We’re terrible at predicting time, so do these things instead

I noticed when I was programming that it usually took me about 3 times as long to finish writing and testing a program as I thought it would, so I started multiplying by 3 when giving an estimate. My customers liked me because I met my estimates. But many/most people never did learn.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90313102/how-to-get-better-at-estimating-your-time

By Jessica Greene—Zapier
Feb. 28, 2019

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The planning fallacy is a term used by psychologists to describe our tendency to underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete a task. The term was first coined in 1977 by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.

Kahneman and Tversky explained that people have a tendency to disregard historical data when making predictions. Instead of forming estimates based on historical evidence (it always takes a month to paint a room), we focus solely on the upcoming task (this room is small, so it won’t take long to paint).

Kahneman later expanded on the original idea in his 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow. In it, he argues that estimation mistakes can usually be attributed to two key factors:

Failing to consider how long it’s taken us to complete similar tasks in the past
Assuming that we won’t run into any complications that will cause delays

But it’s not all bad news. If you understand the reasons why we tend to underestimate how long tasks will take, you can take steps to avoid the pitfalls of the planning fallacy and start forming more realistic estimates.

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The following six estimation techniques are all designed to help you avoid underestimating when you’re trying to determine how much time a task will take.

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Saudi app that lets men track women cleared for sale by Google

[The Telegraph]
Josie Ensor
,The Telegraph•March 4, 2019

Google is refusing to remove a Saudi government app that allows men to track and control women.

The app, which gives men the power to grant and rescind travel permission for women and to set up SMS alerts for when they use their passports, will remain available to buy.

Google said it had reviewed the app — called Absher — and concluded that it did not violate any agreements, and could therefore remain on its Google Play store.

The app, which is owned and operated by the kingdom’s interior ministry, also has features that send alerts if a woman leaves a certain area - making it difficult for women to leave without the say so of a “male guardian”.

Women in the ultra-conservative kingdom must by law have male guardians, whether it be a husband, father, brother or uncle, who gives permission for them to do everything including studying, marrying, renting a house, and travelling.

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Fordham confirms that Trump team threatened the school if his grades became public

Published: Mar 1, 2019

Fordham University is confirming it received a letter from Donald Trump’s then-lawyer threatening legal action if Trump’s academic records became public.

Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has testified to Congress that Trump directed him to write letters warning his schools and the College Board not to disclose his grades or SAT scores.

•••••

Fordham says the letter from Trump’s lawyer was preceded by a phone call from a campaign staffer. Fordham says it’s bound by federal law barring the release of student records.

Trump attended the Roman Catholic university in New York City for two years. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.

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A Common Household Ingredient Might Sabotage Your Antibiotics

https://gizmodo.com/a-common-household-ingredient-might-sabotage-your-antib-1832831414

Ed Cara
2/25/19

Your daily gob of toothpaste or spritz of body spray might be inadvertently mucking up your antibiotic treatment, suggests new research. It found that a common household antimicrobial ingredient—triclosan—seemed to reduce the potency of antibiotics used to treat urinary tract infections by a hundred-fold, at least in mice.

Triclosan is an ubiquitous chemical, found in everything from body wash to lip gloss to deodorant to household cleaners to mouthwash. Traditionally, it’s been advertised as an easy way to kill bacteria and fungi, seemingly without harm to humans. In recent years, though, increasing evidence has suggested otherwise.

In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration finalized its ban of triclosan and similar chemicals from being used in consumer soaps marketed as antimicrobial. The agency cited evidence showing antimicrobial soaps with these ingredients don’t seem to prevent illness or even kill bacteria any better than a typical bar of soap and hot water. Even more worrying is a growing pile of research showing that triclosan can actually help create bacterial superbugs.

It’s thought that the way triclosan stops bacteria is too similar to how many antibiotics do the job. So bacteria that evolve resistance to triclosan also learn how to fend off those drugs. That’s definitely bad news, because triclosan eventually ends up everywhere in our environment, where it can promote broad antibiotic resistance.

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Wiped out: America's love of luxury toilet paper is destroying Canadian forests

I buy toilet paper made of 100% recycled paper.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/01/canada-boreal-forest-toilet-paper-us-climate-change-impact-report

We’re all becoming more aware about the damage single-use plastics and fast fashion has on the environment. Yet there is one product we all throw away every single day that, so far, has not been a major part of conversations about sustainability: toilet paper.
The new household rules: ditch your toilet brush and wash much, much more
Read more

But America’s heavy use of toilet paper – particularly the pillowy soft kind – is worsening climate change and taking “a dramatic and irreversible toll” on forests, especially the Canadian boreal forest, according to a new report by two major environmental groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Stand.earth.

The boreal forest covers almost 60% of Canada and is home to 600 indigenous communities. Its huge size means it can absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the equivalent to the annual emissions of 24m cars each year.

The report found that major brands’ refusal to switch to sustainable materials in toilet paper is having a devastating impact on forests and climate. About 28m acres of Canadian boreal forest is cut down each year, an area the size of Pennsylvania. Virgin pulp, the key ingredient in toilet paper, accounted for 23% of Canada’s forest product exports.

Americans are particularly to blame for this crisis. They make up just over 4% of the world’s population, yet account for more than 20% of global tissue consumption. The average four-person household in the US uses over 100lb of toilet paper a year.

Major toilet paper brands have refused to use more sustainable materials, the report says, because Americans tend to more concerned than the rest of the world about ideal toilet paper texture in their homes, largely due to decades of marketing around toilet paper softness.

Previous reports into the environmental impact of toilet paper have found American desire for super-soft multi-ply toilet paper to be “worse than Hummers” for the environment.

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The authors offer a scorecard system to rate the brands that have the biggest environmental impact. It’s mostly the big brands of quilted paper that score badly, with Charmin Ultra Soft, Kirkland Signature and Angel Soft all receiving F grades because they contain little or no recycled material. Brands that use recycled paper, such as Seventh Generation and Natural Value, received an A grade.

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Insurers Worry a Financial Crisis May Come From Climate Risks

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-22/insurers-worry-a-financial-crisis-may-come-from-climate-risks

By William Wilkes
February 22, 2019, 8:33 AM EST

Insurers are increasingly worried that rising temperatures will lead to a slump in property values that could spark broader financial turmoil.

Those were the conclusions a group run out of the University of Cambridge including some of the world’s biggest insurers. In a report published Friday, ClimateWise said that an increasing catastrophes linked to climate change could triple losses on property investments over the next 30 years.

The warning adds to concerns raised by Munich Re AG last month, which said a string of floods, fires and violent storms had doubled the normal amount of insurable losses. Munich Re has said global climate-related losses may have topped a record $140 billion last year.

“A failure to take account of these risks could be damaging both for individual investors and lenders, but also for the financial system and economy as a whole,” according to the 74-page report, which was written on the behalf of ClimateWise members including Allianz SE, XL Group, Aviva Plc and Lloyds Bank Plc.

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While scientists are cautious to link any single weather event to global warming, they’ve built consensus around the probability that more powerful floods, fires, droughts and storms will occur with higher frequency as the Earth gets hotter.

“Massive wildfires appear to be occurring more frequently as a result of climate change,” to Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek said. He adding investors should look again at whether they’ve properly accounted for rising damages from weather catastrophes.

The German insurer reported $160 billion of losses from natural catastrophes last year, some $20 billion above inflation-adjusted averages in the previous three decades.

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The predictions come amid signs that global warming is causing noticeable dents in some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated economies.

A protracted drought in Germany that made crucial waterways impassable to ships shaved around 2 percentage points off growth in Europe’s largest economy in the fourth quarter of 2018. Wildfires in California caused the first major corporate casualty of climate change, with utility PG&E collapsing due to a $30 billion liability from two years of fires.

Extreme weather events are the most threatening global risks this year, the World Economic Forum said in a report published January.

The U.S Defense Department last month warned climate change could compromise U.S. security, with rising seas increasing flood risk to military bases and drought-fueled wildfires endangering those inland. In December, the Bank of England said it would force banks to make better preparations for climate change after finding only a few had done so.

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Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard': scientists

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-temperatures/evidence-for-man-made-global-warming-hits-gold-standard-scientists-idUSKCN1QE1ZU

Alister Doyle
Feb. 25, 2019

Evidence for man-made global warming has reached a “gold standard” level of certainty, adding pressure for cuts in greenhouse gases to limit rising temperatures, scientists said on Monday.

“Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals,” the U.S.-led team wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change of satellite measurements of rising temperatures over the past 40 years.

They said confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a “five-sigma” level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there was no warming.

Such a “gold standard” was applied in 2012, for instance, to confirm the discovery of the Higgs boson subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe.

Benjamin Santer, lead author of Monday’s study at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he hoped the findings would win over skeptics and spur action.

•••••

Mainstream scientists say the burning of fossil fuels is causing more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.

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The last four years have been the hottest since records began in the 19th century.

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Climate Change Is Cutting Into the Global Fish Catch, and It's on Pace to Get Wors

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28022019/climate-change-ocean-fish-seafood-decline-data-warming-paris-agreement-study

By Phil McKenna
Mar. 1, 2019

Warming ocean waters have already taken a toll on the world's fisheries, and the impact will worsen if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current pace, according to a pair of studies published this week.

In one study, researchers found that the maximum sustainable catch had significantly declined as the oceans warmed over the past century. The other, looking forward, found that limiting further global warming to the Paris climate agreement goal of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius would help protect millions of tons of future catches, worth billions of dollars.

"We were stunned to find that fisheries around the world have already responded to ocean warming," said Malin Pinsky of Rutgers University, a co-author of the study looking at the climate impact over past decades, in a written statement. "These aren't hypothetical changes sometime in the future."

•••••

Warming waters combined with overfishing have created a "one-two punch" in some regions, Free said. Overfishing reduces reproduction rates in fish populations and can damage their habitat. When the water around them warms, the added strain makes these already weakened populations more susceptible to collapse, according to the study.

"Overfishing makes populations of fish more vulnerable to climate change, and climate change is hindering our abilities to rebuild overfished fish populations," Free said.

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The White House quietly rolled back workplace safety rules during the shutdown

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/29/18197346/trump-labor-electronic-injury-reporting-rule?fbclid=IwAR2F1vEmFRgGMquB40O0VWknnzirjj8XKMDUdnOWbeQK-4ENz5Nm4hSGcAY

By Alexia Fernández Campbell Jan 29, 2019, 2:00pm EST

The partial government shutdown may have disrupted air travel and triggered financial hardship, but it didn’t stop the White House from continuing to dismantle regulations meant to protect US workers.

On Friday, the Trump administration gutted a 2016 rule that required most employers to electronically submit detailed reports of all workplace injuries to the Department of Labor each year — reports they’ve long been required to keep, but never required to submit.

The Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses rule would have allowed the government, for the first time, to get more complete data on how many US workers are injured on the job and how those injuries happened. Enacted under the Obama administration, it was supposed to help inspectors identify dangerous work conditions, and in turn pressure businesses to comply with workplace safety laws.

But in 2017, the Trump administration put the electronic reporting rule on hold, then amended it this summer to let employers off the hook. Employers would no longer have to submit the detailed injury reports — just a summary report.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which reviews regulations before they are published, then rushed the amendment through the three-month review process in just six weeks — even though the office was closed during the shutdown and two-thirds of the office’s employees were furloughed. By Friday, the changes were finalized and published.

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Rick Scott calls Gaetz’s tweet threatening Cohen 'embarrassing,' 'disgusting'

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/432188-rick-scott-calls-gaetzs-tweet-threatening-cohen-embarrassing-and-disgusting

By Morgan Gstalter - 03/01/19 11:08 AM EST

Florida Sen. Rick Scott (R) said it was “disgusting” for his Republican colleague Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) to send a tweet appearing to threaten former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen the night before Cohen's congressional testimony.

Scott, the former governor of Florida, told the Tampa Bay Times that Gaetz’s actions this week were “embarrassing.”

“We shouldn’t be doing that stuff up here. You might not like what somebody is going to say but you shouldn’t be trying to intimidate them or their family, it’s wrong,” Scott said. “I think it’s disgusting and I’m glad he apologized.”

Scott was referring to a Tuesday tweet that Gaetz wrote questioning Cohen’s faithfulness to his wife one day before Cohen’s scheduled appearance before the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

“Hey @MichaelCohen212 — Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends?” Gaetz wrote in the now-deleted tweet. “Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”

•••••

The Florida Bar confirmed Wednesday that it has opened an investigation into whether Gaetz, a licensed attorney in the state, violated professional conduct rules with his tweet.

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republicans attempting to intimidate witness Cohen

republicans Jordan and Meadow discounted Cohen's testimony BEFORE he testified before Congress on Wed. Now they have asked the DOJ to investigate Michael Cohen for perjury. This is scary. They should be charged with attempting to intimidate a witness. This is another step on the way to turning our country into an oppressive government ruled by a few powerful people.

Note they put out this statement on Feb. 26, 2019, the day before Cohen testified before Congress.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/02/26/michael-cohen-testimony-democrats-platform-destroy-donald-trump-column/2978144002/

Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, Opinion contributors Published 6:00 a.m. ET Feb. 26, 2019

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The facts are this: When Cohen testifies, he will surely lie. He has done it before. He will do it again. No one should be afraid of the truth, but everyone should be concerned when the deck is stacked in favor of falsehood.

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After Cohen testified, they called for the DOJ to investigate him.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/432042-jordan-meadows-ask-doj-to-investigate-michael-cohen-for-perjury

Two of President Trump’s top Republican allies on Capitol Hill are asking the Justice Department to investigate Michael Cohen for perjury, accusing the onetime Trump attorney of making intentional false statements during his public testimony this week.

“Mr. Cohen’s testimony before the Committee on Oversight and Reform … was a spectacular and brazen attempt to knowing and willfully testify falsely and fictitiously to numerous material facts,” Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) wrote in a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr on Thursday. “His testimony included intentionally false statements designed to make himself look better on a national stage.”

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The Ocean Is Running Out of Breath, Scientists Warn

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ocean-is-running-out-of-breath-scientists-warn/?fbclid=IwAR3edpsO7Yh45goSzNQ00ZGbu4Wp-ubkwlXnDb0AvuK3yuFbuuq16BL8f5A

By Laura Poppick on February 25, 2019

Escaping predators, digestion and other animal activities—including those of humans—require oxygen. But that essential ingredient is no longer so easy for marine life to obtain, several new studies reveal.

In the past decade ocean oxygen levels have taken a dive—an alarming trend that is linked to climate change, says Andreas Oschlies, an oceanographer at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, whose team tracks ocean oxygen levels worldwide. “We were surprised by the intensity of the changes we saw, how rapidly oxygen is going down in the ocean and how large the effects on marine ecosystems are,” he says.

It is no surprise to scientists that warming oceans are losing oxygen, but the scale of the dip calls for urgent attention, Oschlies says. Oxygen levels in some tropical regions have dropped by a startling 40 percent in the last 50 years, some recent studies reveal. Levels have dropped more subtly elsewhere, with an average loss of 2 percent globally.

Ocean animals large and small, however, respond to even slight changes in oxygen by seeking refuge in higher oxygen zones or by adjusting behavior, Oschlies and others in his field have found. These adjustments can expose animals to new predators or force them into food-scarce regions. Climate change already poses serious problems for marine life, such as ocean acidification, but deoxygenation is the most pressing issue facing sea animals today, Oschlies says. After all, he says, “they all have to breathe.”

A warming ocean loses oxygen for two reasons: First, the warmer a liquid becomes, the less gas it can hold. That is why carbonated beverages go flat faster when left in the sun, Oschlies says. Second, as polar sea ice melts, it forms a layer of buoyant water at the sea surface above colder, more saline waters. This process creates a sort of lid that can keep currents from mixing surface water down to deeper depths. And because all oxygen enters this habitat at the surface—either directly from the atmosphere or from surface-dwelling phytoplankton producing it during photosynthesis—less mixing means less of it at depth.

•••••

Climate models projecting future change have also routinely underestimated the oxygen losses already observed around the world’s oceans, he and his colleagues reported in Nature last year—another reason why this trend calls for more attention, he says.

•••••

As oxygen-rich regions become scarcer, current fish habitats will also shrink and force economically important species—such as tuna, which globally generate an estimated $42 billion annually—into new ranges. In the northeastern tropical Atlantic researchers have found habitat for tuna as well as billfish fisheries shrank by 15 percent from 1960 to 2010 (pdf) due to oxygen loss.

Coastline fisheries can also face the added pressure of agricultural runoff fertilizing algal blooms that consume copious oxygen as they decay—as has long been the case in the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of the Mississippi River. These “dead zones” force some fishes to seek higher oxygen areas on the edges of their typical ranges. This can help fishermen find them because the fishes congregate in these condensed areas, but it also provides a false sense of abundance and will not be sustainable in the long-term, Seibel notes.

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Scientists stunned by discovery of 'semi-identical' twins

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/27/scientists-stunned-discovery-semi-identical-twins

Nicola Davis
Wed 27 Feb 2019 17.00 EST

A pair of twins have stunned researchers after it emerged that they are neither identical nor fraternal – but something in between.

The team say the boy and girl, now four years old, are the second case of semi-identical twins ever recorded, and the first to be spotted while the mother was pregnant.

•••••

Twins are normally either identical or fraternal. In the case of identical, one egg is fertilised by one sperm, but the resulting ball of cells splits in two, giving rise to two offspring with identical genetic material. In the case of fraternal, or non-identical, twins, two eggs are fertilised, each by a different sperm. The resulting siblings arise from the same pregnancy, but are no more genetically similar than siblings from the same parents born at a different time.

Faced with a puzzling scenario, Gabbett and colleagues report in the New England Journal of Medicine that they took samples from the two amniotic sacs, allowing them to investigate the genomes of the twins during the pregnancy.

The results, they say, reveal a very unusual situation: the twins are semi-identical or “sesquizygotic”.

“What we have got is a sequence of unusual events,” said Gabbett.

The situation is believed to arise when two sperm cells fertilise a single egg. In the latest case, one sperm carried an X chromosome among its genetic material, and the other carried a Y chromosome.

After fertilisation the chromosomes from the two sperm cells and the single egg got bundled into three “genetic packages”: one contained chromosomes from both sperm – meaning it contained two sets of genetic material from the father, but none from the mother. The other two packages each contained the same set of chromosomes from the mother, as well as genetic material from one of the two sperm, giving rise to either XX (female) or XY (male) cells.

As the fertilised egg divided and the ball of cells grew, those containing only chromosomes from the two sperm died. However, those containing chromosomes from both the egg and a sperm cell continued to divide.

“Then what happens is that little ball of cells splits into two, and that is why you have twins,” said Gabbett, adding that these offspring have a greater genetic similarity than fraternal twins, but are not identical.

But the situation is not that straightforward: some of both embryos’ cells contained two X chromosomes, while other cells contained an X and a Y chromosome.

Gabbett added since one twin was a boy and the other a girl, the ratio of each of these types of cell differed: one embryo contained a greater number of XY cells, so developed male, while the other had a high proportion of XX cells and developed female.

•••••

Gabbett said that while there might be other, unreported, cases of sesquizygotic twins, it remains a very unusual phenomenon.

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NPR misleads by omission.

Since the 2018 election, I have heard NPR mention several times the fact that Republicans won the Senate while Democrats won the House. It came up again in commentary after Cohen's testimony, talking about whether it would affect elections. As in ALL the other times I heard, NPR did NOT mention that a MAJORITY of voters voted for Democrats. Republicans only gained seats in the Senate because of the fact that all states have the same number of Senators, no matter the vast differences in population, and because only 1/3 of the Senate seats are up for a vote in any one election, and this election happened to favor Republicans.

A mom found videos on YouTube Kids that gave children instructions for suicide

By Doug Criss, CNN
Updated 5:28 PM ET, Mon February 25, 2019

Most parents feel pretty safe letting their children watch YouTube Kids, the child-friendly version of the video platform.
But disturbing videos recently found by some moms show the social media site may not be safe for kids at all.
A Florida mother said she has found clips on YouTube and YouTube Kids that gave children instructions on how to kill themselves.
Free Hess said the first time she saw such a video was back in July when another mom alerted her to it after she and her son were watching cartoon videos on YouTube Kids. Spliced in the middle of one of the videos was footage of a man in sunglasses telling children how to slit their wrists.

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The world's healthiest countries, ranked

By Ashley Welch
February 25, 2019

Spain just surpassed Italy as the world's healthiest nation. That's according to this year's edition of the Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index, which ranks 169 countries based on factors that contribute to overall health.

Six of the top 10 countries were in Europe, with Italy ranking second. In contrast, the United States didn't even break into the top 30, ranking at number 35, one notch worse than last year.

•••••

To come up with the rankings, Bloomberg researchers graded nations based on several factors including life expectancy, while giving penalties for health risks such as obesity and tobacco use. Environmental factors like access to clean water and sanitation were also taken into account.

The results mirror other research that came out last fall looking at future life expectancies in 195 countries and territories around the world. In that study, published in the international medical journal The Lancet, Spain also ranked first, with a projected life expectancy of 85.8 years by 2040. The United States ranked 64th.

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Greener Childhood Associated With Happier Adulthood

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/02/25/697788559/greener-childhood-associated-with-happier-adulthood

February 25, 20193:12 PM ET
Jonathan Lambert

•••••

A study published Monday in the journal PNAS details what the scientists say is the largest investigation of the association between green spaces and mental health.

Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark found that growing up near vegetation is associated with an up to 55 percent lower risk of mental health disorders in adulthood. Kristine Engemann, the biologist who led the study, combined decades of satellite imagery with extensive health and demographic data of the Danish population to investigate the mental health effects of growing up near greenery.

•••••

After accounting for those potential confounding factors, the researchers found that growing up near green space was associated with a lower risk of developing psychiatric illness in adulthood by anywhere from 15 percent to 55 percent, depending on the specific illness. For example, alcoholism was most strongly associated with lack of green space growing up, and risk of developing an intellectual disability was not associated with green space.

•••••

"Green space seemed to have an association that was similar in strength to other known influences on mental health, like history of mental health disorders in the family, or socioeconomic status," says Engemann. What's more, the effect of green space was "dosage dependent" — the more of one's childhood spent close to greenery, the lower the risk of mental health problems in adulthood.

•••••

Lambert suggests the explanation might run deep, evolutionarily speaking. She says we evolved surrounded by green space, and something about being exposed to our "native" environment might have powerful physiological and psychological effects.

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Decline in bogong moth numbers leaves mountain pygmy possums starving

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/25/decline-in-bogong-moth-numbers-leaves-pygmy-mountain-possums-starving

Graham Readfearn
Sun 24 Feb 2019 18.01 EST
Last modified on Mon 25 Feb 2019 01.19 EST

Numbers of unique Australian moths that migrate in their billions to alpine areas have crashed, ecologists say, putting extra pressure on the endangered mountain pygmy possum.

Scientists believe the “astonishing” drop in bogong moth numbers is linked to climate change and recent droughts in areas where the moths breed.

At the same time checks on the endangered mountain pygmy possum, which exists only in Australia’s alpine regions, have revealed dead litters in the pouches of females. The moths are a key food source for the possums as they wake from hibernation.

•••••

Prof Lesley Hughes, an ecologist at Macquarie University and councillor at the Climate Council of Australia, said the potential role of climate change in the decline of the moths and possums were what ecologists and climate scientists had predicted.

“Unfortunately the general predictions of the ecological risks of climate change are now turning into observations for particular species. And it should be no surprise we are seeing these impacts in the alpine zone, long recognised as one of the most vulnerable ecosystems to climate risks.

“Sometimes these changes can appear to happen abruptly – one year there are millions of moths and the next almost none. This shows how particular extreme events, such as droughts or severe bushfires, can suddenly tip a species over the edge, with flow-on effects to others in the ecosystem.”

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How a money manager to the super-wealthy used his “collection” of famous friends to avoid a prison sentence for molesting young girls

By Jane Coaston and Anna North Updated Feb 22, 2019, 10:39am EST

Jeffrey Epstein could have gone to prison for life.

The money manager was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls at his Palm Beach mansion between 2001 and 2006. But as Julie K. Brown reports at the Miami Herald, he ultimately got just 13 months in a county jail, thanks to a deal signed by Alexander Acosta, then the US Attorney for Miami and now President Trump’s secretary of labor. On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that Acosta’s team broke the law by concealing the agreement from more than 30 girls who said Epstein abused them, Brown reports.

Epstein has said that any encounters he had with his accusers were consensual, and that he believed they were 18 at the time.

The story of how Epstein got such a light sentence — and who was involved — is a master class in the power dynamics that have been exposed by the #MeToo movement but have yet to truly change.

•••••

The fact that Epstein is free today is a reminder that the American justice system has long been all too willing to ignore the words of girls and women, especially when they accuse a wealthy and influential man. It’s a reminder that those with enough money and connections, from Epstein to Harvey Weinstein, can often manipulate the legal system to serve their own ends. And it shows how one powerful person can protect not just himself but anyone who might be connected to him, all while exploiting those who are powerless.

•••••

because Epstein was able to keep all the details of his prosecution quiet, it’s impossible for the public to know exactly who else was involved in his crimes. By protecting himself, Epstein may have been able to protect his famous friends as well.

•••••

The FBI had prepared a 53-page sex crimes indictment for Epstein in 2007 that could have sent him to prison for life, according to the Herald. Instead, he cut a deal with Alexander Acosta, then the US attorney in Miami, which allowed him to serve just 13 months — not in federal or state prison, but in a private wing of a Palm Beach county jail.

He was granted work release to go to a “comfortable office” for 12 hours a day, six days a week, despite the fact that the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Department prohibited work release for sex offenders.

Epstein’s deal, called a “non-prosecution agreement,” granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators,” meaning that if any of Epstein’s powerful friends were involved in his crimes, they would face no consequences. And Acosta agreed that the deal would be kept secret from the victims, preventing them from showing up in court to try to challenge it.

•••••

However, a ruling on February 21 by federal Judge Kenneth A. Marra gave those who reported abuse by Epstein some hope. Marra ruled that prosecutors under Acosta violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act by hiding the non-prosecution agreement from more than 30 girls who said Epstein abused them, as Brown reports at the Herald. The judge did not overturn Epstein’s plea deal; instead, he gave prosecutors 15 days to work with the victims — now in their 20s and 30s — and their attorneys to arrive at a settlement. It’s not clear whether that settlement could include further prosecution for Epstein.

•••••

Acosta, who helped Epstein serve his time in an office rather than a prison cell — and measure it in months, not years — oversees Trump’s Labor Department, which is responsible for, among other things, preventing human trafficking.

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Climate disasters cost the world $650 billion over 3 years — Americans are bearing the brunt: Morgan Stanley

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/climate-disasters-cost-650-billion-over-3-years-morgan-stanley.html

Tom DiChristopher
Published 6:27 AM ET Thu, 14 Feb 2019 Updated 8:30 AM ET Thu, 14 Feb 2019

Climate-related disasters have cost the world $650 billion over the last three years, and North America is shouldering most of the burden, according to a new report from Morgan Stanley.

While governments and corporations are taking steps to mitigate the impacts of climate change, Morgan Stanley says private enterprises need to strongly consider preparing for a world gripped by more frequent and intense weather events, rising sea levels, changes to agriculture and the spread of infectious disease. Those outcomes will have a lopsided effect across industries, raising risks for some and creating opportunities for others.

"We expect the physical risks of climate change to become an increasingly important part of the investment debate for 2019," Morgan Stanley equity strategists Mark Savino, Jessica Alsford and Victoria Irving said in a research note Wednesday.

At $650 billion, the three-year price of climate disasters totals just over a quarter of a percent of global gross domestic product, the analysts say. The investment bank warns that the situation may only get worse, noting that damages associated with global warming could total $54 trillion by 2040, according to a UN panel composed of the world's top climate scientists.

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President Donald Trump continues to cast doubt on the consensus among climate scientists and U.S. government agencies that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are warming the planet. His administration, backed by congressional Republicans, is seeking to boost fossil fuel production and push through a broad rollback of Obama-era policies aimed at lowering U.S. emissions.

After the U.S., Asia is most exposed to the cost of climate disasters, absorbing $180 billion in economic damages, equal to 0.24 percent of regional GDP, Morgan Stanley says.

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In the near term, Morgan Stanley sees climate change posing risk of negative disruptions to a dozen sectors, from agriculture to oil and gas production. Just four sectors — capital goods, home improvement retail, lodging and construction machinery — could reap benefits from those near-term disruptions.

Over the longer term, structural changes are seen negatively impacting nine sectors, including many of the industries that also face near-term hurdles. Real estate, leisure and consumer retail are also on the list. Other sectors, like auto manufacturing, biotechnology, health care and pharmaceuticals, insurance, mining and utilities, could find opportunity in structural change.

Drilling down, the four main vectors that Morgan Stanley identifies — sea-level rise, weather events, changes in agriculture and infectious disease — will impact sectors in different ways.

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