emissions are about 1.2 to 2.5 times greater than reported economic costs that directly result from reduced hydropower production, the researchers estimated.

In California alone, the drought-induced shift away from hydropower electricity production led to more than $5 billion in damages from 2012 to 2016, or 2.5 times the direct economic cost of switching to more expensive fossil fuels, according to the study.

Those states that are heavily dependent on hydropower for their electricity — such as California, Washington and Oregon — have suffered particularly dramatic effects from the switch to fossil fuel reliance during dry periods.

During future years of extreme drought, such shifts could end up responsible for up to 40 percent of total emissions released via electricity production, the scientists warned.

Previous research, they contended, has underestimated the toll droughts are taking on electricity systems by failing to account for factors beyond the direct economic costs of these disruptions.

Increasingly frequent extreme heat periods will therefore present a challenge to policymakers set on achieving net-zero emission goals in hero-dependent states, according to the authors.

While this specific study focused on the American West, the researchers stressed that many countries around the world are facing similar risks.

Higher-emitting coal-fired plants could end up replacing lost resources in some nations, as opposed to the comparatively lower-emitting fossil fuel — natural gas — that tends to stand in for hydropower in the West, the authors explained.

Meanwhile, other countries that lack excess generation capacity could endure blackouts if hydropower operations shut down, they warned.

“In these regions, drought’s interaction with the energy system can have a cascading series of negative impacts on emissions and health,” corresponding author Marshall Burke, an associate professor at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, said in a statement.

Going forward, the scientists recommended that policymakers implement “more ambitious and targeted measures” to mitigate the both the emissions and health burden that stems from the electricity sector during drought.

“If we want to solve this issue, we need an even greater expansion of renewable energy alongside better energy storage, so we don’t need to tap into fossil fuels as much,” Qiu said.

“Ultimately, to limit future warming and the drought risks that come with it, we need to reduce our emissions,” he added.

Does the Telecom Industry Have an Exxon Valdez-Scale Problem on Its Hands With Toxic Lead Cables?

Daniel Frankel

NEXT TV
Sun, July 16, 2023 

Wheels of broadband fiber optic cables.

A week ago, The Wall Street Journal ran a stunning exposé revealing that cables laid down by telecom companies including AT&T and Verizon Communications decades ago are lined with lead, and that lead is potentially leaching into the ground.

By the WSJ's count, around 2,000 cables around the U.S. match this dangerous criteria.

In the past week, by equity analyst Craig Moffett’s accounting Monday, AT&T, Verizon, Lumen and Frontier Communications have lost a combined $18 billion in market capitalization for a weighted average decline of 6.4%.

Said industry trade group U.S. Telecom in a statement: “Many considerations go into determining whether legacy lead-sheathed telecom cables should be removed or should be left in place, including those regarding the safety of workers who must handle the cables, potential impacts on the environment, the age and composition of the cables, their geographic location, and customer needs as well as the needs of the business and infrastructure demands. The U.S. telecommunications industry stands ready to engage constructively on this issue."

With the story still reverberating around the media ecosystem, the equity analysts for another bank, TD Cowen, said it's too early to assess the long-term damage to telecom companies.

"While 2,000 cables sounds very manageable, we do not know the breadth of WSJ sample size; meanwhile the article notes that Telcos have previously acknowledged ‘some older metropolitan areas may still have over 50% lead cable,‘ suggesting the amount of lead-encased cables could be enormous,” reads a letter from TD Cowen's Gregory Williams sent to shareholders Sunday.

“If so, the cost could be in the tens of billions of dollars,” the letter continued. “We don’t believe the lead-sheathed cables were pervasive in last mile access networks, but perhaps used in aggregation trunk cables, essentially throughout the country.”

For the executive decision-makers at telecom companies, here's where the TD Cowen report got really scary.

“While many of the cables are not in use, and we suspect ownership of the cables will be hotly debated, we believe all the notable legacy ILECs will be in the conversation given AT&T’s breakup in 1984 into the seven RBOCs,” TD Cowan said. “When we consider other catastrophic environmental settlements, some coming to mind include the BP Gulf oil spill for $20.8 billion, the 3M ‘forever chemicals’ for $10 billion, or Exxon Valdez (criminal and financial).’

Another report, sent from MoffettNathanson senior equity analyst Moffett Monday morning, indicates just what a surprise the issue was … to pretty much everyone.

“In our combined decades of covering and/or consulting to the industry, we had never previously encountered the topic of lead in telecom networks,” Moffett wrote. “But at least we’re in good company; per the Wall Street Journal, four former FCC commissioners that it interviewed weren’t aware of lead in these networks, either.”

U.S. Telecom agrees: “We have not seen, nor have regulators identified, evidence that legacy lead-sheathed telecom cables are a leading cause of lead exposure or the cause of a public health issue," the group said.

Again, at this point, there’s no way to accurately assess the size of the problem.

“The WSJ identified some 2,000 lead-sheathed cables, but admitted the actual number could be orders of magnitude higher,” Moffett wrote. “Neither they, we, nor anyone else with whom we have spoken has any real idea what’s out there. Some of these cables have been removed, some have been abandoned in place and some are still in use. We’d be shocked if the carriers even had accurate, comprehensive records regarding the presence or location of all lead cables in their networks.”

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/07/at-falls-to-29-year-low-amid-concerns.html

'The night turned into day': How Manhattan Project scientists reacted to the world's first atomic bomb test


Alexander McNamara
Sun, July 16, 2023 

We see an enormous yellow bubble that is an atomic bomb exploding against a black sky.

To celebrate the release of the Christopher Nolan biopic "Oppenheimer," below is an extract from the book the movie is based on, "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" (Knopf, 2005), by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

RICHARD FEYNMAN was standing 20 miles from the Trinity site when he was handed dark glasses.

He decided he wouldn't see anything through the dark glasses, so instead he climbed into the cab of a truck facing Alamogordo. The truck windshield would protect his eyes from harmful ultraviolet rays, and he'd be able actually to see the flash. Even so, he reflexively ducked when the horizon lit up with a tremendous flash. When he looked up again, he saw a white light changing into yellow and then orange: "A big ball of orange, the center that was so bright, becomes a ball of orange that starts to rise and billow a little bit and get a little black around the edges, and then you see it's a big ball of smoke with flashes on the inside of the fire going out, the heat." A full minute and a half after the explosion, Feynman finally heard an enormous bang, followed by the rumble of man-made thunder.

James Conant had expected a relatively quick flash of light. But the white light so filled the sky that for a moment he thought "something had gone wrong" and the "whole world has gone up in flames."

Related: Who was J. Robert Oppenheimer? Biographer Kai Bird delves into the physicist's fascinating life and legacy

"I could feel the heat on my face a full twenty miles away."

Bob Serber was also 20 miles away, lying face down and holding a piece of welder's glass to his eyes. "Of course," he wrote later, "just at the moment my arm got tired and I lowered the glass for a second, the bomb went off. I was completely blinded by the flash." When his vision returned 30 seconds later, he saw a bright violet column rising to 20,000 or 30,000 feet. "I could feel the heat on my face a full 20 miles away."

We see a black-and-white photo of famous scientists in suits at the bombing site.

Joe Hirschfelder, the chemist assigned to measure the radioactive fallout from the explosion, later described the moment: "All of a sudden, the night turned into day, and it was tremendously bright, the chill turned into warmth; the fireball gradually turned from white to yellow to red as it grew in size and climbed into the sky; after about five seconds the darkness returned but with the sky and the air filled with a purple glow, just as though we were surrounded by an aurora borealis. . . . We stood there in awe as the blast wave picked up chunks of dirt from the desert soil and soon passed us by."

Related: What was the Manhattan Project?

Frank Oppenheimer was next to his brother [Robert] when the gadget exploded. Though he was lying on the ground, "the light of the first flash penetrated and came up from the ground through one's [eye]lids. When one first looked up, one saw the fireball, and then almost immediately afterwards, this unearthly hovering cloud. It was very bright and very purple." Frank thought, "Maybe it's going to drift over the area and engulf us." He hadn't expected the heat from the flash to be nearly that intense. In a few moments, the thunder of the blast was bouncing back and forth on the distant mountains. "But I think the most terrifying thing," Frank recalled, "was this really brilliant purple cloud, black with radioactive dust, that hung there, and you had no feeling of whether it would go up or would drift towards you."

Oppenheimer himself was lying facedown, just outside the control bunker, situated 10,000 yards south of ground zero. As the countdown reached the two-minute mark, he muttered, "Lord, these affairs are hard on the heart." An Army general watched him closely as the final countdown commenced: "Dr. Oppenheimer . . . grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off. He scarcely breathed. . . . For the last few seconds he stared directly ahead and then when the announcer shouted 'Now!' and there came this tremendous burst of light followed shortly thereafter by the deep growling roar of the explosion, his face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief."

"Lots of boys not grown up yet will owe their life to it."

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We don't know, of course, what flashed through Oppie's mind at this seminal moment. His brother recalled, "I think we just said 'It worked.'"

Afterwards, [physicist Isidor] Rabi caught sight of Robert from a distance. Something about his gait, the easy bearing of a man in command of his destiny, made Rabi's skin tingle: "I'll never forget his walk; I'll never forget the way he stepped out of the car. . . . his walk was like High Noon . . . this kind of strut. He had done it."

"Later that morning, when William L. Laurence, the New York Times reporter selected by Groves to chronicle the event, approached him for comment, Oppenheimer reportedly described his emotions in pedestrian terms. The effect of the blast, he told Laurence, was "terrifying" and "not entirely undepressing." After pausing a moment, he added, "Lots of boys not grown up yet will owe their life to it."


American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer - $14.99 at Amazon

The definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress.

Extracted from American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin published by Atlantic Books (2023).

8 wild stories about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb'

Ben Turner
Sat, July 15, 2023 

A black and white photograph of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904 -1967) is infamous for spearheading the development of the world's first atomic bomb — but the physicist's life was far from boring outside the lab. Here are eight intriguing stories about Oppenheimer, drawn from the biography "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" (Knopf, 2005), by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

1. He was the first to propose the existence of black holes

J. Robert Oppenheimer writing equations on a chalkboard.

Oppenheimer was a tireless dilettante and loved to pursue his intellectual curiosity in any direction it took him.

After having been introduced to astrophysics by his friend Richard Tolman, Oppenheimer began publishing papers on theorized, yet-to-be-discovered cosmic objects. These papers included calculations of the properties of white dwarfs (the dense glowing embers of dead stars) and the theoretical mass limit of neutron stars (the incredibly dense husks of exploded stars).

Perhaps his most stunning astrophysical prediction came in 1939, when Oppenheimer co-wrote (with his then-student Hartland Snyder) "On Continued Gravitational Contraction." The paper predicted that, far in the depths of space, there should exist "dying stars whose gravitational pull exceeded their energy production."

The article received little attention at the time but was later rediscovered by physicists who realized that Oppenheimer had foreseen the existence of black holes.

2. Einstein called him a fool

Oppenheimer learning from Einstein.

Oppenheimer's stunning intellect and vast learning didn't always overcome his emotional immaturity and political naivety.

One such instance was a disagreement he had with Albert Einstein during the height of the McCarthy Red Scare. After bumping into Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he spoke with his colleague about the growing efforts to revoke his security clearance.

Einstein counseled his colleague that he needn't submit himself to a grueling investigation and trial by the Atomic Energy Commission; he could just walk away.

But Oppenheimer replied that he would do more good from inside the Washington establishment than from the outside, and that he had decided to stay and fight. It was a battle Oppenheimer would lose, and the defeat marked him for the rest of his life.

Einstein walked to his office and, nodding at Oppenheimer, said to his secretary, "There goes a narr [Yiddish for 'fool']."

3. He may have tried to poison his professor with an apple

Pretty illustration of Bradford Rudge (1805-1885) English school Trinity College at Cambridge University. Here we see scholars dressed in black gowns wandering on the green grass banks of the River Cam and weeping willow trees.

Oppenheimer faced trying times while studying for his doctorate in physics at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England. His intense emotional issues and feelings of growing isolation drove him into a period of deep depression.

Oppenheimer's adviser at Cambridge was Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, an intelligent and gifted experimental physicist whom Oppenheimer envied. Despite Oppenheimer's renowned impracticality, Blackett pushed his student into laboratory work.

Oppenheimer's constant failures in the lab and his inability to win Blackett's approval made him intensely anxious. Consumed by his jealousy, Oppenheimer may have gone to extreme lengths. A longtime friend, Francis Fergusson, claimed that Oppenheimer once admitted that he laced an apple with noxious chemicals and left it enticingly on Blackett's desk.

However, there is no evidence of this incident beyond Fergusson's claims — and Oppenheimer's grandson, Charles Oppenheimer, disputes that this ever happened. But if there was a poisoned apple, Blackett didn't eat it. Oppenheimer is said to have faced expulsion from the school and possible criminal charges, before his father intervened and negotiated that his son instead be put on academic probation.

4. President Truman called him a crybaby

U.S. military commander General Douglas MacArthur (1880 - 1964) and U.S. President Harry S. Truman (1884 - 1972) as they talk in the back seat of a car in Wake Island, October 18 1950.

Oppenheimer was very persuasive in relaxed settings, but he had a terrible tendency to crack under pressure.

Just two months after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer met with President Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office to discuss his concerns about a possible future nuclear war with the USSR. Truman brushed off Oppenheimer's worries, assuring the physicist that the Soviets would never be able to develop an atomic bomb.

Maddened by the president's ignorance, Oppenheimer wrung his hands and said in a low voice, "Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands."

Truman was enraged by this remark, and promptly ended the meeting.

"Blood on his hands, dammit — he hasn't half as much blood on his hands as I have," Truman said. "You just don't go around bellyaching about it." Truman later told his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, "I don't want to see that son-of-a-bitch in this office ever again."

Truman regularly returned to the subject of the Oppenheimer meeting with Acheson, writing in 1946 that the father of the atomic bomb was a "cry-baby scientist" who came to "my office some five or six months ago and spent most of his time wringing his hands and telling me they had blood on them because of the discovery of atomic energy."

5. His students were obsessed with him

U.S. theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer lectures at Kyoto University on September 14, 1960 in Kyoto, Japan.

Oppenheimer was a verbal physicist by temperament. He didn't rely solely on math to understand the world; he also reached for useful ways to describe it with words. His rhetorical felicity, and his erudition on topics far outside of physics, made him a captivating speaker.

Oppenheimer was so gifted at crafting beautiful sentences — often on the fly — that he enraptured the students he lectured. Some of these students became so obsessed with Oppenheimer that they began to dress and act like him — donning his gray suit and ungainly black shoes, chain-smoking his favorite Chesterfield cigarettes and mimicking his peculiar mannerisms.

The starstruck students were nicknamed the "nim nim boys" because they carefully imitated Oppenheimer's eccentric "nim nim" humming.

6. He was a passionate student of the humanities and could speak six languages, including ancient Sanskrit

Vishnu statue in Angkor Wat. The statue is wearing orange robes and is under an orange parasol.

Oppenheimer loved an intellectual challenge and relished any opportunity to demonstrate his prodigious ability to soak up information. He spoke six languages: Greek, Latin, French, German, Dutch (which he learned in six weeks to deliver a lecture in the Netherlands) and the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit.

Oppenheimer also read a lot of books outside of his field. He told friends that he had read all three volumes of Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" cover to cover on a three-day train trip to New York, that he had similarly devoured Marcel Proust's "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu" ("In Search of Lost Time") to cure his depression while on vacation in Corsica, and that he had learned Sanskrit so he could read the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita.

Oppenheimer's close reading of the Gita gave him his most famous quote. In a 1965 NBC interview, he recalled his thoughts upon seeing the mushroom cloud from the first successful atomic bomb test:

"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that one way or another."

7. At age 12, he was mistaken for a professional geologist and was invited to give a lecture at the New York Mineralogy Club

Light passing through a prism.

From age 7, Oppenheimer became fascinated with crystals because of their structures and interactions with polarized light. He became a fanatical mineral collector and used his family typewriter to begin lengthy and detailed correspondences with local geologists.

Unaware that they were writing to a 12-year-old, one geologist invited Oppenheimer to deliver a lecture at the New York Mineralogy Club. Oppenheimer wanted his dad to explain to the club that his son was only 12, but his father was tickled by the incident and urged him to go.

The room of surprised geologists burst into laughter at the revelation that the boy was their mystery correspondent, but they soon provided him with a wooden box so he could reach the lectern. Oppenheimer delivered his speech and was met with applause.

8. He code-named the first atomic bomb test in honor of his dead mistress

At a nuclear test site near Alamogordo, New Mexico, atomic bomb scientists measure radioactivity in seared sand particles 2 months after the explosion when newsmen saw bomb effects for the first time. Standing left to right: Dr. Kenneth.T. Bainbridge (Harvard University); Joseph G. Hoffman, (Buffalo, NY); Dr. J.R. Oppenheimer, Director of Los Alamos Atomic Bomb Project; Dr. L.H. Hempelman, (Washington University in St. Louis); Dr. R.F. Bacher (Cornell University); Dr. V.W. Weisskopf, (University of Rochester); and Dr. Richard W. Dodson (California). | Location: Near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Oppenheimer first met Jean Tatlock in 1936, and began a passionate romance that continued throughout his marriage to Katherine Puening and ended with Tatlock's death in 1944. When Tatlock and Oppenheimer met, Tatlock was an active member of the Communist Party and persuaded Oppenheimer to allay his concerns about the poverty he was witnessing during the Great Depression by donating to the party.

Oppenheimer's reputation as a communist sympathizer soon attracted the attention of the FBI, whose agents began to follow and wiretap him.

In 1944, Tatlock was found dead in her apartment from an apparent drug overdose. She had suffered for much of her life with intense bouts of depression and left an unsigned note, so her death was ruled a suicide. Nonetheless, conspiracy theories — some alleged by her brother — about intelligence agencies' supposed involvement in her death abounded.

Tatlock introduced Oppenheimer to the poems of John Donne, whose work she loved. He drew from Donne's poem "Batter my heart, three-person'd God …" when he assigned the code name "Trinity" to the first test of an atomic bomb.

The FBI's monitoring of Oppenheimer and Tatlock came back to bite him during his trial at the Atomic Energy Commission's 1954 security hearing, where his affair was exposed and used to allege that he had still held communist sympathies late into World War II. The trial, which resulted in the revoking of Oppenheimer's security clearance, hounded him from public life — making him one of the most prominent victims of McCarthyism.

SCI FI TEK
Isometric taps $25M to build a registry and science platform focused on carbon removal



Ingrid Lunden
Mon, July 17, 2023 

Carbon removal -- technology that aims to remove carbon emissions from the environment by breaking it down and turning it into something less harmful -- saw a big splash of attention last year after Stripe, Shopify, Meta, Alphabet and more collectively agreed to pump $1 billion into funding removal startups. Today, a London startup called Isometric hopes to give some structure to that nascent industry. The startup is launching today armed with $25 million, one of the largest seed rounds this year for a climate startup.

Lowercarbon Capital and Plural are the co-investors in this round, alongside Niklas Zennström (Skype's co-founder and founder of the VC Atomico), David Helgason (founder of Unity Technologies), Ross Mason (founder of MuleSoft) and Ilkka Paananen (founder of Supercell).

Isometric will use the funding both to hire more scientists and technologists and to work on its products. Chief among them is a carbon removal registry to provide data to enterprises, looking to buy removal credits, to the various startups building that technology. Isometric claims it will be the first registry for "high-quality, long-duration" carbon removal credits.

More immediately, it is today launching what it refers to as a "science platform," which will provide a way for carbon removal companies to publish and share their data with those interested in seeing it, and for Isometric's team itself to do more firsthand, human vetting, too.


Some of the first carbon removal startups on Isometric will include Charm Industrial (a specialist in bio-oil sequestration); Eion (focusing on rock weathering); Planetary (ocean alkalinity enhancement company), and Brilliant Planet (a microalgae burial company).

Charm recently announced a big tranche of carbon removal sales to JPMorgan, Stripe, Shopify, Meta, Alphabet, McKinsey and more totaling $50 million. Isometric said that its science team has been "independently reviewing historically delivered tonnes" for Charm, posting them on the new science platform.

Eamon Jubbawy, the founder and CEO of Isometric, is a repeat entrepreneur in the London tech world with his startups ranging from other climate work to enterprise businesses.

He was the co-founder of identity verification startup Onfido (which has been backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from many investors); and more recently he was also the co-founder of Sequence, a financial operations platform (younger, but also backed by big names like Andreessen Horowitz). He also co-founded recycling startup Safi (formerly known as TrueCircle).

He said that Isometric is addressing a specific gap that has been identified in the market.

Carbon offsetting has been a popular route taken by companies that want to contribute something positive to the environment while still running their businesses, but it's also full of flaws. Critics have pointed to the fact that the exchanges don't really address the root causes of pollution and carbon emissions, and that many of the projects, unregulated or not, could turn out to be worthless, or worse.

"I was looking at carbon markets and how badly they work," he said in an interview, and he saw how thinking was starting to shift around them, and the belief that "there was more drastic change needed."

That has led many in the industry to search for alternatives and complements to offsetting, and carbon removal has emerged as one of the key areas to watch, helped in no small part by the efforts from Stripe and its Frontier Initiative co-investors, as well as moves from Apple and Microsoft to incorporate removal into their own ESG strategies.

But given relatively recent state of carbon removal -- and some of the learnings of the pitfalls in more widespread carbon offsetting -- there is an opportunity to provide some structure and order to how removal credits are accounted for, and to vet what the removal companies are claiming to do.

While there are registries out there for carbon offsetting, Jubbawy believes that carbon removal required a new approach.

"The carbon registries that existed missed the mark so badly that the only real option was to build another platform to fix all that, focused on removal," he said.

To be clear, there are still some significant conditionals around carbon removal. A lot of the technology being built and applied by removal companies is still largely untested at scale.

And there are definite leaps of faith that have to be accepted for how some of this might work -- for example, if the model is based on decades of in-ground storage of biofuels but the company developing completely that technique is only a few years old.

On the other hand, the tech and order that Jubbaway and Isometric hope to bring to the space, vetting and making their work more transparent to would-be customers and researchers, could be a significant step in separating what works and what does not.