Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

so what’s going on in Syria?

Syria is complicated. This article is by a Cato Institute author with some strong opinions I am not necessarily endorsing, but it does break down some of the key players.

  • Fact: The U.S. government has ground troops inside the borders of Syria, a sovereign country with a seat at the United Nations, and it does not have the permission of that government to be within its borders. The two countries do not have friendly diplomatic relations but nevertheless, neither side claims to be directly at war with the other.
  • The stated reason for U.S. troops entering Syria was to fight the Islamic State group. By many accounts, that objective has been achieved. It is also worth noting that by some accounts, the reason that group formed was blowback from the 2003 U.S. (mostly unprovoked) Iraq invasion.
  • There are, however, regular “drone and rocket attacks” on U.S. troops by militant groups “aligned with Iran and Syria”.
  • The Syrian government is publicly anti-israel, and the U.S. government is obviously an ally of the Israel government. This article doesn’t mention it, but Israel is also known to be carrying out regular strikes against groups on Syrian territory that it considers threatening and/or Iran proxies.
  • The government of Russia is allied with the government of Syria. The United States presence in Syria is therefore “discomfiting” to the Russian government according to some. Russia has troops on the ground in Syria with the permission of the Syrian government. The U.S. and Russia are not directly at war in Syria or anywhere else, but there have been confrontations, provocations, and “harassments”.
  • The U.S. government supports military forces of the Kurdish ethnic group, which some say serves as a de facto government controlling territory in this area. These Kurdish forces are openly engaged in military hostilities with Turkey inside the borders of Syria, which is a NATO member and declared U.S. ally.
  • The government of Syria and the government of Iran are allies, and the U.S. government is openly very hostile to Iran and accuses them of interfering with politics and funding wars and terror groups throughout the Middle East. The governments of Iran and Israel are also openly hostile, of course, with nuclear risks for the region and world.
  • Some say the U.S. is trying to “bring Assad down” or “steal Syria’s oil”. I don’t know how real these claims are or whether either represents any sort of official policy (well, certainly not the latter, and deploying the U.S. military to “steal oil” tens of thousands of miles away simply can’t be a viable business proposition. This one does not pass the logic test.)

There – I don’t know that I “explained” it, but I don’t know that there is anything to explain. We are there because they are fighting us, and they are fighting us because we are there. There are at least four distinct conflicts happening in the same geography – U.S. vs. Russia/Syria/Iran/islamist groups, Israel vs. Syria/Iran, Syria vs. Kurds, Turkey vs. Kurds. What a mess. Even Donald Trump wanted to get out of Syria, probably for what I would consider the wrong reasons. Let’s get the U.S. military out and the diplomats in. Where is Jimmy Carter when you need him? Who is the next Jimmy Carter – Obama maybe?

October 2023 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Israel-Palestine. From the long-term grind of the failure to make peace and respect human rights, to the acute horror causing so much human suffering and death at this moment, to the specter of an Israeli and/or U.S. attack on Iran. It’s frightening and depressing – but of course it is not my feelings that matter here, but all the people who are suffering and going to suffer horribly because of this. The most positive thing I can think of to say is that when the dust settles, possibly years from now, maybe cooler heads will prevail on all sides. Honorable mention for most frightening story is the 2024 U.S. Presidential election starting to get more real – I am sure I and everyone else will have more to say about this in the coming (exactly one as I write this on November 5, 2023) year!

Most hopeful story: Flesh eating bacteria is becoming slightly more common, but seriously you are not that likely to get it. And this really was the most positive statement I could come up with this month!

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: The generally accepted story of the “green revolution“, that humanity saved itself from widespread famine in the face of population growth by learning to dump massive quantities of fossil fuel-derived fertilizer on farm fields, may not be fully true.

rolling the DICE

The Intercept has a long take-down of William Nordhaus’s DICE climate change economic model. Well, it’s not just this journalist, who may not have past middle school algebra for all we know, in this openly left-leaning publication taking him down, it’s Joseph Stiglitz, Nicholas Stern, and Herman Daly among others. So despite some unnecessarily inflammatory language, I found the article to be a good summary of where this debate stands.

The basic take-down is that Nordhaus’s model ignores those “fat tail” tipping point scenarios, and is basically just extrapolating recent data far into the future in a linear manner, without consideration of true system dynamics. I might agree, but I can also see the point Nordhaus himself makes that our global society is doing much less than even his somewhat conservative model would recommend. Scientists sometimes deserve to be accused of “paralysis of analysis” – because there is some controversy, politicians and corporate leaders can rationalize continuing to do nothing. When in reality, all the economists and scientists cited here, who vehemently disagree with each other, all agree that our global society is doing too little too late to avert catastrophe. If our leaders would do what Nordhaus is recommending, it would be a huge step in the right direction, and then we could have a useful debate about whether we have done enough or still need to do more. We are nowhere near that point so this is quite literally an academic debate. If the more catastrophic scenarios people are talking about were moving the politicians in the right direction, that would be one thing, but I am not convinced. I think seeing the experts argue with each other just gives the politicians excuses. And we KNOW most of them failed elementary school arithmetic.

rapid intensification strikes again

Hurricane Otis, which just struck Acapulco last week as I write this, went from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane in 24 hours. This is scary because you can’t evacuate major coastal cities every time a tropical storm is nearby, and enormous damage and death can result from this, and it is becoming more frequent.

1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030!

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post says China will have 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030, an increase from a few hundred now. This is bad, in my view. It is also less than the U.S. and Russia have (5,000-6,000 each). Whatever one may think of China’s policies toward Tibet, Xinxiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, China has not invaded any sovereign UN member states without permission in recent memory (ever? there’s a good history question but I can’t think of one.) The United States and Russia have both invaded multiple sovereign states each in very recent memory (do I need to list them? Panama, Bosnia, Iraqx2, Afghanistan, Libya, Georgia, Ukraine, and I’m probably forgetting some – oh, Syria, when and how the f— did the United States invade Syria without anyone noticing? I’m not counting the dozens or hundreds of countries where we have boots on the ground with the permission of sketchy governments.) So who has reasons to be afraid of whom? I’m just saying, the United States leadership could try putting themselves in another country’s shoes and ask what they might be thinking and feeling. You don’t have to agree with your opponent to try to understand them better.

Only one country has ever used nuclear weapons in war. I hope we can continue to make this statement for a long time to come. If we have 5,000 nuclear war heads, China has 300 (making up some round numbers here), and is threatening to build more, maybe there is some room for negotiation? Maybe they would agree to stop at 1,000 if the U.S. and Russia both agreed to reduce to 2,000. The whole world would be safer. We would have a shred of credibility when we tell other countries they don’t need nuclear weapons. This would be a clear win-win-win-(etc.) situation. Are there any courageous leaders left in our country or anywhere on Earth?

flesh eating bacteria: worry or not worry?

If you are one of the people who gets flesh eating bacteria, it is horrible. This article is about a person who got a minor scrape in the Gulf of Mexico, lost her leg, and was lucky to live. But here are the numbers:

Cases of V. vulnificus are rare. Between 150 and 200 are reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention every year, with about 20% resulting in death. Most are in states along the Gulf of Mexico, but, in 2019, 7% were on the Pacific Coast. Florida averages about 37 cases and 10 deaths a year.

But a rise in cases nationally and the spread of the disease to states farther north — into coastal communities in states such as Connecticut, New York, and North Carolina — have heightened concerns about the bacterium, which can result in amputations or extensive removal of tissue even in those who survive its infections. And warmer coastal waters caused by climate change, combined with a growing population of older adults, may result in infections doubling by 2060, a study in Scientific Reports warned earlier this year.

Alternet, orignally in Tampa Bay Times

My heart certainly goes out to this person, the other 149-199 people per year who get this, and the other 299 to 399 per year who may get it by 2060. I am going to continuing worrying most about things that kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people each year. And I am going to keep in mind that being so fearful of the outside world I become a couch potato would also be very risky for my health.

more evidence for rapid intensification

Anecdotally, we have seen an increase in rapid intensification of hurricanes in recent years. A “new study” (which the journalist does not name or link to, a pet peeve of mine) confirms this using data.

The study looked at 830 Atlantic tropical cyclones since 1971. It found that in the last 20 years, 8.1% of the time storms powered from a Category 1 minor storm to a major hurricane in just 24 hours. That happened only 3.2% of the time from 1971 to 1990, according to a study in the journal Scientific Reports. Category 1 hurricanes top out at 95 mph (153 kph) and a hurricane has to have at least 111 mph (178 kph) winds to become major.

When storms rapidly intensify, especially as they near land, it makes it difficult for people in the storm’s path to decide on what they should do — evacuate or hunker down. It also makes it harder for meteorologists to predict how bad it will be and for emergency managers to prepare, Garner and other scientists said.

Associated Press

Insurance companies take note of these things, and recall that the National Flood Insurance Program does not cover wind damage. If you live near the coast, this could be catastrophic for you. I predict the government will have to start picking up more and more of the tab for storms and other natural disasters over time, and this will gradually make us all a little poorer as we can’t afford to have other nice things, even if we don’t live near the coast.

just start your y-axis at zero

Seriously, just do that and it will work out most of the time. The only exception in my mind is if you are comparing the range or spread of two data sets and neither one is close to zero.

Snopes

I’ve been to Indonesia, and people there are normal human beings who are in fact somewhat shorter than Europeans on average. But their heads were typically around my shoulder height, not my knees. Some political violence has occurred there in the not-so-distant past, but I found the culture warm and hospitable. Like almost any country not at war, the biggest risk to your physical safety is probably being in a car accident or hit by a car. The next biggest if you are there for any length of time might be air pollution and second hand smoke. Once an Indonesian woman yelled at me to not sit next to her on a ferry. The ferry was crowded and there was nowhere else to sit, but I was eventually able to solve the problem by swapping seats with another woman (my gender being what made her uncomfortable apparently.) Other times I had groups of female Indonesian tourists stop me on the street and ask to take vacation pictures with me to show their friends back home. This was when I was quite a bit younger than I am now.

Ol’ Lindsey Graham’s gettin’ pretty hot, Time to turn Iran into a parking lot

Lindsey Graham was on Meet the Press on Sunday, October 16 (yesterday as I write this) saber-rattling against Iran. I couldn’t help myself thinking of this catchy little hit from 1980…uh, what year is it now?

I looked up the lyrics to this 1980 song. Pretty offensive. Or, let’s go with intended as parody.

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb
Bomb Iran
Let’s take a stand
Bomb Iran
Our country’s got a feelin’
Really hit the ceilin’, bomb Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran

Went to a mosque, gonna throw some rocks
Tell the Ayatollah, “Gonna put you in a box!”
Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb
Bomb Iran
Our country’s got a feelin’
Really hit the ceilin’, bomb Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran

Ol’ Uncle Sam’s gettin’ pretty hot
Time to turn Iran into a parking lot
Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb
Bomb Iran
Our country’s got a feelin’
Really hit the ceilin’, bomb Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran

Call the volunteers; call the bombadiers;
Call the financiers; better get their ass in gear
Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb
Bomb Iran
Our country’s got a feelin’
Really hit the ceilin’, bomb Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran
(Let’s nuke ’em! Whoo!)

genius.com