News bits: Climate change, etc.

New Jersey tests a legal theory to punish liars

The state of NJ is suing big carbon energy polluters and their main supporting propagandist organization. DeSmog writes:

New Jersey Sues Five Oil Companies, Alleging Decades of ‘Concealment’

and ‘Public Deception’ on Climate Change

The case adds to a growing number of major climate accountability cases against the oil industry, a scenario that Shell predicted in 1998

The state of New Jersey filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against five oil companies and the oil industry’s most powerful lobbying group for covering up and misleading the public about climate change, the latest round of state and municipal-led climate litigation seeking accountability from the oil industry.

The lawsuit, filed in the New Jersey Superior Court, states that the companies knew about climate change for decades and actively sought to conceal that information from the public. Instead, they funded PR campaigns aimed at confusing and misleading the public.

The oil companies “concealed and misrepresented the dangers of fossil fuels; disseminated false and misleading information about the existence, causes, and effects of climate change; and aggressively promoted the ever-increasing use of their products at ever-greater volumes,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit names ExxonMobil, Shell Oil Company, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and the American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group in which the five oil companies were members.  

As it happens, nearly 25 years ago, Shell predicted with remarkable accuracy the events that would broadly unfold. In a 1998 internal document that laid out future climate scenarios, Shell described a hypothetical catastrophic storm that would ravage the U.S. East Coast in 2010 — one that sounds unmistakably like Hurricane Sandy — which sets off a society-wide backlash that would engulf the oil industry. The result would be a legal and policy reckoning. From Shell’s 1998 forecast:

“Following the storms, a coalition of environmental NGOs brings a class-action suit against the US government and fossil-fuel companies on the grounds of neglecting what scientists (including their own) have been saying for years: that something must be done. A social reaction to the use of fossil fuels grows, and individuals become ‘vigilante environmentalists’ in the same way, a generation earlier, they had become fiercely anti-tobacco. Direct-action campaigns against companies escalate. Young consumers, especially, demand action.”

Today, a long list of major climate accountability cases are proceeding in state courts, each with extensive documented evidence demonstrating that the oil industry, including Shell, covered up internal climate science and instead chose to fund climate denial and greenwashing campaigns.  

And as DeSmog reported last month, Shell is acutely aware of how its communications on the energy transition can open it up to further litigation, warning employees in internal emails and presentations not to confuse the oil major’s net-zero talk with the company’s actual business plan.

What fresh hell is this? Oil companies and their hired propagandists doing ‘concealment’ and ‘public deception’??? No. Greenwashing? No. That's just not possible. This is America, home of the free and land of the brave, mom and apple pie. Gigantic oil companies would never pollute, lie, conceal or deceive. This must be a mistake.  

Oops!

New Jersey home after climate change-related 

superstorm Sandy visited the beach in 2010

(not sarcasm)

A letter to the editor about an abortion study

The lead researcher on a study that followed a group of women who got an abortion they wanted and a group who were denied an abortion. She wrote this letter to the NYT criticizing a NYT opinion piece that discussed her research. 

To the Editor:

Re “The Abortion Debate and the Physical Costs of Pregnancy,” by Ross Douthat (column, Oct. 6):

I led the Turnaway Study and was quoted extensively in Mr. Douthat’s column. My study compared the lives of women who received a wanted abortion with those who were denied, or “turned away” from getting an abortion — following both groups for five years to see how their life paths diverged.

As Mr. Douthat notes, we found that most women denied abortions eventually reconcile themselves to parenting. But Mr. Douthat glosses over the most important findings from the study.

People who carried unwanted pregnancies to term suffered worse physical health for years to come; in fact, two died from childbirth. Women denied abortions were more likely to live in poverty, along with their children, and to have a hard time covering even basic expenses like food and housing, compared with those able to get their abortions. Not being able to access abortion services curtailed people’s other life goals such as getting a higher education, finding a high-quality romantic relationship and even having intended children later under better circumstances.

Mr. Douthat diminishes the substantial harm done to women’s lives and to the well-being of their existing and future children on the basis of the finding that women are emotionally resilient. The callous argument seems to be that it is OK for the government to force someone to sacrifice their body, their family’s security and their life goals so long as it doesn’t also break their spirit.

Diana Greene Foster
Oakland, Calif.

The writer is a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Greene Foster makes some good points. The forced birthers will probably attack and downplay this research, the researchers, the data and/or the data analysis. This is the kind of inconvenient science, facts and truths that America’s radical right does not have the moral courage to face or accept. Are most forced birthers moral cowards? Probably. It looks that way. 

The poison stolen 2020 election lie continues its journey through the courts

This speaks for itself. Trump is knowingly lying to the courts. It just does not matter to him. Facts are not going to get in the way of this gigantic lie. It is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump, so why not keep lying?

Georgia Secretary of State staff about to hold a press conference refuting 1 by 1 the claims President Trump made on the call with @GaSecofState pic.twitter.com/dFOehpxula

— Justin Gray (@JustinGrayWSB) January 4, 2021

This is the flock that Trump is fleecing.

Why the US must press for a ceasefire in Ukraine

 

The following is an opinion piece by John Matlock, Jr., who helped to end the Cold War as ambassador to USSR from the late 80s to 1991 when it ceased to exist. He joins a growing list of experienced diplomats and International Relations specialists alarmed by the reckless, perhaps unwinnable war unfolding and escalating almost by the week now. The piece appeared on October 17, 2022 in the online magazine Responsible Statecraft.

John Matlock, Jr. was the last US ambassador to the Soviet Union (1987-91). Prior to that he was Senior Director for European and Soviet Affairs on President Reagan’s National Security Council staff and was U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981-1983. He was Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,  and has written numerous articles and three books about the negotiations that ended the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and U.S. foreign policy following the end of the Cold War.

Why the US must press for a ceasefire in Ukraine

As a key player in Kyiv’s defense and the leader of sanctions against Russia, Washington is obligated to help find a way out.

October 17, 2022

Written by Jack F. Matlock, Jr.

 

Four recent events have put the war in Ukraine on a distinctly more dangerous course.

— The Russian annexation of four additional Ukrainian provinces blocks compromise solutions that were feasible earlier. [On October 18,  a day after this piece appeared, Russia announced that these 4 annexed territories now fall under the military doctrine governing  Russia's use of nuclear weapons, thus significantly increasing the risk of nuclear war.--ed.]

— The disabling attacks on both North Stream pipelines make it impossible in the near term to restore Russia as the principal energy supplier to Germany, even if the war in Ukraine should be miraculously ended.

— The Ukrainian attack on the bridge to Crimea gave Russia a pretext to escalate attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets.

— The Russian retaliatory attacks on civilian targets are certain to do more damage to Ukraine than Ukraine can do to Russia. 

The leaders of both Russia and Ukraine have set impossible goals. In fact, not a single participant in the war in Ukraine has espoused a goal that can restore peace in the area. Russia’s recent incorporation of four Ukrainian provinces into the Russian Federation will not be accepted by Russia’s neighbors or by most European powers.

Given the passions aroused by the war and its atrocities, Ukraine, even with NATO support, cannot create a stable, functioning state within all the borders it inherited in 1991. If Ukraine tries to regain these territories by force and is encouraged and empowered by the U.S. and NATO to do so, Russia (and not just President Putin) will very likely demolish Ukraine in retaliation. Reality trumps illusion whenever the two conflict.

And if war should stop with the destruction of Ukraine — Kyiv and Lviv leveled as Grozny once was — that would assume that escalation does not involve the use of nuclear weapons. If the Russian leader feels convinced that the U.S. and “Western” goal is to take him out, what is to prevent him taking out others as he goes?

What Went Wrong

It did not have to happen. When the Cold War ended (by negotiation, not by victory) and the USSR fragmented into 15 separate countries (because of pressures from the inside, not from without), Europe was suddenly whole and free, the goal of U.S. and NATO policy during the Cold War. If the future stability and prosperity of Europe were to be ensured, the principal task was to build a security system covering all the countries of Europe. 

But a succession of American presidents, from Clinton to Trump, chose instead to enlarge NATO, to trash arms control treaties that ended the Cold War, and to enlist former Soviet republics in a military alliance that excluded Russia. Benjamin Abelow summarized the portentous events in his insightful How the West Brought War to Ukraine. 

The war might have been prevented — probably would have been prevented — if Ukraine had been willing to abide by the Minsk agreement, recognize the Donbas as an autonomous entity within Ukraine, avoid NATO military advisors, and pledge not to enter NATO. Nevertheless, what was possible even as late as January 2022 may not be possible now. The Russian annexation of additional territory raises the stakes. But the longer the war continues the harder it is going to be to avoid the utter destruction of Ukraine.

America’s Security

We Americans can only admire the valiant resistance Ukrainians have mounted to the Russian invasion and should be proud that we have been able to support their defense. Everything possible should be done to make sure that Ukraine survives as an independent state. But that does not mean that Ukraine has to recover all the territory it inherited in 1991. In fact, given all the passions aroused by the war and what preceded it (the violent change of government in 2014 that many Russians considered a coup d’etat organized by the United States), the population in some areas is likely to resist a return to Kyiv’s control.

Some will argue that the United States has a moral obligation to support whatever the Ukrainian leaders demand since “they know best.” No, they do not know best what is in the security interests of the American people, and that should be the primary concern of any American government. They also, under the stress of war, may not be the best judges of their own ultimate security interests.

I was ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1990 when the Lithuanians declared their independence from the Soviet Union. The United States had never recognized the annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia by the Soviet Union, so the Lithuanians requested immediate U.S. recognition of their independence. I had total sympathy with the Lithuanian aspirations but had to explain that it would be a mistake to do so until Lithuania was in fact free. Why? Because, in 1990, U.S. recognition would almost certainly have precipitated a Soviet crack-down which the U.S. could not counter without risking nuclear war. 

The Lithuanians, along with their Baltic neighbors, kept their demands for independence peaceful. The U.S. privately kept pressure on the Soviet Government to refrain from using force, and the USSR State Council recognized the independence of Lithuania and its two neighboring countries in September 1991, freeing them legally before the rest of the Soviet Union broke up. 

The issue with Ukraine and Russia of course is not recognition of independence but whether the U.S. should support the Ukrainian goal to restore its control over all the territory it received when the Soviet Union broke up. If pursuit of that goal precipitates the progressive destruction of Ukraine, it is obviously not in Ukraine’s interest.  

Effect on the World

The fighting in Ukraine continues and intensifies while the world is still struggling with the covid-19 pandemic and remains vulnerable to mutations and new pathogens, while global warming is producing ever more destructive effects. Meanwhile, migrations caused by famine, flood, war, and misgovernment are overwhelming the capacity of even the richest countries to absorb the afflicted. And to all of that one must add the threat of Armageddon, a nuclear holocaust — something no rational leader would risk. But rationality cannot be assumed in either domestic or international politics today.

Europe’s position will be severely tested during the upcoming winter as the result of drastically curtailed trade with Russia, particularly when it comes to energy. Increasingly, European publics are likely to blame the United States for policies that fuel inflation and bring on economic recession, especially as their currencies weaken against the dollar. The U.S. sanctions on Russia will be seen by many as self-serving attempts to dominate Western Europe.

A new iron curtain is now being imposed on Russia — this time by Western policy — even as the United States announces more measures to confront and “contain” an assertive China. This will result, inevitably, in more cooperation between Russia and China. Also, the increasing use of economic sanctions to achieve political purposes will encounter push-back with a greater volume of international trade conducted in national currencies other than the U.S. dollar. 

As Europe is weakened and more countries suffer from U.S. sanctions, coalitions to resist U.S. dominance will flourish. Geopolitical competition will take precedence over action to deal with common problems, even as international conflict intensifies them.

What all the parties to the conflict in Ukraine seem to have forgotten is that the future of mankind will not be determined by where international borders are drawn — these have never been static in history and doubtless will continue to change from time to time. The future of mankind will be determined by whether nations learn to settle their differences peacefully.  

Is There a Way to Stop the War?

There may not be, given the passions aroused by the conflict. Both Ukraine and Russia have lost enough blood that their populations are likely to oppose any effort to give the other side any portion of what it wants. Their presidents hate each other and see any concession as a personal defeat. But the more the war continues, the more Ukrainian lives will be lost, property destroyed, and the probability of a wider conflict increased.

The only practical way to stop the actual fighting would be to agree on a ceasefire. This is difficult for the Ukrainians since they are liberating some of the occupied territories, but the reality is that if the war continues Russia is capable of damaging Ukraine more than Ukraine can damage Russia without risking a wider war.

As principal arms supplier to Ukraine, the U.S. should encourage the Ukrainians to agree to a ceasefire. As the sponsor of the most punitive sanctions on Russia, the U.S. should use its leverage to induce Russia to agree to genuine negotiations during a ceasefire. 

Negotiations must be conducted in private to be successful, which would require a revival of U.S.-Russia diplomacy. Over the past few years, tit-for-tat expulsions have reduced both countries to skeleton diplomatic staffs. Nevertheless, if there is a will to talk and negotiate, ways can be found. So far, it is the will that seems to be lacking.

At present, none of the relevant parties to the conflict in Ukraine seem to be willing to stop fighting and enter into genuine negotiations to bring peace in Ukraine. Until this changes, the fighting stops, and serious negotiations get underway, the world is headed for an outcome where we all are losers.

Science: COVID is evolving

There's this bit of ☹️ news about evolution and COVID from WaPo: 

Instead of a single ominous variant lurking on the horizon, experts are nervously eyeing a swarm of viruses — and a new evolutionary phase in the pandemic. 

This time, it’s unlikely we will be barraged with a new collection of Greek alphabet variants. Instead, one or more of the multiple versions of the omicron variant that keep popping up could drive the next wave. They are different flavors of omicron, but eerily alike — adorned with a similar combination of mutations. Each new subvariant seems to outdo the last in its ability to dodge immune defenses. 

“It is this constant evolutionary arms race we’re having with this virus,” said Jonathan Abraham, an assistant professor of microbiology at Harvard Medical School. 

The pace of evolution is so fast that many scientists depend on Twitter to keep up. A month ago, scientists were worried about BA.2.75, a variant that took off in South Asia and spawned a cloud of other concerning sublineages. In the United States, BA.4.6 and BF.7 have been slowly picking up steam. A few weeks ago, BQ.1.1 started to steal the spotlight — and still looks like a contender to take over this fall in Europe and North America. A lineage called XBB looms on the sidelines, and threatens to scramble the forecast. 

To focus too much on any one possible variant is, many experts argue, missing the point. What matters is that all these new threats are accumulating mutations in similar spots in what’s called the receptor binding domain — a key spot in the spike protein where virus-blocking antibodies dock. If those antibodies can’t dock, they can’t block. Each new mutation gives the virus a leg up in avoiding this primary line of immune defense.

This is what was concerning as soon as COVID variants started popping up. This thing isn't over yet and it may never be.

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Evolution

For the science wonks, a bit about evolution and chemical space. The initial isolate of SARS-CoV-2 from Wuhan, China has a 29903 nucleotide, single stranded RNA genome. That is typical for a Coronavirus. That makes the COVID genome about average for viruses, some of which are smaller and some larger.

For each nucleotide in the 29903 locations, there are four possible nucleotides. If there is a mutation at one of those positions, that is evolution. Mutational evolution is blind and can kill the organism, have no effect or be helpful in some way. Selection for survival of non-lethal mutations in the next generations is not blind. Probably about 50% of mutations will kill the virus. That prevents that particular mutation from being passed to subsequent generations of viruses. Other mutations will have no effect on the virus due to degeneracy of the genetic code.

RNA viruses tend to have high mutation (evolution) rates, as this 2018 article, Why are RNA virus mutation rates so damn high?, discusses:

RNA viruses have high mutation rates—up to a million times higher than their hosts—and these high rates are correlated with enhanced virulence and evolvability, traits considered beneficial for viruses. However, their mutation rates are almost disastrously high, and a small increase in mutation rate can cause RNA viruses to go locally extinct. .... The fabled mutation rates of RNA viruses appear to be partially a consequence of selection on another trait, not because such a high mutation rate is optimal in and of itself.

Chemical space

Chemical space is a concept that refers to the space spanned by all possible molecules and chemical compounds adhering to a given set of construction principles and boundary conditions. Translated into English, it refers to all possible chemical structures that would fit within some defined space that a certain kind of molecule fits in. The thing to understand is that if one takes a fairly simple organic molecule such as a steroid and considers space for it and small to modest sized chemical variants (say up to ~500 Daltons[1]), the number of compounds that fit in that space are in the billions or trillions. One could loosely think of a chemical variant of a steroid as akin to a 'mutation' of the steroid.

The RNA genome of COVID is big compared to a steroid. The number of possible nucleotide mutations that COVID can contain in its chemical space is beyond gigantic, 4 to the 29903th power. Translated into English, that means 4 multiplied by 4 a total of 29903 times. That is the chemical space that the COVID genome has to play around and evolve in. 4 times 4 seven times is 16,384. Do that another 29,896 times and that's the space COVID has to evolve in. It's freaking HUGE.  

In English, we are probably seeing just the very beginning of a period of rapid evolution of COVID in both humans and other animals it can infect. Translated into English, that means, get boosted every time a COVID booster vaccine contains RNA from the local or regional variant du jour that is infecting people and killing some of them and long hauling some others. Periodic new boosters are probably going to be coming out every ~5-10 months for a long time to come. 

Darned evolution . . . . grumble, grumble . . . . . I've been vaccinated 5 times now against a grand total of three different COVIDS (the original strain and two omicron variants). That pipsqueakery is looking more and more like five shots is just the beginning. (cluck of grumpy disapproval)

Footnote: 

1. Wikipedia says this about the size of chemical space for most pharmaceutical small molecule drugs:

A chemical space often referred to in cheminformatics is that of potential pharmacologically active molecules. Its size is estimated to be in the order of 1060 molecules. There are no rigorous methods for determining the precise size of this space. The assumptions [3] used for estimating the number of potential pharmacologically active molecules, however, use the Lipinski rules, in particular the molecular weight limit of 500. The estimate also restricts the chemical elements used to be Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Sulfur. It further makes the assumption of a maximum of 30 atoms to stay below 500 Daltons, allows for branching and a maximum of 4 rings and arrives at an estimate of 1063.

Drug companies have made a heck of a lot more than 1,063 small molecule drug candidates. There have been well over 1063 variants of steroids, statins, antibiotics, lipids, vitamins, signal transmitters (melatonin, serotonin, etc.), etc. What has been made so far is a paltry ~49 million molecules as of July 2009. Some of those are drug candidates and some are for other purposes, e.g., food additives, plastics, catalysts, fuels, etc. 

News: It's not so good today ☹️

Democracy in peril, not Republican voter’s main concern

The NYT writes:

Republican Voters See Democracy in Peril, 

but Saving It Isn’t a Priority

A New York Times/Siena College poll found that other problems have seized voters’ focus — even as many do not trust this year’s election results and are open to anti-democratic candidates.

Clearly, the rot that Trump implanted in the minds of conservatives and some others about stolen elections has sunk in and that false belief will persist. That is just some of the gigantic damage to democracy that Trump and his rotten Republican Party has inflicted on American democracy and society and we still suffer with. America and democracy have been hyper-polarized and grievously wounded by radical right conservatism and its immoral-evil dark free speech Leviathan e.g., Faux News. The open question is whether we will ever recover. Right now, that is not possible.

Voters and poll workers face all-out war at the polls

The NYT writes:

Right-Wing Leaders Mobilize Corps of Election Activists

Officials are prepared for aggressive challenges in midterm elections. “We’re going to adjudicate every battle,” Stephen K. Bannon said.

On the eve of a primary runoff election in June, a Republican candidate for secretary of state of South Carolina sent out a message to his supporters.

“For all of you on the team tomorrow observing the polls, Good Hunting,” Keith Blandford, a candidate who promoted the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump, wrote on the social media app Telegram. “You know what you are looking for. We have the enemy on their back foot, press the attack.”

The next day, activists fanned out to polling places in Charleston, S.C., demanding to inspect election equipment and to take photographs and video. When election workers denied their requests, some returned with police officers to file reports about broken or missing seals on the machines, according to emails from local officials to the state election commission. There were no broken or missing seals.

There we have it. Radical right Republican politicians and elites see non-Republican voters and honest poll workers as cheats, liars and criminal felons for simply voting. That is an outrageous insult to honest voters and poll workers. That is the kind of anti-democratic poison the Republican Party and most of its candidates openly and undeniably stand for. 

In view of its fulminating attitude and unjustifiable behaviors toward honest non-Republican voters and honest poll workers, is it fair and evidence-based to consider the Republican Party, its candidates and elite supporters to be domestic terrorists? It sure looks that way. 

The GOP has declared all-out war on those of us who are sane, secular and tolerant, and our democracy and our civil liberties. So why can't we respond in self-defense? Or, in the name of comity and turning the other cheek, should we just let the GOP steam roll us into the kleptocratic Christian fascism it so desperately want to impose on all of us?

There’s no steal to stop, but that doesn’t stop self-professed

Republican “patriots” from stopping it anyway

Just look at them, they actually believe the lies and slanders

From the Kleptocrat-in-Chief’s 

kleptocracy is fun files

The NYT writes:

Trump Hotels Charged Secret Service Exorbitant Rates, House Inquiry Finds

The Trump Organization charged the Secret Service up to $1,185 per night for hotel rooms used by agents protecting former President Donald J. Trump and his family, according to documents released on Monday by the House Oversight Committee, forcing a federal agency to pay well above government rates.

The committee released Secret Service records showing more than $1.4 million in payments by the department to Trump properties since Mr. Trump took office in 2017. The committee said that the accounting was incomplete, however, because it did not include payments to Mr. Trump’s foreign properties — where agents accompanied his family repeatedly — and because the records stopped in September 2021.

Once again, kleptocracy is properly seen as as one of the radical right’s core agenda items. No Republican would complain about the Kleptocrat-in-Chief ripping taxpayers off. That is a major agenda item for both the Christian nationalists and the brass knuckles capitalist elites who dominate the morally rotted Republican Party. Those elites very much want to join the endless festival of kleptocracy that awaits them once they have killed democracy, the rule of law, inconvenient truth and our precious civil liberties.

 

The Christians want taxpayers to pay for all Christian church activities and schools. The capitalists what to pay little or no taxes and adhere to few or no regulations. Republican capitalist elites want taxpayers to suffer from the side-effects of cruel, unregulated capitalism. They demand that society and the environment absorb all the risk and damage inherent in being hell-bent on profits with zero social conscience about human or environmental consequences.

In a nutshell, vast wealth for elites at the tippy top is a key part of what both Christian and capitalist Republican elites stand for and what they want. They just might get their wish. The other key part is vast power over average people and all governments, so that little or nothing stands in the way of wealth gushing up to the top elites. They might get that too.