The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data

Stephan:  The trend that this story describes . is going to profoundly change our world, and in several ways. To begin with this analysis is a datapoint on the trend out of the carbon energy era. It also is moving us ever closer to recognizing that reality is a construct of information, manipulated by intentioned focused awareness.

A new commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era. These titans—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft—look unstoppable. They are the five most valuable listed firms in the world. Their profits are surging: they collectively racked up over $25bn in net profit in the first quarter of 2017. Amazon captures half of all dollars spent online in America. Google and Facebook accounted for almost all the revenue growth in digital advertising in America last year.

Such dominance has prompted calls for the tech giants to be broken up, as Standard Oil was in the early 20th century. This newspaper has argued against such drastic action in the past. Size alone is not a crime. The giants’ success has benefited consumers. Few want to live without Google’s search engine, Amazon’s one-day delivery or Facebook’s newsfeed. Nor do these firms raise the […]

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The Coal Industry Is Dying, and It’s Leaving Communities Like This One to Pick Up the Pieces

Stephan:  Because the Trump administration will not acknowledge that coal is doomed as a major energy source they are making no effort to properly help former coal areas to make the transition out of carbon, and the congress is going along with this. The very people who voted for Trump and the Republicans now in congress from those states and districts are having their lives destroyed by Republican politics. History will see it as one of the great tragic ironies

Rail cars filled with coal at Cloud Peak Energy’s Antelope Mine north of Douglas, Wyoming.
Credit: Ryan Dorgan/The Casper Star-Tribune/AP

John Arnett chose Adams County, Ohio, as his home long before he was old enough to vote, drink beer or drive a motorcycle along the Ohio River. After his parents split up, Arnett opted at age 10 to spend most of his time with his grandmother in Adams County, along the river 70 miles southeast of Cincinnati, rather than with his parents in the Dayton area. He liked life on the tobacco farm his grandfather had bought after retiring early from General Motors Co. in Dayton. And his grandmother, who became a widow when her husband died in a tractor accident, welcomed the companionship.

After high school, Arnett joined the U.S. Marine Corps, in 1999. His unit, the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines—the storied Suicide Charley—took him to the other side of the world: South Korea, Japan, Thailand. In the spring of 2003 he was an infantryman in the invasion of Iraq, spending five […]

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Mystery of Earth’s Missing Nitrogen Solved

Stephan:  Here is one of those stories where we thought we knew everything only to discover... well, we didn't.

Sedimentary rocks, such as those in the Grand Canyon, contain surprisingly high levels of nitrogen.
Credit: Paul Rojas/Getty Images

Experts used to think nearly all nitrogen in soil came directly from the atmosphere, sequestered by microbes or dissolved in rain. But it turns out scientists have been overlooking another major source of this element, which is crucial to plant growth: up to a quarter of the nitrogen in soil and plants seeps out of bedrock, according to a study published in April in Science.

Apart from a few scattered studies, “the [research] community never thought to look at the rocks,” says lead study author Benjamin Z. Houlton, a global ecologist at the University of California, Davis. This discovery has implications beyond understanding the planet’s nitrogen cycle; it could also alter climate models. It suggests plants in certain areas may be able to grow faster and larger than previously thought and could thus absorb more carbon dioxide, Houlton says.

As global temperatures rise, calculating how much heat-trapping carbon dioxide plants soak up […]

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Christian fundamentalism is linked to higher rates of infant mortality: study

Stephan:  The leaders of christofascism want their minions to be ignorant and easy to manipulate; that's why they are trying to privatize elementary and secondary education, and to undercut university programs. The problem with willful ignorance is that it has very direct negative consequences. If you have a movement that stresses distrusting science is it any surprise it results in increased death. This article explains. Christofascism is a religion of profit and power.

US baby from a uterus transplant
Credit: Baylor University Medical Center

Counties that are more religiously conservative have higher rates of infant mortality, according to a new studypublished in the May issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 

Researchers analyzed rates of infant deaths and cross-checked that data with whether an area had a greater number of conservative Protestants, or leaned towards mainline Protestants and Catholics.

Sociologist Ginny Garcia-Alexander, a lead author of the study, examined the number of deaths from four weeks through the first year. She explained in a Portland State University research update that babies who die during that period of development die because of birth defects, which tend to be prevented by advances in medical knowledge. Previous studies have shown that communities that lean towards religious fundamentalism might be more likely to reject scientific advances.

Later in life child mortality is  linked to outside factors like poverty.

“This is continuing to show us that there are things that we can do in our communities to improve health outcomes,” Garcia-Alexander said.

“And to the extent […]

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China’s Green Shift Positions It to Overtake U.S. in Energy, Security

Stephan:  This is why China is in the process of becoming the dominant culture in the last half of the 21st century. America is now headed by what in my opinion amounts to a mafia family of grifters. And like all grifters they care only for themselves. China in contrast thinks in half centuries and has learned pragmatically that social wellbeing is the most efficient, healthiest, most productive and by far the cheapest way to run a nation. We, on the other hand, are being run by a congress and president who seem incapable of thinking beyond their own ideological fantasies and self-interest, and it is destroying us as as a nation, as anyone can see who has the courage to look unflinchingly at the social outcome data.

 

The Great Hall of the People Beijing
Credit: Juan Cole

The Guardian reports that air pollution in 62 Chinese cities fell by 30 percent between 2013 and 2016, according to the World Health Organization. Beijing, the capital, fell from a global fourth-place ranking on polluted air to 187th. (emphasis added)

I was in Beijing in March 2015 for a conference, and did a jaunt out to the Great Wall, bringing my camera. I needn’t have bothered. That day, at least, you couldn’t see more than 50 feet away from your face, and my dreams of photographs of the wall stretching out into the distance were dashed. I was there for a week and my throat got sore from just breathing the air. Things are quickly improving, though. The smog in those 62 cities was largely being caused by burning coal, for household heating and industrial purposes. Coal is the worst emitter of carbon dioxide among the hydrocarbon fuels, but it also puts out, when you burn it, lots of particulate matter that causes lung problems, […]

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