How Some Oil and Chemical Companies Operate

A plastics-laden waste dump in Nakuru, Kenya

In a New York Times article today, the focus is on a new trade deal with Kenya that the oil industry is pushing hard to get. The oil sector is under enormous economic pressures from low profits and growing social concerns about the environment generally, including awareness of the severity of increasing plastic waste problems. Plastics are profitable and both big oil and chemical companies want to make and sell a lot more plastics than they are now.

In response to the economic pressure, the oil sector has decided to try to force Africa to open itself up as a great place to dump hundreds of millions of tons of plastic waste. The oil and chemical (plastics) sectors have formed a trade group, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, to deal with the massive and growing plastic waste problem. The solution is to dump the waste in Africa. The companies behind that lobby power include Exxon, Chevron and Dow. The group is lobbying US trade negotiators to demand a reversal of the Kenya’s strict limits on plastics. The NYT writes:

“According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, an industry group representing the world’s largest chemical makers and fossil fuel companies is lobbying to influence United States trade negotiations with Kenya, one of Africa’s biggest economies, to reverse its strict limits on plastics — including a tough plastic-bag ban. It is also pressing for Kenya to continue importing foreign plastic garbage, a practice it has pledged to limit.

Plastics makers are looking well beyond Kenya’s borders. “We anticipate that Kenya could serve in the future as a hub for supplying U.S.-made chemicals and plastics to other markets in Africa through this trade agreement,” Ed Brzytwa, the director of international trade for the American Chemistry Council, wrote in an April 28 letter to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

The United States and Kenya are in the midst of trade negotiations and the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, has made clear he is eager to strike a deal. But the behind-the-scenes lobbying by the petroleum companies has spread concern among environmental groups in Kenya and beyond that have been working to reduce both plastic use and waste.

Kenya, like many countries, has wrestled with the proliferation of plastic. It passed a stringent law against plastic bags in 2017, and last year was one of many nations around the world that signed on to a global agreement to stop importing plastic waste — a pact strongly opposed by the chemical industry.

The plastics proposal reflects an oil industry contemplating its inevitable decline as the world fights climate change. Profits are plunging amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the industry is fearful that climate change will force the world to retreat from burning fossil fuels. Producers are scrambling to find new uses for an oversupply of oil and gas. Wind and solar power are becoming increasingly affordable, and governments are weighing new policies to fight climate change by reducing the burning of fossil fuels.

Pivoting to plastics, the industry has spent more than $200 billion on chemical and manufacturing plants in the United States over the past decade. But the United States already consumes as much as 16 times more plastic than many poor nations, and a backlash against single-use plastics has made it tougher to sell more at home.”

Plastic waste clogs the Narobi River in Kenya

The NYT article goes on to note that American exporters shipped more than 1 billion pounds of plastic waste to 96 countries including Kenya in 2019. In theory the waste was to be recycled, but much of the waste is not recyclable and it ends up in rivers and oceans. China closed its ports to most plastic trash in 2018. Since then, exporters have been looking for new dumping grounds and Africa looks to be the best place.

The NYT article makes this critically important point: The plastics industry’s pro-waste dumping proposals would make it hard to regulate plastics in the United States. That is because the trade deal under negotiation applies to both sides.

Plastic waste mixed with other waste 

This is how it arrogant, corrupt government works

The NYT points out that Kenya was one of the countries that signed a global agreement to stop importing plastic waste. The chemical industry strongly opposed it. The Times reviewed emails showing that industry representatives, including former US trade officials, are worked with US trade negotiators to try to block or stall those rules. The emails show close ties between the trade representatives, administration officials and industry representatives.

In March of 2019, a recycling trade group executive wrote to federal officials including trade negotiators to show them a recent useful statement by environmental activists. The executive wrote: “Hey ladies. This gives us some good fodder to build a strategy.” The chemical industry rationale to oppose bans on plastic waste exports is that they prevent recycling of what plastic there is that is recyclable.

Of course, that rationale ignores the facts that the waste can be recycled in the US and much or most  plastic waste cannot be recycled for practical and/or economic reasons. A 2018 article by National Geographic commented: “Of the 8.3 billion metric tons that has been produced, 6.3 billion metric tons has become plastic waste. Of that, only nine percent has been recycled. The vast majority—79 percent—is accumulating in landfills or sloughing off in the natural environment as litter.” In other words, 91% of plastic waste is not recycled.

Clearly, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste is an alliance to increase plastic waste and spread it throughout the land and the oceans where it will be out of Americans’ sight and minds. It's a win-win for the oil and chemicals sectors and a lose-lose-lose for the environment, the American people and Africa.

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste hates mandatory recycling in Kenya and everywhere else --
the NYT writes: “Kenya’s efforts to restrict plastics and encourage re-use are worrisome for plastics makers, whose leaders see the country as a promising market”
-- Specifically, what is worrisome is the threat to profits that recycling constitutes
Credit...

The Things That Unite Us

 By Best in Moderation

Integration comes in both positive and negative forms, and each relies on a shared set of values. Either we build towards them or we fight to defend them, but in both cases that set of values should be explored, shared and defined. So with that very short introduction, the focus of this piece:
What are the things that Unite the USA?
We're in potentially the most divided period of our nations history since the Civil War, and IMO we are even more divided than then. See, back during the CW most people still believed in the same values on most issues except for race and slavery. People were however divided on which entity was better at building or defending those values. Now, however, I'm not sure we are united in what things we value, or at least we are not defining our values well enough to make a good choice.
The DNC ran a convention on highlighting not policy but values that underscore those policies. The RNC ran a convention on highlighting values they felt were under threat (though most of the focus was on the threat, not the values). But neither was particularly able to separate the political choice from the value, and I think the value is worth exploring.
To that end, I suggest the following set of values that define US unity:
- Bravery
- Righteousness
- Independence
- Resourcefulness
- Curiosity
***********************************************************************************
Bravery:
The people of the USA admire the brave, the impulsive, people who jump into the fray. Some confuse it with strength, but we've not always been the top nation in terms of strength, and yet the bravery of our people has led us to victory against much more powerful foes. It has also allowed us to take grand steps in innovation and exploration, such as social and technical changes and the space programs, for example. The people of the USA value bravery in the face of adversity, and pride themselves in always taking on a challenge, even when it is not strictly necessary to do so.
Righteousness:
The people of the USA define themselves by being Good. Many conflicts are defined as us fighting for the freedoms and rights of other people, thus that righteousness is not just focused on the self. There is a sense that to do right is very valuable not just as a person but as a nation. Americans pride themselves in an identity as the "good guys."
Independence:
The people of the USA value their independence. Typically one solution does not help all people, so the choice to opt in or not is pretty valued by individual Americans. The opportunity to do something different and choose not to be joined to an existing entity is as valued as our search for entities we do choose to join. Ironically, the value of independence to Americans is one of the prime unifying values.
Resourcefulness:
The people of the USA value resourcefulness, the ability to make much out of little. Whether in pop culture or in legend, the idea that someone can take their bare bones existence and turn it into a flourishing successful business or organization is a staple of American culture. Often we measure our success not only by what we achieved but where we started from, and value the latter more.
Curiosity:
The people of the USA are curious, and skeptical. It's not enough to see something work somewhere else or be told an idea exists; Americans tend to need to explore it themselves. This often leads to new innovations and perspectives, and when we're at our best, Americans value and pursue their curiosities to the best of their abilities.
***********************************************************************************
My hope by highlighting these values is that we can stop the petty and circular arguments of what policies work better than others theoretically, and turn it more to which policy is more likely to support the things we as United Americans value most.
Please discuss your agreement or disagreement with my list, add some of your own, and how we can build up those values in the coming times.

The Influence of Leaders

A Washington Post article discusses how leaders can radically shape opinions of their followers. The article describes how the president has been able to change positive views in the GOP of foreign trade and low tariffs from 56% approval in 2015 to 29% by October 2016. The WaPo writes:

“These trends can seem disconcerting, because they appear to reverse the idealized direction of influence in a democracy, where the views of citizens are supposed to guide their politicians. Leadership surely involves the art of persuasion, but should it really drive such mercurial shifts on core issues?

Political science research shows that this ‘follow the leader’ dynamic is hardly limited to Trump. It occurs throughout history, on both sides of the aisle and in other countries. It happens even when party elites try to stop it. In general, the people who run our political parties — particularly the most prominent and charismatic figures — have the ability to reshape what voters in those parties think. 

‘Leader persuasion’ is a well-documented phenomenon in political science. Before the 2000 election, for instance, more than two-thirds of Americans broadly supported giving workers the option to invest Social Security funds in the stock market. Then GOP nominee George W. Bush promoted the idea and Democrat Al Gore opposed it, and the issue became central to the election. .... Gore voters soured on the policy. 

Nowhere are the consequences of voters’ deference more clear than in the coronavirus pandemic. For months, Trump has downplayed the severity of the contagion, condemned shutdowns that public health experts endorsed, ridiculed mask wearers, and pushed to reopen businesses and schools. Unsurprisingly, the resulting partisan divides on recommended behaviors have undermined our collective response to the crisis. In late April and early May, for example, the rate of mask-wearing among Republicans lagged that of Democrats by more than 20 percentage points, according to one survey.

Some observers have suggested that Trump has “hijacked” his party — and in attempting to explain why Republicans would follow him, they have focused on his distinctive (and unarguable) opportunism and disregard for norms. But the lesson of this vein of research is that all political parties are vulnerable to dramatic shifts and “takeovers” by prominent leaders (perhaps especially in presidential systems, which grant the chief executive inordinate prominence). Long after Trump is gone, American politicians who win top positions will be tugging the views of their partisans much closer to their own, adding yet more instability to an already hostile and polarized system.”

This suggests that maybe some people do not always think for themselves, and instead simply follow the leader. Maybe that is fairly common. 

The age of political tribalism…

 

While it appears that we and the media are a reflection of each other, do the media more control us, or do we more control the media?  Who do you think has the greater influence over the other?  Explain your reasoning.

Thanks for posting and recommending.

"#Unfit" delivers a Trump diagnosis we all know and warns of dire consequences for ignoring it

 

Is Trump mentally unstable? Mental health professionals, historians, George Conway & the Mooch say yes in a new doc.

https://www.salon.com/2020/08/28/unfit-the-psychology-of-donald-trump-review/

‘#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump’ Review: A Documentary Dissects the President’s Malignant Narcissism

Putting Donald Trump on the couch has become a national pastime, and this movie does it well.

https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/unfit-the-psychology-of-donald-trump-review-1234744187/#article-comments

For the first time, mental health professionals go on the record, in an eye–opening, science–based assessment of the behavior and stability of Donald J. Trump

https://unfitfilm.com/

Commentary: These Discouraging Times

Dark free speech has great power to create 
an illusion of free will

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves. -- Eric Hoffer, moral philosopher

“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100/Methuselah's Children


During the republican convention, it became clear that it is probably not very useful any more to point out the lies, deceit, dirty tricks, illegality and corruption the president and his propagandists are deploying in this election. The problem is that most minds are made up. The rule of law is broken at the federal level so that's not a factor. There is no pretense at truth any more by the GOP. And, most of the president’s supporters apparently do not care, and/or do not believe the president is doing the bad things he is doing, or if he is doing it, it’s not that bad. This is a tribal thing, not a rational thing.

Dirty tricks and broken laws

In an article today, Fact-checking Trump’s lies is essential. It’s also increasingly fruitless, the Washington Post writes that their fact checker rattled off 21 false or misleading statements in the president's 70 minute acceptance speech. That's about one attack on truth every three minutes. In view of the tidal wave of deceit, Anderson Cooper, “looking bemused, paused for a moment and then deadpanned, ‘Oh, that’s it?’” The speech was a cornucopia of lies and deceit. Apparently, Trump supporters generally believed it and loved it, or were at least OK with it whether they believed it or not.

Also today, the New York Times reports that the Trump campaign tricked three of four New York city residents in low income housing into a video interview about bad conditions in the massive housing project they live in. The three tenants were not told the interview was going to be used to make a campaign video for the president's re-election that aired on the republican convention. One of the three commented: “I am not a Trump supporter. I am not a supporter of his racist policies on immigration. I am a first-generation Honduran. It was my people he was sending back.” The fourth resident was a Trump supporter and was told of the purpose of the interview, and approved of its intended use.

According to the NYT, that was the second time the Trump campaign mislead people in an event involving the federal government that was filmed for the Republican National Convention. The other instance was the convention showed a video of five new American citizens being sworn in at a naturalization ceremony by the president. That stunt gas been criticized as an illegal violation of the Hatch Act. It doesn’t matter because the US Attorney General was hired to protect the president and his campaign staff from breaking laws and that is exactly what he is doing by doing nothing.

Do they really believe the propaganda?

It is not just reputable news sources who report on the scope and depth of the disinformation and illegality in the president's campaign and himself. I experience it directly by engaging with people at radical right sites. Narratives, i.e., verifiable facts, true truths and sound reasoning, that contradict the false dark free speech narratives the president and GOP routinely deploy are instantly rejected. They are attacked as lies. Citing fact sources makes no difference -- they are all liars telling lies. I am told that I should be ashamed of myself for pretending there is any truth in actual facts and truths. Then the ad hominem attacks and insults fly in my direction. I am dehumanized and thus make a comfortable and satisfying target for unfounded insults. Truth and sound reasoning have become lies. Lies and bogus reasoning are now truth. The amazingly poisonous power of dark free speech is on full display.

Of course, the people doing conservative-populist politics online are probably more radical, reality-detached and irrational than the president’s average supporter. It’s just not clear how much more. What passed for truth and reality at the GOP convention is probably what most of the rank and file believe to be mostly or completely true.

Vladimir Putin must be loving this spectacle of American self-destruction and dehumanization. I still believe that the president is working for Putin, willingly or not, knowingly or not, but probably knowing and willing.

The vindictive way of life

One can a person do?

The election is not too far off. The president’s supporters are dug in and probably nothing can dislodge most of them (~99% ?). Hundreds of millions in ads will be spent, but how many minds are left that are still persuadable? What on Earth would it take to persuade someone after 3½ years of the president? What else can one do, if anything?

Yes or No?

  

Should Biden debate Trump?  Why/why not?

(My opinion is buried somewhere in the commotion below.) 😉

Thanks for recommending.  Can I slice you off a nasty piece?  😈

 

WHAT DOES GOP STAND FOR?

 SOME THEORIES:

Greedy Oppressive Pricks

Golf, Oil and Prostitutes

Gluttons Of Power

Growing Our Portfolios

GREEDY OLIGARCHY PLUTOCRATS

GANG OF PROFITEERS

Greedy, Overweight, & Pathetic!

Gasbags on Painkillers

Gluttonous Old Pigs

Also up for Consideration:

BUT I AM SURE:

Y'all can do better than me. (Or is that y'all can do better than I?)

HAVE FUN WITH THIS ONE.!

Whistle Blower Miles Taylor and His Story

Miles Taylor

This frightening story is from Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the president’s Department of Homeland Security. It is from the Washington Post today:

“In a video for a Republican anti-Trump group on Tuesday afternoon, the former chief of staff at Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, Miles Taylor, confirmed reports that Trump had offered officials pardons in exchange for possibly illegal actions at the border. Legal experts have argued this would, in fact, be illegal.

In a video for a group called Republican Voters Against Trump released Tuesday, Taylor said he personally witnessed Trump in April 2019 offering officials pardons if they were criminally charged for their actions in stemming illegal immigration at the border.

“The president said to the senior leadership of the Department of Homeland Security, behind the scenes, ‘We should not let anyone else into the United States,’ ” Taylor says in the video. “And even though he’d been told on repeated occasions that the way he wanted to do it was illegal, his response was to say, ‘Do it. If you get in trouble, I’ll pardon you.’ ”

Taylor summed it up: “The president offered to pardon U.S. government officials for breaking the law to implement his immigration policy.” Taylor said he decided at that point to quit.

In a Washington Post op-ed last week, Taylor said that Trump routinely tried to use the department in which Taylor served for his “political benefit” — and often explicitly so: ‘He insisted on a near-total focus on issues that he said were central to his reelection — in particular building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. Though he was often talked out of bad ideas at the last moment, the president would make obviously partisan requests of DHS, including when he told us to close the California-Mexico border during a March 28, 2019, Oval Office meeting — it would be better for him politically, he said, than closing long stretches of the Texas or Arizona border — or to “dump” illegal immigrants in Democratic-leaning sanctuary cities and states to overload their authorities, as he insisted on several times.’”

In a different video, Taylor claimed Trump that asked for withholding disaster aid when California was suffering from wildfires. California didn’t support him politically and thus needed to be punished. Taylor said: “On a phone call with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he told FEMA to cut off the money and to no longer give individual assistance to California. He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down from a wildfire, because he was so rageful that people in the state of California … didn’t support him and that, politically, it wasn’t a base for him. .... A lot of the time, the things he wanted to do not only were impossible, but in many cases illegal. He didn’t want us to tell them it was illegal anymore, because he knew that there were — and these were his words — he knew that he had ‘magical authorities.’ ”

If what Taylor is alleging, it is clear that the president is not president for all Americans. He is only interested in service to people in states that support him. That is the case even if it mean he screws his supporters in states that do not support him.

What a rotten, evil, failed leader. He has no magical authorities, just lies, hate, corruption and incompetence in service to himself.

GOP Arrogance and Disrespect for the Rule of Law

“Today's Republican Party...is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for "balance," constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance.” ― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the Politics of Extremism

The New York Times is reporting that the White House is blowing off criticisms that the president's blatant use of government resources for his personal political gain is illegal under the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities while they are working in an official capacity. It also prohibits civil servants from running for political office or using their titles in political activities. The White House just does not care. The NYT writes:

“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares,” Mark Meadows, President Trump’s chief of staff, said in an interview with Politico. “This is a lot of hoopla that is being made about things mainly because the convention has been so unbelievably successful.”

Mr. Meadows made his comments the morning after the Republican National Convention aired two official ceremonies staged earlier on Tuesday on the White House grounds — a pardon performed by Mr. Trump and the naturalization of new citizens performed by Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, as Mr. Trump watched and chatted with them.

During the convention, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech from Jerusalem, in an apparent violation of separate State Department rules, and the first lady, Melania Trump, delivered a speech from the Rose Garden.

Arrogance, irrationality and untruthfulness

Meadows assertion that nobody outside of the Beltway really cares is arrogant, irrational and not true. Some people still do care about respect for the rule of law, even if the president and most of the GOP leadership does not. Clearly, the president and his administration do not. Meadows was also quoted as saying that “you can’t break the law — you shouldn’t do it,” but then suggested that the Hatch Act was outdated. That seems to imply that breaking the law somehow isn't breaking the law because it is allegedly outdated. The irrationality of the Meadows ‘rationale’ is obvious and undeniable.

Apparently, Meadows and the president are both unaware of the facts that (1) an outdated law is still the law, and (2) outdated laws need to be repealed or amended by congress, or invalidated by a court of competent jurisdiction. They just blow that off and break the law as if it no longer exists and pretend that breaking it is not breaking it.

The GOP Convention: A Promise vs Delivery Disconnect?

Republicans have promised a positive inspiring convention. So far, they have delivered a tidal wave of lies and hyperbole. And based on the bits of speeches in this 1 minute video, there seems to be a major disconnect between the promise and the delivered product.

The Cognitive Biology of Hate and Racist Speech

A Washington Post article includes a couple of comments on some research into the biological effects of hate and racist speech.[1] These are worth a mention, even if folks here are aware of these biological effects. The WaPo writes:

There is a wealth of research out there that frequent exposure to hate speech (what else would you call Trump’s racist appeals and personal attacks?) makes us, as one paper from 2017 put it, “less sensitive to hate speech and more prejudiced toward hate speech victims than their counterparts in the control condition.”

Richard A. Friedman, a psychiatrist, wrote in 2018 that “politicians like Mr. Trump who stoke anger and fear in their supporters provoke a surge of stress hormones, like cortisol and norepinephrine, and engage the amygdala, the brain center for threat.” He continued: “One study, for example, that focused on ‘the processing of danger’ showed that threatening language can directly activate the amygdala. This makes it hard for people to dial down their emotions and think before they act.” In layman’s terms: All that anger and fear can make you less rational.

From what I can tell, the main point of dark free speech is to make people less rational and more emotional, intuitive and negatively biased. That is how most (~96% ?) demagogues and tyrant wannabes rise to power.


Footnote:
1. I call speech like that dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

Regarding Voter Suppression

The president claims that there has been and will be massive voter fraud in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections. If he wins in November, he might tone that rhetoric down some. All the evidence so far of voter fraud amounts to not much. Despite that, the radical right constantly but falsely claims that voter fraud is a major problem. So far, that is false.

On the flip side, what about evidence of voter suppression that results form false claims of trying to  stop massive voter fraud? The Washington Post writes:

“More than 534,000 mail ballots were rejected during primaries across 23 states this year — nearly a quarter in key battlegrounds for the fall — illustrating how missed delivery deadlines, inadvertent mistakes and uneven enforcement of the rules could disenfranchise voters and affect the outcome of the presidential election.

The rates of rejection, which in some states exceeded those of other recent elections, could make a difference in the fall if the White House contest is decided by a close margin, as it was in 2016, when Donald Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by roughly 80,000 votes. 

This year, according to a tally by The Washington Post, election officials in those three states tossed out more than 60,480 ballots just during primaries, which saw significantly lower voter turnout than what is expected in the general election. The rejection figures include ballots that arrived too late to be counted or were invalidated for another reason, including voter error. 

‘If the election is close, it doesn’t matter how well it was run — it will be a mess,’ said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who studies election data. ‘The two campaigns will be arguing over nonconforming ballots, which is going to run up against voters’ beliefs in fair play,’ he said.”

Nationwide, about 319,000 mail and absentee ballots were rejected in the 2016 general election. Given postal service sabotage and chaos and various voter restrictions and requirements in many red states, a lot more than 534,000 mail ballots could be rejected next November. Republicans will do their very best to see that the rejections hit likely democratic voters than likely republicans. If there is going to be massive voter fraud in November of 2020, it will come in the form of unjustified GOP voter suppression perpetrated in the name of preventing almost non-existent voter fraud.

One more time… because I’m kinda slow

 

*          *          *

While I personally experience a sense of spirituality, real or not, I’ll admit that I’m not religious in any orthodox sense.  Still, I think I do comprehend the concept of “morality” and “moral code.”  My understanding is that holy books aim to provide high standards and guidance for such. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Attn: Politically active evangelicals who support Trump

Q1: From a morality standpoint, doesn’t Donald Trump continue to be pretty much everything the Bible tells humanity it shouldn’t be: vain, selfish, covetous, mendacious, adulterous, anti-“other-ness”/our neighbors”?  My understanding is that these types of questionable activities are high on the list of “Christian don'ts,” and that being a Christian is supposed to mean a continuous striving/aspiring to the highest of biblical moral standards. Is that not true?

Q2: Nevertheless, Donald Trump claims to be a Christian.  Based on his actions, am I wrong when I, a non-Christian, see Trump as a Christian in name only? Is being a CINO okay with your God?  Why/Why not?

Q3: As a Christian, does Donald Trump’s actions offend you?  If yes, how so?  If no, why not?

Q4: If I’m completely off base here, then please explain to me what I don’t get about the Trump / Christian / Bible “non-sequitur.”  Please help me understand the disconnect between what Christian Trump says, and what Christian Trump does, because I still (after all these many years) don’t get it. :(

Whether religious or not, all are invited to help me understand this personal conundrum.

Thank you.

Should Daylight Saving Time Be Scrapped?

 

Every year we complain about War Time, as Daylight Saving Time was first known, developed to save energy and give farmers a bit more light. Except the First World War is over and we now have air conditioning and artificial lighting, so it doesn't actually save any energy at all.

This year, everyone is on about circadian rhythms. Sumathi Reddy of the Wall Street Journal speaks to Dr. Till Roenneberg of the University of Munich:

“Most of our physiology is governed by a circadian clock. This body clock synchronizes to the sun time”...When you travel to a different time zone your circadian clock adjusts to a new darkness-sunlight cycle in a few days. In daylight-saving time, the dark-light cycle doesn’t change but the time does. So there is a discrepancy between your biological clock and social clock, which researchers refer to as “social jet lag,” Dr. Roenneberg said. Permanent standard time is closer to the sun’s natural time so social jet lag is reduced, he added.

Now I have read this six times and it makes no sense, this difference between the biological clock and the social clock. In real solar time, Boston and Detroit are 45 minutes apart. Berlin and Madrid are 90 minutes apart. Which is running on biological time and which on "social time?" The Doctor continues:

“Daylight-saving time means that we virtually live in another time zone without changing the day-light cycle,” Dr. Roenneberg said. “The problem is the misalignment. The circadian clock is trying to optimize our physiology. Now suddenly we have to do things which are not at the biologically appropriate time.”

If one is going to make the case that there is a biologically appropriate time, then we not only have to get rid of daylight saving time, but we have to get rid of time zones altogether, which I proposed a few years ago, calling for local time. Noon used to be local, with over 300 time zones in the USA.

 

Then along comes the transcontinental railroad, and Sandford Fleming (the guy in the tall hat standing behind Lord Strathcona who is driving the last spike) figured out time zones so that everyone would be able to figure out where the trains were supposed to be. But we are not trains; noon should be noon wherever you are, not at 11:34 in Boston today and 12:42 in Detroit. What works for the convenience of Sandford Fleming and the railroads (and later, Walter Cronkite and the TV networks) doesn't work for our bodies.

If the science finds that there truly is a biological time, then the answer isn't just to get rid of DST. In this era of streaming entertainment and smart watches, it's time to run the trains and planes and conference calls on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), and everything else on local time, noon where you live. 

Does the time change cause heart attacks and car crashes?

We have noted that these time changes are really bad for your health, including an increase in the number of heart attacks and car crashes. But according to Paul Taylor, writing in the Globe and Mail, the research may be sketchy.

The research into the increase in the number of crashes was done by Stanley Coren, Ph.D. of the University of British Columbia, studying the rate of crashes on the first Monday after the switch. When he wrote his letter to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1996 it was still common to say accident instead of crash so I will not change that:

© Stanley Coren via New England Journal of Medicine

These data show that small changes in the amount of sleep that people get can have major consequences in everyday activities. The loss of merely one hour of sleep can increase the risk of traffic accidents. It is likely that the effects are due to sleep loss rather than a nonspecific disruption in circadian rhythm, since gaining an additional hour of sleep at the fall time shift seems to decrease the risk of accidents.

Others disagree with Dr. Koren and question the results; a doctor at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto looked at 16 different studies and concluded: “Looking at the sum total of evidence – and not just one cherry-picked study – my impression is that, if there is an association, it is modest.”

Then there is the question of heart attacks, which we have discussed before, which is based on a Swedish study which found that "heart-attack cases increased by about 5 per cent in the week after the clocks were adjusted – both in the spring and the autumn." Taylor questions that one too:

In particular, many studies that fail to show an effect don’t end up in the medical journals. “We tend to publish only the stuff that is interesting and will catch people’s attention. The papers that don’t find an association are less likely to be published,” [cardiologist Dr.] Ko says. That can lead people to conclude certain things have a greater impact than they actually do. Ko says he thinks the association between the daylight time switch and heart attacks is real. But, he adds, that risk is likely small and probably affects only those with existing heart disease.

Fine. But anyone with kids and dogs knows that this time change is totally disruptive, and really doesn't serve any purpose. Pick one and just keep it year round. Or even better, just go local time and forget about running on War Time, Railway time or Cronkite time, and go with Your Time.

Does the time change save energy?

It's that time of year when we lose an hour of sleep and turn our clocks forward thanks to the introduction of Daylight Saving Time, which probably made a lot of sense back in 1916 when it started as a fuel-saving measure in World War 1. Every year we look at this change and every year find more evidence that it really should be scrapped already, and that thanks to the prevalence of air conditioning, it now actually increases energy consumption.

 

Is the time change good for business?

© JP Morgan Chase/ Shedding Light on Daylight Savings Time

One of the justifications for maintaining DST is that is good for business; it has been thought that the extra light in the evening meant more people in stores. This was recently studied by JP Morgan Chase in Shedding Light on Daylight Savings Time, where they compared sales receipts in Los Angeles, where there is DST, to Phoenix, which is in one of the few states that does not switch to DST.

And indeed, Los Angeles showed that the extra hour of daylight increased sales in stores by about one percent. However this was swamped the the loss of sales, a drop of 3.5 percent, when the clocks were turned back in November. In total, throughout the year, the effect appears to be more negative than positive.

The increase in spending at the beginning of DST is determined by comparing daily card spending per capita in the 30 days before DST starts, to daily card spending per capita in the 30 days after DST starts. The decrease at the end captures a similar window to compare spending in the 30 days before and after the end of DST. Most of the impact stems from responses at the end of DST, when spending on goods drops more than spending on services, and spending during the work week drops more than weekend spending. The magnitude of the spending reductions outweighs increased spending at the beginning of DST.

The shock of the dark evenings in November keeps people out of stores more than the extra hour in the spring brings them in. And now that online shopping is an available option, there is even less reason to subject people to this change, which is not very good for our health:

DST can kill you

In 2016 we reported on a study described in STAT which suggests that switching to Daylight Saving Time can kill you.

A 2013 study of nearly 1,000 patients at two Michigan hospitals compared admissions for heart attacks during the seven days after the move to daylight saving to the same days two weeks prior. In the study, which looked at data between 2006 and 2012, researchers found 17 percent more heart attacks after “springing ahead,” with a 71 percent spike on the first day, Sunday. In fact, that one day accounted for almost all of the overall increase.

It's not just heart attacks either.

Analyzing a decade worth of strokes in Finland, scientists found a brief spike in the incidence of ischemic stroke (the most common kind, caused by a clot blocking blood flow in the brain) after the clocks are turned ahead compared to the week before. The rate was 8 percent higher during the first two days after setting the clocks ahead, Dr. Jori Ruuskanen of Finland’s University of Turku and colleagues reported. But in people over 65, the incidence of stroke on those Sundays and Mondays was 20 percent higher.

 

However there is one positive effect: apparently there is a sharp reduction in street crime rates. According to Business Insider, a recently published paper shows that the extra light in the afternoon discourages potential offenders.

Results show that daily cases of robbery, a violent and socially costly street crime, decrease by approximately 7% in the weeks after DST begins, with a 19% drop in the probability of any robbery occurring. A 27% decrease in the robbery rate during the sunset hours drives much of this result.

Ending DST could solve climate change

A few years back, the transition to Daylight Saving Time happened on April 1st, so of course we calculated impact of an extra hour of sunlight had on the world and announced that ending DST could solve global warming.

TreeHugger Labs ran the numbers and has determined that If DST runs half the year for an hour a day, that is fully 1/48th of our total exposure to the sun that could be eliminated with the cancelling of Daylight Saving Time, almost 2% of solar heat gain annually.That's huge!

 

A surprising number of readers were convinced. In 2007 the Arkansas Democrat published a letter complaining about the earlier start of DST:

You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of sunlight would have on our climate. Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat.

Silliness aside, Brian Merchant looked at the issue and concluded that Daylight Savings Time actually increases electrical demand, as air conditioning has eclipsed lighting as the main use of electricity.

Brad Plumer in the Washington Post summarizes the effects of DST and quotes the same study Brian did, finding that DST increases energy consumption, can be bad for your health, has mixed effects on the economy:

Retailers love the extra sunlight — it means that there are more customers around who are willing to go out and shop. The all-powerful golfing industry is also a big fan, apparently. On the other hand, daylight saving can cut into sales for movie theaters and reduce the audience for prime-time television — people go out and enjoy the evening air instead of staring at screens inside.

Perhaps it's time to scrap Daylight Saving Time. What do you think?

Should DST be scrapped?

https://poll.fm/7866326

 

https://www.treehugger.com/should-daylight-savings-time-be-scrapped-survey-4857480