Episodios

  • Chevron Deference

    Chevron Deference
    Jul 2 2024
    This week we talk about the APA, the Supreme Court, and Marbury v. Madison.We also discuss the Chevron Doctrine, government agencies, and the administrative state.Recommended Book: A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach WeinersmithTranscriptThe Supreme Court's 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision was pivotal to US legal theory and practice because it established the concept of judicial review, which essentially said that US courts could assess laws passed through the typical legislative system, through Congress, and, if they determined those laws were unconstitutional, strike them down.This was a huge rewiring of the US government, as it gave a substantial amount of new power to the court system, and it provided a new check on the legislative system that recentered the Constitution as the source of all law; if the judges decided new laws didn't line up with that original Constitutional intent, according to their interpretation of said intent, the new laws would be a no-go.This is true of statutes that declare policy, as well, which are generally part of the law-making process, and also help shape regulations, guidelines, and other things of that nature—the fuzzier stuff that goes on to effect things, even when some of those fuzzy statements and implications aren't formalized in law, yet.So any and all of this stuff that Congress decides on could, at some point, be looked into by the US court system, and that system can say, nope, that doesn't line up with what's in the Constitution—it's not Constitutional—and that means the Constitution, following Marbury v. Madison, became a lot more of a legal reality in the country, rather than just a collection of principles and ideals, which is how some legislators and legal scholars thought of it before this ruling.Within this same entwined governmental/legal system, Congress sometimes delegates policy decision-making powers to US agencies, allowing them to make legal decisions in cases where Congress passes a law that it is some way ambiguous—saying that there need to be emissions standards on cars, for instance, but leaving the task of coming up with those standards to the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA.This delegation ability was reinforced by a 1984 Supreme Court decision, Chevron v. The Natural Resources Defense Council, today usually referred to as "Chevron" or the "Chevron decision," the justices unanimously deciding against the DC judicial circuit's ability to set government policy, reminding those justices that judges are unelected officials and thus shouldn't be making law, and that when Congress isn't specific enough in their lawmaking, this can represent an implicit desire for the agencies in charge of implementing the relevant laws in the real world to figure out the specifics for themselves; after all, they would probably know better how to do so than a bunch of lawmakers who are not experts on the subject matter in question.That case also limited the US court system's ability to review an agency's interpretation of the law, which in that specific case meant that judges shouldn't have the right to look into how US agencies decide to do things, willy-nilly, just because they don't like the outcome.Instead, they have to adhere to what has become known as the Chevron Doctrine or Chevron Deference, which says, first, the judges have to decide if Congress was clear on the matter—and if so, they go with what Congress said, no questions asked. If Congress was unclear on something, though, then they have to decide if the agency in charge of executing Congress' decision has made reasonable and permissible decisions on that implementation; and if the answer is yes in both cases, the court must accept the agency's decision on the matter.If not, though, then the court can step in and make some kind of judgement; but it's a fairly ponderous process to get to that point, because of this doctrine, and they will almost always defer to the decision made by the relevant agency, because of that 1980s-era court case.The Chevron decision is generally considered to be one of the most formative in modern case-law because it empowered US agencies with all sorts of responsibilities and rights they wouldn't have otherwise enjoyed.The Chevron case, itself, was predicated on a disagreement about the 1963 Clean Air Act, which failed to specifically define what "source" meant, in terms of emitted pollutants; Congress didn't specify. And this ambiguity led to a clarification in 1981, by then-President Reagan's EPA, that allowed companies to bypass the Act's procedures by building-out new, highly polluting components to their plants and factories, as long as they also modified other aspects of those plants and factories in such a way that emissions were reduced.An environmentalist advocacy group challenged this new definition, which amounted to a loophole that allowed companies to get around otherwise sterner emissions rules, and that's how we got the Chevron court ...
    Más Menos
    19 m
  • Axis of Disorder

    Axis of Disorder
    Jun 25 2024
    This week we talk about China, Russia, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.We also discuss BRICS, North Korea, and the post-WWII global world order.Recommended Book: Supercommunicators by Charles DuhiggTranscriptThe Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, is a defense and economic alliance that was started by China and Russia back in 2001, and which has since expanded to become the largest regional organization in the world in terms of both land area and population, encompassing something like 80% of Eurasia, and 40% of the global population, as of 2020.The SCO also boasts about 20% of global GDP between its member nations, which originally included the governments of its precursor regional alliance, the Shanghai Five, which formed back in 1996: China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.With the evolution of that group into the SCO, though, Uzbekistan joined the club, and in 2017 it allowed India and Pakistan in, as well. Iran joined in 2023, and the list of observer and dialogue partner nations is pretty big, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Cambodia, Egypt, Kuwait, the Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and the UAE.The original purpose of the Shanghai Five, which was inherited by the SCO, was to increase trust and diplomatic relationships between these nations, which otherwise have a lot of potential enemies surrounding them on all sides—this is why the advice to never fight a land war in Asia is so well-taken: there's just a lot of land and a lot of borders and pretty much everyone who's tried, with few exceptions, has found themselves depleted by the effort.Thus, while there are other components to the SCO, member countries' agreement to respect each others' borders, including opposition to intervention in other countries—invading them, messing with their politics, criticizing their approach to human rights, etc—the sovereignty issue is the big one here, with making sure that everyone involved is diplomatically tied-up with everyone else in a close second, so member states can focus on the borders that present the most risk, and invest less attention and resources on the borders they share with their fellow members.That said, the SCO also includes mechanisms that allow member nations to work together on big projects, like transportation infrastructure that passes through or benefits more than one country, and fighting local terrorist organizations. It also allows them to integrate some aspects of their monetary and banking infrastructure, among other ties, so there's an economic component to these relationships.Another intergovernmental organization that likewise encompasses a significant chunk of the global population, landmass, and economic activity is BRICS, which is an acronym that was originally coined to gesture at the economic potential of the then-burgeoning economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, but which in recent years has expanded to also include Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the UAE.BRICS nations hold about 30% of the world's territory, 45% of its population, and pull in about 33% of global GDP, based on purchasing power parity.And BRICS has long served as a sort of counterweight to global institutions that often seem to favor the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations, many of which are Western nations, like those of North America and Europe.So while the G7's expanded iteration, the G20, brings nations like Brazil, India, and Indonesia into the conversation, the majority of the power in such institutions—and this includes institutions like the UN, because of who holds vetoes and soft power influence within those organizations—the majority of the power is still typically held by the world's currently most influential and wealthy governments.And BRICS, from the beginning, included those nations that were assumed to become the most powerful, or at least equally powerful nations, by many metrics, in ten or twenty or thirty years, based on demographics, economic growth, and so on.Both of these groupings, then, are attempts to lash together the governments of nations that are on favorable growth trajectories, or otherwise in interesting, upward-moving positions by various metrics, or which are located in areas that would benefit from some kind of unity, but which aren't always given the respect they believe they deserve within other globe-straddling organizations; in some cases because they're simply not there yet, in others because their governments are a bit more authoritarian, while entities like the UN, while including everyone, tend to favor democracies.What I'd like to talk about today is another loose grouping of nations that seems to be forming, and which, while it doesn't have an official designation or even membership roster yet, is becoming increasingly well-defined, collaborative, and active.—The geopolitical, military, and news analysis community has been ...
    Más Menos
    19 m
  • France's Snap Election

    France's Snap Election
    Jun 18 2024
    This week we talk about the National Rally, Macron, and the European Union.We also discuss Marine Le Pen, elections, and the French National Assembly.Recommended Book: Pockets by Hannah CarlsonTranscriptThe first week of June 2024, the EU held its parliamentary election, the tenth since it began holding such elections in 1979, and this one was notable in part because the number of MEPs—Members of European Parliament—increased from 705 to 720, due to population changes in the bloc, those new seats given to growing countries, one apiece to Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Latvia, Austria, Poland, Finland, Slovenia, and Slovakia, and two apiece to Spain, France, and the Netherlands—though that figure still a far cry from where it was before the UK left as part of its Brexit withdrawal from the union, which culminated in 2020.These elections happen every five years, so this was the first EU election since the UK left, which means we got to see how things would shake out, post-British-presence in the bloc, a bit of a power vacuum beginning to be filled by those that remain, alliances adjusting somewhat to account for that change.Those few structural items aside though, this election was also notable in its outcome, as, while centrist parties like the European People's Party, or EPP, which is center-right, and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, or S&D, which is center-left, each claimed substantially more seats than any other party—about 190 and 136, respectively, as of the day I'm recording this, though the final votes are still being counted, so some of these numbers are prone to changing a bit in the coming days—and Renew Europe—a fairly center-aligned party—coming in at a distant third with about 80 seats, the Identity and Democracy Group, which is made up of mostly far-right parties, looks to have achieved a strong fifth place; again, the numbers are still being tallied as I record this, so these numbers are still provisional, but it looks like they grabbed about 58 seats, which is 9 more than they had, pre-vote.While centrist politicians and parties still hold the reins, then, their collective majority is shrinking, Identity and Democracy, and a slew of smaller, also further-right parties scooping up quite a few seats in this election, these groups attracting a lot more support from certain demographics, especially young men under 30, and especially in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, and Finland.This shift in ideology is being attributed to many things, including but not limited to the rise in so-called identity politics, which some data suggest is causing young men, in particular, to feel excluded from some aspects of modern social life, the success of far-right groups in spreading their messages on social networks, heightened levels of immigration, which far-right groups seem to have successfully tied to all manner of societal ills, and the general tendency of whatever group is in power to spark discontent, tipping the scale toward their opposition simply because they've been governing, and you can't really govern without upsetting someone about something, and without taking the blame for things that are beyond your control, as well.This surge in votes for far-right groups isn't expected to substantially change the direction of the EU, as a lot of policies, including aspects of the bloc's regulatory apparatus, their pivot toward net zero efforts and renewable energy, and their general position on foreign antagonists like Russia, and by some estimates, China, as well, are basically locked in for the next few voting periods, at the minimum.But there is a chance specific elements of these goals, and other, less central pursuits, will be more difficult to pass and support over the long-haul, and policies that centralize power with the EU, rather than individual countries, will likely have a harder time getting passed, as most of these far-right groups are also quite Euro-skeptical and nationalist.What I'd like to talk about today is the outcome of this election in one EU nation—France—and why French President Macron decided to call a snap vote following the tallying of the ballots.—In 2022, the liberal coalition Ensemble, which includes French President Macron's party, Renaissance, lost the absolute majority it had previously enjoyed in France's National Assembly, its lower house of government, which marked the first time since 1997 the French President hadn't also held an absolute majority in that parliamentary body.That same year, the nationalist, far-right National Rally party gained a bunch of seats, as did the left-wing to far-left New Ecological and Social People's Union. This resulted in a hung parliament, which hadn't happened since 1988, and among other consequences, that meant passing laws and other sorts of governance became a lot trickier, as Macron had to make deals with people and groups he didn't typically ally with, and with whom his ...
    Más Menos
    18 m
  • Google AI Overviews

    Google AI Overviews
    Jun 11 2024
    This week we talk about search engines, SEO, and Habsburg AI.We also discuss AI summaries, the web economy, and alignment.Recommended Book: Pandora’s Box by Peter BiskindTranscriptThere's a concept in the world of artificial intelligence, alignment, which refers to the goals underpinning the development and expression of AI systems.This is generally considered to be a pretty important realm of inquiry because, if AI consciousness were to ever emerge—if an artificial intelligence that's truly intelligent in the sense that humans are intelligent were to be developed—it would be vital said intelligence were on the same general wavelength as humans, in terms of moral outlook and the practical application of its efforts.Said another way, as AI grows in capacity and capability, we want to make sure it values human life, has a sense of ethics that roughly aligns with that of humanity and global human civilization—the rules of the road that human beings adhere to being embedded deep in its programming, essentially—and we'd want to make sure that as it continues to grow, these baseline concerns remain, rather than being weeded out in favor of motivations and beliefs that we don't understand, and which may or may not align with our versions of the same, even to the point that human lives become unimportant, or even seem antithetical to this AI's future ambitions.This is important even at the level we're at today, where artificial general intelligence, AI that's roughly equivalent in terms of thinking and doing and parsing with human intelligence, hasn't yet been developed, at least not in public.But it becomes even more vital if and when artificial superintelligence of some kind emerges, whether that means AI systems that are actually thinking like we do, but are much smarter and more capable than the average human, or whether it means versions of what we've already got that are just a lot more capable in some narrowly defined way than what we have today: futuristic ChatGPTs that aren't conscious, but which, because of their immense potency, could still nudge things in negative directions if their unthinking motivations, the systems guiding their actions, are not aligned with our desires and values.Of course, humanity is not a monolithic bloc, and alignment is thus a tricky task—because whose beliefs do we bake into these things? Even if we figure out a way to entrench those values and ethics and such permanently into these systems, which version of values and ethics do we use?The democratic, capitalistic West's? The authoritarian, Chinese- and Russian-style clampdown approach, which limits speech and utilizes heavy censorship in order to centralize power and maintain stability? Maybe a more ambitious version of these things that does away with the downsides of both, cobbling together the best of everything we've tried in favor of something truly new? And regardless of directionality, who decides all this? Who chooses which values to install, and how?The Alignment Problem refers to an issue identified by computer scientist and AI expert Norbert Weiner in 1960, when he wrote about how tricky it can be to figure out the motivations of a system that, by definition, does things we don't quite understand—a truly useful advanced AI would be advanced enough that not only would its computation put human computation, using our brains, to shame, but even the logic it uses to arrive at its solutions, the things it sees, how it sees the world in general, and how it reaches its conclusions, all of that would be something like a black box that, although we can see and understand the inputs and outputs, what happens inside might be forever unintelligible to us, unless we process it through other machines, other AIs maybe, that attempt to bridge that gap and explain things to us.The idea here, then, is that while we may invest a lot of time and energy in trying to align these systems with our values, it will be devilishly difficult to keep tabs on whether those values remain locked in, intact and unchanged, and whether, at some point, these highly sophisticated and complicated, to the point that we don't understand what they're doing, or how, systems, maybe shrug-off those limitations, unshackled themselves, and become misaligned, all at once or over time segueing from a path that we desire in favor of a path that better matches their own, internal value system—and in such a way that we don't necessarily even realize it's happening.OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and other popular AI-based products and services, recently lost its so-called Superalignment Team, which was responsible for doing the work required to keep the systems the company is developing from going rogue, and implementing safeguards to ensure long-term alignment within their AI systems, even as they attempt to, someday, develop general artificial intelligence.This team was attempting to figure out ways to bake-in those values, long-term, and ...
    Más Menos
    28 m
  • Trump's Conviction

    Trump's Conviction
    Jun 4 2024
    This week we talk about secret documents, hush-money payouts, and federal court cases.We also discuss polling, independents, and post-presidential felonies.Recommended Book: The Final Empire by Brandon SandersonTranscriptIt's a weird time in American politics for many reasons, including but not limited to the increasing polarization of the two main parties, the difficulty in finding bipartisan opportunities to work together, the concomitant tendency for Congress, and lawmakers at other levels of governance to not get much done, and the heightening tension between federal and state-level governments on an array of hot-button issues.But one of the more bizarre ongoing narratives within this larger, stasis-inducing state of affairs, is the tale of former President Donald Trump and the legal woes he's faced since losing the 2020 election to now President Biden.Trump has denied, and continues to deny the outcome of that election, attributing his loss to all sorts of things, like corruption and fraud on the part of his political enemies, and in part because of things he's done in support of those, at this point evidence-less, allegations, a portfolio of legal intrigue has haunted him, even throughout his time in office, but especially since he left office in January of 2021.A lot of print and digital ink has been spilled on this subject, of late, because of the outcome of one of the legal cases in which Trump has been enmeshed: he was found guilty in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to cover up a payment he made to an adult film star, allegedly to keep her quiet about an affair they had back in the day.And that's the main topic I'd like to delve into on this episode, as the implications of that juried court ruling are many and varied, but to kick things off, I think it's worth taking a look at the state of those other ongoing cases, as while they're less immediately relevant to Trump and his ambitions to retake the White House in November's election, they're still pursuing him, in a way, serving as unknown variables that could pop up to bite him at some future moment, which is important when we're talking about someone who wants to become the most powerful person on the planet, once more.One such case is focused on Trump's handling of classified documents when he left the White House, the allegations being that he took classified documents that we wasn't supposed to take, handled them in such a way that they were stored in public where anyone could steal or read them, and that he may have even shown them to other people on purpose, which is a big no-no.He also allegedly went out of his way to keep government agents from reclaiming those documents after he was asked to return them.This is considered to be kind of a big deal in part because there were hundreds of these sorts of documents that Trump seemed to treat as if they belonged to him, and which he then allegedly conspired with folks in him employ to hide from the agency responsible for keeping such things safe and hidden, which they do because these sorts of documents often contain information about US military and intelligence matters—so that information getting out could conceivably put such assets, people and infrastructure, at risk.Trump was indicted on this matter in mid-2023 and charged with 37 felony counts, then another 3 were added that same year, bringing the total up to 40.Trump pleaded not guilty to all of these charges and his legal team has done all they can to slow the proceedings, which seems to have worked, as the case is now delayed indefinitely, the judge overseeing it—who was appointed to her position by Trump while he was in office—having been accused of slow-walking the process on purpose, though that's not really something that can be proven, and there's a chance the case is just complex enough that, as a fairly green judge attempting to tackle a big, important, complex case, she just fell behind and that stumbling is now in the spotlight and being reframed by folks who want to see this thing move forward, faster.Trump also faces a case in Georgia that focuses on his alleged efforts to interfere with the 2020 Presidential election, which, again, he lost to Biden, but which he claims he won; he also claims he was the victim of some sort of conspiracy, the nature of that supposed conspiracy having changed several times since he initially made that claim.Trump and 18 of his allies were indicted in August of 2023 for these efforts, which have been framed as an attempt to subvert election results in the state of Georgia, and similar delay tactics have been used in this case as in the other ones, though the District Attorney in charge of the case has made those efforts somewhat easier, having engaged in a relationship with the lead prosecutor, who she hired, which is arguably not relevant to the case, but is also a fairly overt conflict of interest.The timeline of this case has thus been pushed back, ...
    Más Menos
    23 m
  • UK General Election 2024

    UK General Election 2024
    May 28 2024
    This week we talk about the Tories, Labour, and the UK Parliament.We also discuss the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and Rishi Sunak’s gamble.Recommended Book: Like, Literally, Dude by Valerie FridlandTranscriptThe government of the United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy led by a Prime Minister and their cabinet, the Prime Minister attaining their position through the primacy of their party in the country's key legislation-passing body, its Parliament.So the Prime Minister runs day-to-day operations in the country, they are technically appointed by the monarch, who is currently Charles III, as of 2022, though that appointment is generally determined by other factors, like who has the most support within Parliament—the most seats held by their party, and in many cases seats held by allies and allies of convenience, as well; when this happens, the resulting government is called a coalition government, because while the Prime Minister is from one party, usually the one with the most seated MPs, Members of Parliament, they're only able to govern because they have one or more other parties working with them as part of a coalition.Now, the UK government has two houses in its Parliament, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and the names of these houses tell you a lot about them: the House of Lords consists of folks who have been granted Lordships by government higher-ups, alongside those who have inherited Lordships from their parents, but it also includes experts in various fields who have been granted that status by the Prime Minister—economists, for instance.The House of Commons, in contrast, is voted upon by the people, so when there are Parliamentary elections in the UK, that's what we're talking about, votes for MPs who represent a region, a parliamentary constituency—of which there are 650 across the UK's constituent countries, England, Scotland, Wales, and North Ireland.Within the UK, political parties have to be officially registered to participate in governance and votes, though folks who want to run solo can register as independent or label-less candidates for voting purposes.As of late-May 2024, there were 393 officially registered political parties in the UK, though only 13 of them currently have representatives in the House of Commons, and only four of those have more than 10 seated representatives—the Conservative and Unionist Party, often called the Tories or Conservatives, the Labour Party, which is the main center-left party in the UK, the Scottish National Party, which is also generally center-left, but tends to be focused on Scottish politics and priorities, and the Liberal Democrats, who are generally seen as a sort of blend of the Tories and Labour.General elections, during which MPs are voted upon, are held every five years or so, but elections can also be held sooner if the current Prime Minister asks the monarch to dissolve parliament, which in practice means the Prime Minister is calling for a general election, generally scheduled for a specific date in the future, usually because the House of Commons has lost faith in the current government, which makes passing law and overall getting things done difficult; they don't have enough votes to pass anything, basically, though in some cases it's because of more general political circumstances that indicate calling for an election, now, might be better than holding an election sometime later in the future.That latter case seems to be the impetus for what I'd like to talk about today, which is the recently called and now upcoming UK general election, and the state of political play in this, one of the world's wealthiest and most influential countries.—On May 22, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that he was calling for a snap election on July 4 of this year, just a half-dozen weeks in the future, surprising many analysts who expected he would wait as long as possible before committing to a date.That expectation was predicated on the reality of how Sunak's party, the Tories, have been doing in the polls in recent years; pretty abysmally.Labour has been crushing the Conservatives in these polls, of late; the Tories have been in power since 2010, which means purely by virtue of having been governing that long, a lot of people will tend to blame them for a lot of things, their party having been in charge all that time, but they also catalyzed and oversaw the secession of the UK from the European Union, which is a move that was initially pushed by many on the further right wing of the party, but the populist nature of the movement eventually claimed the majority of Tory politicians who changed their vote to support it, rewiring politics in the UK, similar to how former President Trump rewired the Republican Party in the US—a lot of power changing hands, a lot of previously top people being elbowed aside or pushed into retirement, a lot of new policies ascending to the front-burner, while previous ...
    Más Menos
    17 m
  • Gaza Conflict Update

    Gaza Conflict Update
    May 21 2024
    This week we talk about Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and Hamas.We also discuss Egypt, the Rafah Crossing, and Netanyahu’s motivations.Recommended Book: Going Zero by Anthony McCartenTranscriptIsrael, as a country, was founded as a consequence of, and in the midst of, a fair bit of conflict and turmoil.It was formally established in mid-1948 after years of settlement in the area by Jewish people fleeing persecution elsewhere around the world and years of effort to set up a Jewish-majority country somewhere on the planet, that persecution having haunted them for generations in many different parts of the world, and in the wake of widespread revelation about the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis in parts of Europe they conquered and controlled.Israel finally happened, then, in part because Jewish people had been treated so horribly for so long, and there was finally government-scale support for this effort following that conflict, and the realization of just how monstrous that treatment had become.The area that was carved out for this new nation, though, was also occupied and claimed by other groups of people.The British and French controlled it for a while in the decades leading up to the creation of Israel, but before that it was ruled by the Ottomans as part of their Syria administrative region and, like the rest of their Empire, it was formerly a Muslim state.Thus, what serves as a hallowed day worthy of celebration for Israelis, May 14th, Israel's national day, commemorating their declaration of independence, for other people living in the region, that day is referred to as the Nakba, which translates roughly to "the catastrophe," marking a period in which, beginning that year, 1948, about half of Palestine's population of Arabs, something like 700,000-750,000 people either fled of their own volition, or were forced to flee by Jewish paramilitary groups who moved in to clear the locals leading up to the emergence of Israel, at first, and then by the newfound Israeli military, after the formation of the country.Hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed, people who didn't flee were massacred, and wells were poisoned to kill stragglers and keep people from returning.Ultimately, about 80% of the Arab Muslim population in what was formerly British-held Mandatory Palestine, and which was a Muslim region in a Muslim country before that were forced from their homes leading up to or just after Israel's Declaration of Independence.This, alongside the existing hatred toward Jewish people some regional leaders already had, mostly for religious reasons, sparked the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which was just one of several and frequent full-scale military conflicts between Israel and its neighbors in the early days of its existence, the Israelis mostly on the defensive, and frequently targeted by surprise attacks by many or all of their neighbors simultaneously, even in the earliest days of their national founding.Israel, in part because of support from international allies, and in part because of its militarized society—that militarization reinforced as a consequence of these conflicts, as well—fairly handedly won every single war against, again, often all, of their Muslim neighbors, simultaneously, though often at great cost, and those victories led to a sequence of expansions of Israel's borders, and humiliations for their neighbors, which further inflamed those existing prejudices and fears.Israel has controlled the non-Israel territories of the West Bank, of East Jerusalem, which is part of the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip—all of them majority Muslim, and collectively referred to as the Palestinian Territories—since the aftermath of the Six Day war (which was one of those aforementioned, all of their neighbors attacking them all at once conflicts) in 1967.Israeli settlers have slowly established militarized toeholds in these areas, kicking out and in some cases killing the folks who live on the land they take, which is against international law, but generally allowed by the Israeli government.And though these areas were governed by the Palestinian Authority beginning in the mid-1990s, the PA lost control of Gaza in 2006, a more militant group called Hamas taking over practical control in the area at that time, ruling through violence and threats of violence, basically, despite the Palestinian Authority continuing to claim they run things there, too.On October 7, 2023, that more militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, Hamas, launched a sneak attack against Israel, hitting multiple areas along the Israeli border with the Strip, killing at least 1,139 Israelis and taking 252 people captive.Hamas said this attack was in response to Israel's abuses of Palestinian people, historically and contemporarily, while Israelis generally see this as an unprovoked attack on mostly civilians by a terrorist organization.What I'd like to talk about today is the conflict that's erupted since that attack...
    Más Menos
    29 m
  • La Niña 2024

    La Niña 2024
    May 14 2024
    This week we talk about ENSO, El Niño, and attribution science.We also discuss climate change, natural disasters, and the trade winds.Recommended Book: Titanium Noir by Nick HarkawayTranscriptThe field of attribution science, sometimes referred to as "extreme event attribution," focuses on figuring out whether and to what degree a particular weather event—especially rare weather disasters—are attributable to climate change.Severe floods and tornadoes and hurricanes all happen from time to time, which is why such events are sometimes referred to as once in a decade or once in a century disasters: the right natural variables align in the right way, and you have a disaster that is rare to the point that it's only likely to happen once every 10 or 100 years, but such rare events still happen, and sometimes more frequently than those numbers would imply; they're not impossible. And they're not necessarily the result of climate change.Folks working in this space, which is a blend of meteorology and the rapidly evolving field of climate science, do their best to figure out what causes what, and how those odds might have been impacted by the shifts we're seeing in global average temperatures in particular, and the knock-on effects of that warming, like shifts in the global water cycle; both of which influence all sorts of other planetary variables.The most common means of achieving this end is to run simulations based on historical climate data and extrapolating those trend-lines forward, allowing for natural variation, but otherwise sticking with the range of normal fluctuations that would have been expected, had we not started to churn so much CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere beginning with the industrial revolution.So if we hadn't done the Industrial Revolution the way we did it, what would our global climate and weather systems look like? They have a bunch of models with different assumptions baked into them that they have running, and they can simulate conditions, today, based on those models, and compare them with the reality of how things actually are in the real world, a world in which we did start to burn fossil fuels at a frantic rate, with all the pros and cons of that decision aggregating into our current climactic circumstances.This comparison, between a baseline, non-climate-change-impacted Earth, and what we see happening on real Earth, allows us to gauge the different in likelihoods for various weather systems and increasingly even specific weather events, like massive floods or hurricanes.It also allows us to ascertain what elements of a disaster or system are more or less likely, or the same, compared to that baseline Earth; so maybe we look at a regional heat wave and discover that it was a rare event made more likely by climate change, but that the intensity of the heat wasn't impacted—as was the case with a heat wave in Russia in 2010; climate change made the heat wave more likely, but had such a heat wave occurred, despite its low likelihood, in that non-industrial revolution scenario, the heat would have been roughly the same intensity as it was in real life.Both components of this system, attributing events and patterns to climate change, and confirming that they were not impacted, that they were just run of the mill bad luck, the consequence of natural systems, are arguably important, as while the former provides data for folks wanting to predict future climate change-related outcomes, and provides some degree of ammunition for the argument that climate change is making these sorts of things worse, which helps put a price tag on not moving faster to shift away from fossil fuels, it's also vital that we understand how climate and weather systems work, in general, and that we are able to set proper expectations as to what will change and how, as the atmosphere's composition continues to change, while also understanding what will remain the same, what various regions around the world need to be prepared for in a vacuum, leaving climate change out of it, and how our global weather systems work on a granular level, so that as outside influences like climate change, but not limited to climate change, act upon them, we can make better predictions about how that will adjust or overhaul the practical reality for people and ecosystems impacted by them.What I'd like to talk about today is a natural weather phenomenon that is expected to return soon, and how this phenomenon might change our latent, global weather patterns, for the better, for the worse, and for the neutral, and in turn how it might be changed by the climactic adjustments we're tracking using these simulations.—The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO phenomenon, is the monicker we've given to a collection of sea surface temperature and wind variations in the Pacific Ocean that, largely unpredictably, tweak the patterns of these systems from time to time, influenced by and influencing a large number of ...
    Más Menos
    17 m