Blog Betty (Thomas Friedman is a Great Man was an online novel)

Sunday, November 08, 2020

NASA and sea level rise (plus Curiosity)

Before Gina comes after me :D, please go read Ava and C.I.'s "Media: The scream in our soul" -- Gina loves the piece (as do I) and pointed out in the gina & krista round-robin that the piece posting on election night meant that a lot of us didn't even note it (none of us did) due to all the other things going on.

Now for Curiosity. I love our land rover on Mars. And by "our," I mean the whole earth's, not just the US. Curiosity is up there (out there?) doing important work and I really hoped that TIME would declare Curiosity the person of the year but it never did. We don't really value science in this country.

For all our lamentations about low science scores and our talk of needing to invest in science, time and again, we ignore it in our popular publications and our popular programs.

Lesley e-mailed that she loved Curiosity as well and that she didn't think I'd ever noted the documentary NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC did? I don't believe I have, Lesley.

But I have now because you drew it to my attention. Thank you.

Now I was looking around the NASA website this weekend and found this:

NASA Studies All Aspects of Sea Level Rise

With satellites, airborne missions, shipboard measurements, and supercomputers, NASA has been investigating sea level rise for decades. Together with our international and interagency partners, we’re monitoring the causes of sea level rise with high accuracy and precision. Global sea level is rising approximately 0.13 inches (3.3 millimeters) a year. That’s 30% more than when NASA launched its first satellite mission to measure ocean heights in 1992.

Humanity, not one agency, not one country, not one continent, but . . . humanity has been monitoring global sea level from space with exquisite accuracy for more than 28 years.
Michael Freilich ›
1954-2020

This month, NASA is partnering with the European Space Agency, NOAA and EUMESTAT to launch the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, which will continue 28 years of satellite-based ocean height measurements. The satellite was renamed in honor of the late director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, an oceanographer by training who recognized that a complex problem like sea level rise requires people with diverse backgrounds, from across the globe, to solve.

Artist depiction of Sentinel satellite — **Artist’s drawing of Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich. Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory**

In 2014, NASA created a Sea Level Change Science Team to bring together experts from across the agency and at other institutions that study different aspects of this multidisciplinary problem. Scientists studying glaciers, ice sheets, ocean physics, land movement and more are brought together to tackle what sea level rise looks like now – and what it will look like in the future.

"We’re united by this big goal," said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, the NASA program manager who oversees the team. "Sea level is impacted by these different factors that one discipline doesn't cover – so we’ve got to bring in experts to approach it from all angles."

Four Impacts of Sea Level Rise

Rising Sea Level: Meltwater from Ice

About two-thirds of global sea level rise is due to meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets, the vast expanses of ice that cover Antarctica and Greenland. In Greenland, most of the ice loss stems from warming air temperatures that melt the surface of the ice sheet, as well as calving from the glaciers that empty into the sea. In Antarctica, however, year-round freezing temperatures mean that the surface of the interior ice sheet doesn't melt. Instead, most of the ice is lost as warmer ocean temperatures join warm air temperatures to eat away at the floating ice shelves at the ends of glaciers in West Antarctica. This causes the glaciers to speed up, and more ice to flow – and melt – into the sea.

Warmer air temperatures can melt the top of ice sheets from above, while warm ocean waters eat away at the ends of glaciers and ice shelves where they meet the sea. Credit: NASA

NASA measures this change from space. With the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite 2, or ICESat‑2, scientists can calculate the change in height of the ice sheets to within a fraction of an inch, allowing them to calculate how changing ice sheets are contributing to sea level rise. With the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On satellites, or GRACE-FO, a partnership with the German Research Centre for Geosciences, scientists can calculate the mass of ice lost from these vast expanses across Greenland and Antarctica.

The ice sheets alone contributed around 1.2 millimeters per year to sea level rise between 2002 and 2017, scientists calculated by comparing data from the GRACE and GRACE-FO satellites.

Since 2006, an average of 318 gigatons of ice per year has melted from Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets, scientists calculated by comparing data from the first ICESat and ICESat‑2.

One gigaton is enough to cover New York City’s Central Park in ice 1,000 feet deep.

Glaciers in places like Alaska, High Mountain Asia, South America and the Canadian Arctic are susceptible to warming air temperatures. Over the last decade, nearly all glaciers have been shrinking. Whether the glaciers empty directly into the ocean, or into rivers that eventually reach the sea, the meltwater from these smaller glaciers contributes about as much to sea level rise as the meltwater from massive ice sheets contributes.

Rising Sea Level: Thermal Expansion

Earth’s dark-colored oceans absorb heat. As the water warms, it expands, causing sea levels to rise. Credit: NASA

Not only is more water flowing into the ocean from ice sheets and glaciers – the warmer water of the ocean is taking up more space, adding to sea level rise. The upper 2,300 feet (700 meters) of the ocean has been warming since the 1970s – and much of the extra heat generated by global warming is absorbed by the ocean. When water warms, individual molecules move around faster, expanding the volume that they take up. On a global scale, this causes about a third of the sea level rise that scientists have measured.

Like all sea level change, thermal expansion varies across the oceans – some regions are more affected than others. Currents and winds move this newly warmed and expansive water around, and that warmer water influences the strengths and patterns of ocean currents. Instruments like the Argo floats from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego collect temperature and other data on the ocean waters.

Complicating Sea Level: Ocean Circulation

Earth’s complex ocean currents move water around. Influenced by bumpy ocean floor topography, the churning of cold water to the surface, and other factors, currents can lead to regional differences in sea level rise. Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

Sea level rise isn’t consistent across the globe. Some coastal areas see triple the average rate of rise while others don’t observe any changes, or can even see a drop in sea level. Ocean currents, the upwelling of cold water from the deep ocean, winds, movements of heat and freshwater, and Earth’s gravitational pull all play a role in moving water masses around. When water melts from Greenland, for example, the drop in mass decreases the gravitational pull from the ice sheet, causing water to slosh toward the shores of South America. Warmer waters can speed up currents, and even tilt the surface of the ocean – changes that will be measured by the upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite mission, developed by NASA and international partners.

Naturally occurring ocean climate cycles can also play a role in temporarily masking or enhancing the effects of climate change on sea level rise. During most of the time that satellites have been measuring global sea surface height, sea level rise along the West Coast of the United States has been lower than the global average due to extended cool phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), a long-term cyclical pattern of climate variability in the Pacific Ocean that affects ocean and atmospheric conditions. The cool PDO phase pushed warm water away from the U.S. West Coast, suppressing sea level rise. But around 2010-2011, the PDO shifted to its warm phase, and scientists are now observing faster-than-average sea level rise for the region, which is expected to continue for at least the next five years and potentially much longer.

Complicating Sea Level: Solid Earth Dynamics

Ice is heavy when it covers large swaths of continents, as it did during the last ice age. As these ice sheets melted, Earth’s crust responded to the redistribution of mass on its surface by rising where the ice sheets previously resided – a rebounding process that is still occurring in some areas. Other areas are sinking – or subsiding – in response to the rebound, like the other end of a seesaw. Credit: NASA

It’s not only water processes that play a role in global sea level rise – ground movements can play a significant role as well. On a continental scale, Earth’s crust is still recovering from the last ice age. 20,000 years ago, Canada, the northeast United States, Scandinavia and other regions were weighed down by ice sheets. As the ice sheets melted, and the weight on the continents eased, the land surface slowly rebounded. That rebounding process is still occurring and can even cause other places to drop – for example, Norfolk, Virginia is sinking due to rebounding further north.

Rising sea levels can also be compounded by sinking land. The Mississippi River Delta, for example, is essentially drowning as sinking ground from resource extraction, sediment loading, and the weight of the built environment is combined with higher sea levels. NASA will be studying this case with a field campaign called Delta-X, designed to study how sediments are accumulating on the delta.

Sorry for the way that laid out but I found it worth highlighting.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Friday, November 6, 2020. And the count goes on -- yes, the count goes on.

"Here we go again" is how Kathleen Wallace opens her column that went up at COUNTERPUNCH on Thursday. Yeah, I know. Kind of familiar -- see Wednesday morning's "Here we go again (Ava and C.I.)" but we -- Ava and I -- were true to our own voices, so no one can really copy us though, goodness knows, many have tried and failed over the years. Hey, IN THESE TIMES, what happened to that entertainment media coverage? No, it's not as easy as it looks -- especially if you're trying to offer a feminist perspective but, hey, thanks for playing.

And playing's all Kathleen Wallace is doing. I planned to highlight her but I read and read and it just got worse and worse. 'COVID didn't register!'

Yeah, it did but your head's been up your ass so long that you never got what was going on. The center-left meme was that Covid-19 meant the country would turn away from Donald Trump collectively and now here comes Kathleen to tell us, "I also thought covid would be a gamechanger, but the Trump supporters view the shutdowns as the enemy, not the virus."

Why admit at the top of your column that you were wrong and just cling to your insulting beliefs that got you into this mess to begin with?

For months, the media and much of the left has lived in an artificial world that was far from reality-based. There are people on the right who just see the pandemic as something that's been overblown and/or some sort of plot but that's true of some on the left as well.

What no one seems to get about a number of Donald Trump supporters is that they're not as stupid as the MSNBC talking point crowd.

They know damn well that the hissy fits over what Donald did in February and Joe Biden's claims of what he would do are largely nonsense. Reality, in February and March, Joe and his campaign were telling people -- in the midst of the pandemic -- to go to the polls and vote. Joe presented no plan for a response to the pandemic.

Did Donald flounder? Yes, he did. But many people remember that so did the CDC. Many remember when we were told there was no point in wearing masks Then we were told to wear masks. People can look at those events and they can see that everyone was learning as they went along.

The Democratic Party leaders tried to weaponize Covid for the election. And you got a lot of childish and petty little brats -- who need to grow the hell up, quite frankly -- reinventing the narrative the same way they tried their neoliberal reinvention of government in the 90s (that was the Clintonesque destruction of the safety net and you can refer to the book REINVENTING GOVERNMENT if you're late to that party). It was disgusting to see people try to profit politically off the pandemic.

And maybe if you did something other than 'learn' about the world from MSNBC, you'd have known that. We spoke to group after group and heard this called out repeatedly. I'd be surprised if out of the hundreds in the last two months, more than 21 of them were Trump supporters. The bulk identified as Democrats (though many were clear that they would not be voting in the election due to Joe's position on fracking or his assault of Tara Reade or both). And they were appalled by the way the pandemic was being used as political football. Nancy Pelosi's refusal to provide a second stimulus also fell under that umbrella. People were outraged by that and saw that as yet another example of a party wanting your vote but refusing to do anything to get it. And then came Joe's I-promise-you-nothing campaign and you had a political party that stood for nothing other than trying to shape opinion.

I don't know why, in the face of the rebuke that is this election, you'd say, "I got is wrong but let me tell you about all the other things I believe without any basis in fact and let's pretend like they are right."

Throughout the last four years, opinions have been presented as facts and this from the 'neutral' media? It rained is a fact. What someone felt about the rain is an opinion -- that seems to confuse a number of so-called reporters at various corporate outlets.

Wallace really shouldn't write a word. She's a stupid and sexist fool. Doubt me? Note this passage:

This falls completely on Obama and the corrupt DNC machinery. As you all know, prior to Super Tuesday, Obama pulled the strings of the other primary candidates, creating a situation that unearthed a most inorganic Biden victory. He got them to pull out and support Biden en masse. Though Obama was reported to have said “don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up”, he opted to intervene in the democratic process of a legitimate primary. Elizabeth Warren (oh don’t upset her with snake emojis) helped out too, making sure the progressive vote was splintered. It makes you wonder what was going on there. She sells her soul for no payout, it seems.

Did Elizabeth help out? That's an opinion but if you think she helped out and you also think this falls completely on Barack -- your words -- then why is it that you seen to blame them equally? That's what you're doing in that paragraph. Four sentences calling out Barack and three calling out Elizabeth.

And note the sexism, Elizabeth is the one who "splintered" the progressive vote. Not Bernie. As a man, apparently, the progressive vote belonged to Bernie. As a woman, apparently, Elizabeth was supposed to sacrifice and step aside. Was this the election or post-WWII America? Go home, girls, the men are back!

What an offensive piece of trash Wallace is.

Again, there are facts and there are opinions. It's a fact that they both sought the nomination. It's an opinion that one should have dropped out (we never called for either to drop out -- we did note that people needed to back off and stop the sexism against Elizabeth and that failing to do so would only hurt Bernie). Elizabeth and/or her supporters could argue throughout the primary that Bernie lost last time and he'd lose again. They could have argued that Bernie had the nomination stolen from him last time and that he'd have it stolen again.

They could have pointed out the reality that Elizabeth stood up to Joe in the debates while Bernie undercut his own talking points and his own stands with 'my friend Joe' comments.

They could have pointed to the attacks during the primary from Bernie on women like Zephyr Teachout. What did Zephyr do? Oh, yeah, she wrote the truth about Joe Biden's record -- a record that Bernie was running against. And Zephyr was rewarded for that well researched and well thought out column by being attacked and disowned by Bernie and his campaign. Or the backstabbing of Briahna Joy Gray. If you were shocked by Bernie's dismissive attitude towards Briahna, so sorry that you didn't know s**t as usual.

It wasn't surprising in the least. I sat through those awful VA hearings the Senate Committee held under Bernie's leadership (I also sat through Daniel Akaka and Patty Murray's hearings which set the standards for any Senate hearings). I saw Bernie's patronizing attitudes towards women -- women on the committee, women testifying before the committee. A group of women veterans and I spent one post-hearing lunch together counting up all the sexist terms Bernie had used in the hearing and all the ways he'd been patronizing to women but never to men.

Did Bernie tell Elizabeth that he didn't think a woman could win?

We don't know. But those of us who have seen Bernie in action do know that it wouldn't be a surprise. And, when that rumor came up, we said here, check the archives, whether it was said or not, it shouldn't be the end of the world. The statement, as reported, was that someone didn't think the country would elect a woman. That's an opinion and it's an opinion of what others think. It wasn't a statement, as reported, that a woman shouldn't be president or that Bernie said he wouldn't vote for a woman. It was a politician looking at the landscape and trying to read it and coming to a conclusion.

Our advice was to leave it alone and that was partly because we knew Bernie's past very well. Just leave it alone and let it fade. But his supporters couldn't do that or wouldn't do that. And Bernie couldn't either and he had to give the story new life by confronting Elizabeth at the end of the debate. As she was heard saying, "You called me a liar." And that is what he did.

None of this is written as an Elizabeth lover. Had she gotten the nomination, I would've voted for her. I probably would've voted for anyone other than Joe. I certainly would've voted for Beto, Julian, Marianne . . .

But I am not an Elizabeth Warren fan nor am I even a supporter. I don't mean a supporter or her presidential campaign, I mean a supporter of her public work. I think she's done a very poor job on a lot of things. I would include that the time to let us know that a program isn't working is long before the money's all been distributed. I think she's been very dishonest about her past -- I'm referring to the Republican thing, not the Native American aspect. Trina was very familiar with Elizabeth Warren and her politics and the minute Elizabeth ran for the Senate, Trina was telling you she wasn't all that and that she had started out a Republican. Trina lives in Boston and knew exactly what Elizabeth was and wasn't.

And we called out Elizabeth through out the campaign including when she decided to use impeachment as a campaign booster. Didn't work for her.

So Elizabeth's not perfect and I'm not saying she is. I'm not a supporter of Elizabeth Warren. But, please note, Kathleen Wallace, when I'm writing about what happened and trying to explain it, I'm not just offering a one-sided version of a narrative that rescues all my beloveds and paints everyone else as the devil.

Kathleen is unhappy with Bernie's loss. But she's not going to blame him apparently. So she'll blame Barack (who does deserve a portion of the blame, he clearly pulled strings behind the scenes) and she'll blame Elizabeth but she won't blame Bernie.

Here's what Kathleen thinks is a critique of Bernie:

This is all not to say that Sanders isn’t clearly at fault in this situation as well. He embraced the sheepdog role and after the first Lucy football incident, he should have run as an Independent if he was serious about truly winning the presidency. How many people who couldn’t afford it plunged what assistance they could into his campaign? It’s a pretty craven and bitter move to do to those young idealists. At some point, you have to hold to your convictions. Say what you will, but these scary Trumpers do hold to their (often toxic convictions) and it’s powerful. They win that way. Bernie has done much to push progressive ideals and has done well introducing them to a large audience, but he also has been instrumental in ripping the hearts out of those who truly believed in his platform. How can you be for the ideas that he offered and still hit the campaign trail for a Biden? Sure, sure the bigger threat thing is what is always given as the excuse— but he likely knew exactly what would happen this second time around. He coalesced progressive support around him during the primary, keeping a trend towards any third party leanings down. He was an instrumental cog in all of this….again.

So his portion of the blame, per Kathleen, is the sheepdog role -- a role he played after he dropped out. And his other one was refusing to run as an independent. Again, that would happen after he dropped out.

Bernie, in her mind, made no mistakes until then. And the mistakes she attributes to him feed into her belief that he's a good guy. He may very well be a good person but she doesn't offer that possibility for Donald Trump or Barack Obama or Elizabeth Warren or anyone she disagrees with. Are we not supposed to notice that?

As the pandemic was making clear the need for Medicare For All, who dropped out?

Bernie. It was the perfect time to speak out about his platform and how, look around at the people in need in this crisis, this is why we need Medicare For All.

But he didn't do that. He grumbled about David Sirota and Nina Turner when they were busting their asses for him. He called out Zephyr and, after the election, Briahna. This is leadership?

It's whoring.

And you could float the idea that it's another reason Elizabeth didn't drop out. She was running against a man who did nothing. Naming post offices, that was Bernie's Congressional accomplishment. Yes, I started that talking point but I didn't do it to help Hillary (I actually favored Martin in 2016) and I didn't realize the campaign would run with his lack of accomplishments in Congress -- both the House and the Senate. I was just applying the same standard to all. It's not my job to fluff and flatter.

And Elizabeth does have some accomplishments in the Senate and she might have stayed in the campaign for that reason.

More to the point, she doesn't need a reason to stay in other than she wants to. She's not stealing anything from anyone by making a forceful case for herself.

I'm raking my brain for when we hear this sort of talk about a man. Other than the lunatic ravings of Al Gore's self-appointed online defender/mistress Bob Somerby (in his attacks on Bill Bradley), I'm not remembering it.

If Bernie's campaign was so weak that it couldn't survive another person campaigning openly, then it wasn't strong at all.

Now it's another thing to suffer through what the DNC did to him in 2016 and the strings Barack pulled this go round. Those were not done publicly, they were largely hidden.

But Elizabeth wanted the nomination and she sought it publicly. If Bernie couldn't handle that, I don't know that he could have handled the nomination.

Wallace is worried about Pete Buttigieg and that made me laugh the most at her column. Barack was the shiny, new toy in 2008. Pete can't be that. He tried to be it in 2019 and 2020 but it didn't happen. And in 2024 or 2028, he's not going to be anything but another fat assed male politician. Am I the only one whose noticed how much weight he's put on? Or how fat his face is? Barack was shiny and new with his thin trim self -- to the point that people spoke of anorexia. True or not, he did look lean and hungry and it gave his words an impact that a soft and fat politician just wouldn't have. Barack looked lean and hungry and that amplified his message of change. When roly-poly Pete lumbers out on stage in four years or eight years, a call to change from a fat cat politician will ring as hollow as it always does.

I kept searching her column -- which was sent into the public account by fifteen different people -- or at least fifteen different e-mail accounts -- for something to praise and include. I thought I was going to from the byline. But it's a really bad column. And don't think you're brave by noting Joe grabbing a woman's ass and including a mention of #MeToo if you can't mention Tara Reade. Tara told the truth. Kathleen did mention Anita Hill. It's safe to do that, isn't it?

Thing is, I was around back then and it wasn't safe. But people -- women and men -- wouldn't let it die. We didn't walk away from it. And these same people today, we're not walking away from Tara Reade. Joe will never live Tara down. It's the sort of thing the media can dismiss for a year or so but it's the sort of thing that festers and grows and that becomes so firm that even the cowardly -- Kathleen, for example -- finally feel that they can speak out about it -- the way she feels she can support Anita all these decades later.

I wanted to praise Kathleen. But she wrote a sexist article which opens with her admitting she was wrong but never goes on to try to attempt to re-evaluate any of the prejudices and mistaken beliefs that led to her being so wrong.

Most of all, I'll never support any argument -- made by a man or a woman -- that a woman's role is to sacrifice her goals and dreams so that a man can get ahead. I will always stand against that sort of nonsense.

In Iraq, Dilan S. Hussein (RUDAW) reports:

Iraqi President Barham Salih on Thursday officially signed recent electoral reforms into law, dividing provinces into smaller voting constituencies for the 2021 election.

"The law was passed after a long debate. The reform of the electoral law was a national demand to secure Iraqis' right to choose their representatives without fear of forgery, manipulation and the exertion of pressure on voters," said Salih.

"I call upon all state institutions to swiftly fulfill the required conditions for conducting early fair and free elections," he added. "Electoral corruption is a serious scourge that threatens the peace and stability of our community as well as the country's economic viability."

This would appear to mean that elections are moving forward (June 6, 2021). THE MEDIA LINE notes a possible snag, "Yet a dispute about how to replace retiring judges of the Federal Supreme Court, which rules on constitutional challenges, needs to be settled prior to elections." Of the new law, AP explains, "The new law changes each of the country’s 18 provinces into several electoral districts and prevents parties from running on unified lists, which has in the past helped them easily sweep all the seats in a specific province. Instead, the seats would go to whoever gets the most votes in the electoral districts."

Karen Steele has a letter to the editors of THE BALTIMORE SUN which includes:

Oct. 22 was the tenth anniversary of the publication of the Iraq War Logs (“Julian Assange is no hero,” May 15, 2019). The documents revealed war crimes, more than 15,000 previously undocumented civilian casualties and evidence that the military killed innocent people and mislabeled them as enemies for statistical purposes.

These revelations were only possible because Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning acted out of conscience, and WikiLeaks bravely published them after the Washington Post and New York Times hesitated. The coverage won countless awards, but also led to Ms. Manning spending years in prison and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange facing an unprecedented 175-year sentence.

Two more things. Time permitting, I'd like to explore the good and the bad about Brad Bannon's HILL column -- explore it this weekend. Second, this weekend, NOW and The Feminist Majority have a virtual conference:

You won’t want to miss an up-to-the-minute feminist analysis of the 2020 election. Join the Feminist Majority and the National Organization for Women (NOW) for the last in a series of free virtual conferences this Saturday November 7^th at 12:30pm ET on the power of the feminist vote and what is at stake as a result of the 2020 election.

REGISTER TODAY!

Our exciting plenary session will feature an election analysis panel led by Feminist Majority president Eleanor Smeal, featuring feminist pollster Celinda Lake of Lake Research and Barbara Arnwine, president and founder of Transformative Justice and its national voter protection project.

The second panel discussion will feature feminist political action committees that propelled feminist candidates to victory chaired by Bear Atwood, vice president of NOW. The keynote address will be delivered by Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California. The conference will close with a discussion with NOW president Christian Nunes on where we go from here.

You won’t want to miss this opportunity to engage with important feminist leaders and organizers who are working to protect the decades of progress made and are paving the way for even more feminist victories ahead. Register now!

If you have already registered please look for an email from NOW Conference 2020 that contains a link to join and if you haven’t registered, please do so now! If you have any issues registering or joining the conference please email NOW@scottcircle.com.

For equality,

Eleanor Smeal
President, Feminist Majority

Feminist Majority
1600 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA 22209
United States

The following sites updated:

Thursday, November 05, 2020

Science: New planet discovered

I love to blog about science and figure we could use another topic as we wait for the results of the election (and maybe we will be waiting until Thanksgiving for those -- or even later). There's a new planet to discuss and marvel over. Sophie Lewis (CBS NEWS) reports:

If you thought living on Earth in 2020 was comparable to hell, planet K2-141b is here to prove you wrong.

On the scorching hot planet, hundreds of light-years away, oceans are made of molten lava, winds reach supersonic speeds and rain is made of rocks. Scientists have referred to the bizarre, hellish exoplanet as one of the most "extreme" ever discovered.

According to a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, scientists from McGill University, York University and the Indian Institute of Science Education have uncovered details of one of the newest "lava planets" — a world that so closely orbits its host star that much of it is composed of flowing lava oceans.

Scientists found the atmosphere and weather cycle of K2-141b to be particularly bizarre. The Earth-sized exoplanet appears to have a surface, ocean and atmosphere all made of the same ingredients: rocks.

I wonder, in twenty years, how many more planets we will know about. They're out there and each year we get better and better at research and travel. And once a scientific breakthrough takes place, things tend to move much quicker. So it's interesting, to me, anyway, to think about how other planets, new ones, may pop up on a monthly or, who knows, maybe even a weekly basis.

On the new planet, SPACE.COM adds:

The scientists behind the new researchers wanted to understand what sort of atmosphere such a hot world might have and how terrestrial tools would see it. K2-141b was a tempting target because it's been studied by both the K2 mission of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and by the agency's Spitzer Space Telescope. And the atmosphere is particularly intriguing because scientists believe that NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, due to launch late next year, will be able to analyze the components of distant planetary atmospheres.

The researchers started with what previous studies have determined about K2-141b so far — for example, that the planet's density is about that of Earth's, so the crust can be modeled as pure silica as a reasonably simplified representation. Then, the scientists figured out what the surface might look like. That work took into account complications like the fact that the planet is so close to its star that more than half the world's surface might be sunlit, perhaps as much as two-thirds, the researchers calculated.

Offering more specifics, Andrew Griffin (INDEPENDENT) explains, "Two thirds of the planet is stuck in perpetual, blazing daylight from the orange dwarf star that K2-141b orbits around. Because it is so close to its sun – with years that last less than a third of a day on Earth – it is locked in place gravitationally, meaning the same side of the planet always faces its star."

That's a very interesting discovery.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, November 5, 2020. The ballot counting continues in the US, the corruption continues in Iraq, and much more.

What a difference a day makes? Yesterday morning, on many programs, including RISING, Democrats were stating that the mail-in ballots would have to be counted and this race was going blah blah blah. But now Joe Biden's trying to declare victory?

One of the things that this elections has made clear is that we can't move towards mail-in ballots under the current system. Example of why? Arizona being called for Joe Biden yesterday with less than 75% of the votes being counted. It's now at 88% counted and Joe is only 2.4% ahead of Donald Trump. 12% of the vote remains uncounted -- of the known vote, that's not including any ballots en route and post marked on election day -- and its being called?

We should move towards universal mail-in ballots. We can't at this time because of the fact that people aren't honest. Now if this was California and it only had 62% of the vote counted and it was declared for Joe, I wouldn't blink twice. California is a Democratic state. But this is Arizona which is supposedly in play.

The rush to declare Arizona? Makes you wonder if Katharine Harris is their Secretary of State this year?

In 2000, many of us wanted to see all the ballots counted (yes, I supported Al Gore but I wanted to see all the ballots counted regardless of whether they favored Gore in the end or not). There was a media rush created insisting that we had to know and we had to know now, wrap it up, wrap it up. No, we didn't need to know immediately. The new president is sworn in when? Middle of January. We certainly could have waited and allowed, for example, the recount to be finished in Florida. By the same token, there is no need to rush the count this go round. We need to be fair and we need to be transparent. That this even has to be said is rather sad and a sorry comment on the current state of politics in the United States.

Can we move towards online voting?

That's a big question we got yesterday when we were speaking to various college groups.

We could but the problem there is the same problem we've had with the machines of the '00s. Verifiable? Do we print a paper receipt that's kept? Black box voting is a term that was very popular in the '00s and a major voting concern for some.

There's a lot we need to ponder between now and the next election.

In two different groups, students brought a new voter shaming technique that emerged this election, one I had ignored. The minute that they mentioned I remembered vaguely hearing that in a commercial. Apparently, the commercial was all over YOUTUBE.

You have to vote, the commercial argues, because while your ballot is secret, your neighbors will be able to find out whether or not you voted due to the voting rolls.

This is the United States of America and you do not have to vote. Back when the USSR was around, some commentators used to note that was part of the freedom -- that in the USSR you had to vote but in a democracy you do not have to vote. The bullying and shaming and attempts at voter intimidation seem to only increase each year.

Do you have to vote to avoid your nosy neighbors?

No. You can tell them that you're registered at your parent's address, for example. You can tell them you did a mail-in ballot and it must have been a 'spoiled' ballot or not received. You can also tell them -- and should consider telling them -- "Get out of my f**king business you spying piece of trash." Because that's really what they are. It is not their business whether you voted or not. The Tattle States of America, is that what we're becoming?

Probably so.

Voter disenfranchisement is an issue that has many levels and that should be explored between now and the next election.

Clearly, the biggest segment of disenfranchisement are non-voters who do not feel part of the system. That's something that really needs to be explored. Another area of disenfranchisement is when you can't vote for your candidate due to ballot access.

The Democratic Party's efforts to keep the Green Party off the ballot were disgusting and dishonest and most looked the other way.

Don't come crying to me when you feel disenfranchised if you spent your time trying to keep someone off a ballot.

If you want to increase voter turnout, you need to make voting easier. That's not just access to a ballot to vote on, that's also access to a ballot -- meaning candidates have ballot access.

It's a funny sort of limited call for voting offered by the Norman Solomon's of the country. Vote!!! But just vote for the candidate I tell you to and ignore the efforts to keep others off the ballot.

On the election, C. Alexander Ohler ("a former senior analyst for the U.S. Department of State in Iraq and currently serves as a visiting fellow at the University of Tennessee. ) argues a win for Joe is bad for Iraq at THE HILL:

Directly after taking office, President Obama appointed Vice President Biden to oversee U.S. operations and diplomacy in Iraq. At that time, Iraq had begun to stabilize. The once-formidable al Qaeda in Iraq had been all but defeated and relegated to the outskirts of Mosul and civilian deaths fell to about one-fourth of what they had been before the “surge.”

But by the end of the vice president’s first term, civilian casualties in Iraq rose by almost 400 percent to over 20,000, and ISIS (a.k.a. ISIL, IS, [. . .]) flew its black flag from Syria through northern Iraq to a point about 60 miles outside of Baghdad.

What happened during the period that Biden oversaw Iraq? In 2009, Iraqiyya, a multi-sectarian and moderate political party founded by Sunni leader Rafe al-Essawi and Shia leader Ayad Allawi, challenged then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law Coalition in the 2010 national election and won with a narrow victory.

Iraq’s parliamentary system designates that the winning electoral party has the first shot at forming a coalition government with other parties. Maliki, however, influenced the court and had the interpretation of the law altered that led to a six-month standoff in which Maliki, backed by Iran, retained power but was unable to form a coalition government.

Joe Biden and the Obama administration faced a decision: to support the democratic results of the election or to back Maliki’s bid to retain power. Against the advice of Ambassador Robert Ford, a six-year diplomatic veteran of Iraq, General Ray Odierno and others, Biden and then-Ambassador Hill decided to backstop Maliki and the State of Law Coalition.

The administration’s reasoning is not entirely clear. Michael R. Gordon and retired Lieutenant General Bernard E. Trainor report in their book, “The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama,” that Vice President Biden was convinced that Maliki would deliver a Status of Forces Agreement.

[. . .]

Regardless of the reason, Biden’s fateful decision to support Maliki would seed political turmoil in Iraq that, according to General Petraeus and others, paved the way for the rise of ISIS.

Upon securing the premiership, Maliki reneged on several power-sharing agreements with Iraqiyya. Instead, the prime minister moved to consolidate power by exerting control over independent Iraqi institutions and appointing high-level security positions without required constitutional approval that transformed Iraqi security forces into sectarian instruments. The Status of Forces Agreement never materialized, and immediately after the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2011, Maliki placed tanks in front of the homes of Sunni leaders in the Green Zone.

If that sounds familiar, it should. We've been making that argument here for over eight years now. Glad it's at THE HILL today but is there a reason no one could make it before? Is there a reason that this issue couldn't be explored by the press before the election?

Is there a reason that it never came up in any debate -- not in the Democratic Party debates not in the Democratic-Republican debates of the general election.

Joe ran through the campaign citing his wisdom and experience and Iraq. Yet that never got challenged for the reality of that record. The closest it came to being challenged was him being asked about his vote for the war -- an action that took place in 2002 before the war started. Everything he did as a senator after that vote and as vice president for eight years -- when Barack put him in charge of Iraq -- as vice president was ignored.

Can someone offer an honest explanation and not just an excuse or rationalization?

Over at the US government's Carnegie Endowment for Peace (a misnomer), Kirk H. Sowell writes:

Since taking office, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has faced a series of fiscal and security crises amid collapsing public services and protests. The collapse in global oil prices due to the coronavirus pandemic and the Saudi-Russia oil price war caused Iraq to face an internal solvency crisis as early as June. This fiscal crisis has short and long-term implications. In the short-term, Baghdad continuously struggles to pay public sector salaries, which required the state to borrow from the Central Bank over the summer. With low oil revenue, the state’s monthly profits are covering just over 50 percent of its expenses. In the longer-term, Iraq faces a looming macro-fiscal state collapse—potentially within the next year.

The state is struggling to cover its monthly expenses. Over successive governments, the size of the public sector has grown to the point that Iraq needs to spend more than its total revenue on basic payments—public sector salaries, pensions, food aid, and welfare—to keep a majority of Iraq’s population out of destitution. In 2019, oil revenue averaged $6.5 billion per month, and with modest non-oil revenues (largely customs, well less than $1 billion per month), this covered operational expenses with a small amount left over for capital spending. Since the recovery of oil prices after the March collapse, Iraq’s monthly oil revenues have averaged just over $3 billion/month, hitting a high of $3.52 billion in August. In testimony before parliament in September, Finance Minister Ali Allawi revealed¹ that with revenues at these levels, the government was still borrowing 3.5 trillion Iraqi Dinars (IQD) — just over $3 billion—from the Central Bank each month.

On October 10, as Iraq’s cash crunch became more acute, Allawi explained that state employee compensation rose from 20 percent of oil revenues in 2005 to 120 percent today. To help the public understand why the government of such an oil-rich country was broke, he explained that a government of this size should have at least $15 to 20 billion in funds to pay monthly expenses on an ongoing basis, but when this government took office, only about $1 billion was available.² This is in part due to weak revenues, the result of low oil prices and Iraq’s adherence to OPEC’s limitations on oil exports. In the past, Iraq’s oil exports have reached 3.5 million barrels per day (bpd), yet they decreased to 2.5 million bpd in recent months. Prominent figures, including former oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, have argued in favor of leaving the OPEC agreement unilaterally. Yet Allawi, speaking before Parliament, explained that while he agreed that OPEC’s quota formula was unfair, Iraq needs the OPEC agreement to keep oil prices from collapsing. More recently, according to the Iraq Oil Report, the government has signaled that it may try to thread the needle by increasing exports by 250,000 barrels per day to satisfy critics—an amount above its quota, but still about 750,000 barrels per day below peak production, and thus hopefully too small an increase to incur Saudi retaliation.

Iraq’s monthly oil revenue to collapsed from $6.2 billion in January to just $1.4 billion in April. The figure recovered to $2.9 billion in May and has gradually improved since, but in August was still just $3.5 billion. Since the government only had about $3 billion in expendable reserves in May, it became clear that Iraq could not pay state employees in June. Salaries over the summer were paid as money became available. As late as July 28, the prime minister’s spokesman admitted that employees at the Culture & Antiquities Ministry (apparently the lowest priority), were still waiting to be paid.

Kirk's preaching austerity. Oh, boo, hoo, poor little government only took in X billions a month. Oh, boo, hoo. That's more than many countries ever do. If you addressed the corruption, the people would be better off but you don't want that, what you want is austerity. It's not about helping the Iraqi people, it's about gutting their social programs. You want them in a for-profit, capitalistic system and that's all this is about. Quit pretending otherwise. This is an attack on the Iraqi people.

If you were concerned about anything resembling reality, you'd note that Iraq's population is around 35 million and bringing in X billion a month should be more than enough to ensure a high standard of living for every Iraqi. The failure to make that happen goes to corruption.

Equally true, these efforts to prop up Mustafa are getting really pathetic -- what happened to the promise that he would be a prime minister only until early elections (June 2021) could be held?

Kirk overlooks that promise, he's too busy preaching his own wants and desires: austerity.