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How unhealthy is red meat? And how beneficial is it to eat vegetables? A new rating system could help you cut through the health guidelines

The Conversation

How unhealthy is red meat? And how beneficial is it to eat vegetables? A new rating system could help you cut through the health guidelines

Aleksandr Aravkin, Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Washington, Jeffrey Stanaway, Assistant Professor of Global Health and Health Metrics Sciences, University of Washington, and Christian Razo, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington – October 21, 2022

The new rating system shows that eating the right amount of vegetables can lower your risk of heart disease by nearly 20%. <a href= — The new rating system shows that eating the right amount of vegetables can lower your risk of heart disease by nearly 20%. Westend61/Getty Images

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

We developed a new method for assessing health risks that our research suggests should make it a lot easier for people to determine which health advice to follow – and which to ignore. The approach, recently published in the journal Nature Medicine, offers a straightforward way for both policymakers and the general public to assess the strength of evidence for a given health risk – like consuming red meat – and the corresponding outcome – ischemic heart disease – using a rating system of one to five stars.

The system we developed is based on several systematic reviews of studies regarding risk factors like smoking and health outcomes such as lung cancer. Well-established relationships between risks and outcomes score between three and five stars, whereas cases in which research evidence is lacking or contradictory garner one to two stars.

In our analysis, only eight of the 180 pairs that we analyzed received the top rating of five stars, indicating very strong evidence of association. The relationship between smoking and lung cancer, as well as the relationship between high systolic blood pressure – the higher of the two numbers in a blood pressure reading – and ischemic heart disease were among those eight five-star pairs.

This rating system enables consumers to easily identify how harmful or protective a behavior may be and how strong the evidence is for each risk-outcome pair. For instance, a consumer seeing a low star rating can use that knowledge to decide whether to shift a health habit or choice.

In addition, we created an online, publicly available visualization tool that displays 50 risk-outcome pairs that we discussed in five recently published papers in Nature Medicine.

While the visualization tool provides a nuanced understanding of risk across the range of blood pressures, the five-star rating signals that the overall evidence is very strong. As a result, this means that clear guidelines can be given on the importance of controlling blood pressure.

Why it matters

Clear messages and evidence-based guidance regarding healthy behaviors are crucial. Yet health guidance is often contradictory and difficult to understand.

Currently, most epidemiological analyses make strong assumptions about relationships between risks and health outcomes, and study results often disagree as to the strength of risk-outcome relationships. It can be confusing for experts and nonexperts alike to parse through conflicting studies of varying strength of results and determine if a lifestyle change is needed.

This is where our method comes in: The star-based rating system can offer decision-makers and consumers alike much-needed context before headline-grabbing health guidance is dispensed and adopted.

For example, the average risk of ischemic heart disease with a blood pressure of 165 mmHG – or millimeters of mercury, the basic unit used for measuring pressure – is 4.5 times the risk of the disease with blood pressure of 100 mmHG; but this is just a single estimate. The relative risk of ischemic heart disease increases by more than four times across the blood pressure range, and there is inherent uncertainty in the estimate based on available data. The rating of five stars incorporates all of this information, and in this case means that relative risk of ischemic heart disease across the entire range of exposures increases by at least 85%.

On the other hand, take the example of red meat consumption. Consuming 100 grams of red meat per day – as opposed to none – results in a very modest (12%) increase in risk for ischemic heart disease. That’s why it scores a rating of just two stars, consistent with only a weak association.

People should be well aware of their levels of exposure to risks classified with three to five stars, such as systolic blood pressure. By monitoring and keeping one’s blood pressure as low as possible, a person can substantially reduce the risk of developing ischemic heart disease.

What’s next

Our hope is that decision-makers will be able to use our star rating system to create informed policy recommendations that will have the greatest benefits for human health. We also hope the public can use the ratings and the visualization tool as a way to more clearly understand the current level of knowledge for different pairs of health risks and outcomes.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Aleksandr Aravkin, University of Washington; Christian Razo, University of Washington, and Jeffrey Stanaway, University of Washington.

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Jeffrey Stanaway receives funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Aleksandr Aravkin and Christian Razo do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Republicans plan to torpedo key Biden policies as polls predict midterm victory

The Guardian

Republicans plan to torpedo key Biden policies as polls predict midterm victory

Chris Stein in Washington DC – October 21, 2022

<span>Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters</span> — Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

A standoff over the debt ceiling. Aid to Ukraine on the chopping block. And impeachment proceedings against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – or perhaps even president Joe Biden himself.

With polls indicating they have a good shot of winning a majority in the House of Representatives in the 8 November midterms, top Republican lawmakers have in recent weeks offered a preview what they might do with their resurgent power, and made clear they have their sights set on key aspects of the Biden administration’s policies at home and abroad.

Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the chamber, this week signaled in an interview with Punchbowl News that if Congress is going to approve an increase in the amount the federal government can borrow – as it’s expected to need to by sometime next year – Republicans are going to want an agreement to cut spending in return.

“You can’t just continue down the path to keep spending and adding to the debt,” said McCarthy, who is likely to be elevated to speaker of the house in a Republican led-chamber. “And if people want to make a debt ceiling [for a longer period of time], just like anything else, there comes a point in time where, okay, we’ll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior.”

Asked if he might demand that Social Security and Medicare, the two massive federal retirement and healthcare benefit programs that are nearing insolvency, be reformed as part of debt ceiling negotiations, McCarthy replied that he would not “predetermine” anything.

But the California lawmaker warned that members of his caucus were starting to question the money Washington was sending to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia’s invasion. “Ukraine is important, but at the same time it can’t be the only thing they do and it can’t be a blank check,” he told Punchbowl.

Then there’s the question of if Republicans will choose to exercise the House’s powers of impeachment – as they did against Bill Clinton in 1998, and as Democrats did to Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021.

The prime target appears to be Mayorkas, whom Republicans have pilloried amid an uptick in arrivals of migrants at the United States’ border with Mexico. Yet another target could be Biden himself – as Jim Banks, chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee, which crafts policy for the party, suggested on Thursday.

Political realities may pose an obstacle to McCarthy and his allies’ ability to see their plans through. High inflation and Biden’s low approval ratings have given them momentum to retake the House, but their chances of winning a majority in the Senate are seen as a toss-up. Even if they did win that chamber, they’re unlikely to have the two-thirds majority necessary to convict Biden, Mayorkas, or whomever else they intend to impeach – or even the numbers to overcome Democratic filibusters of any legislation they try to pass.

Matt Grossman, director of Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, questioned the GOP’s willingness to legislate. The party’s plans, as outlined in the Commitment to America McCarthy unveiled last month, appear thin in comparison to similar platforms rolled out in 1994 and 2010, when Republicans again took back Congress’ lower chamber from Democratic majorities.

“There’s a longstanding asymmetry between the parties. Republicans legitimately want government to do less,” he said.

“They’re doing pretty well electorally without necessarily needing a policy agenda, and they’re tied to, kind of, defending the Trump administration or attacking the Biden administration. There’s not much of a felt need for a lot of policy.”

There are also signs of division within the party over how the GOP should use its new majority. In his interview with Punchbowl, McCarthy said he was against “impeachment for political purposes” and focused instead on addressing crime, border security and economic issues, all familiar themes for Republicans running this year.

The split was even more pronounced when it came to Ukraine. On Wednesday, Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence called in a speech at influential conservative group the Heritage Foundation for Republicans to continue to support the country, saying “there can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists to” Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The day after, the foundation’s president Kevin Roberts put out a statement saying: “Heritage will vigorously oppose Washington’s big spenders who attempt to pass another Ukrainian aid package lacking debate, a clear strategy, targeted funding and spending offsets.”

Democrats are assured control of Congress until the end of the year, and have taken note of the apparent erosion of will to support Kyiv. NBC News reports they may push for another big military aid infusion in a year-end spending bill, intended to keep the Ukrainians armed for months to come.

It seems clear that Republicans will eventually coalesce behind a strategy to strong-arm the Biden administration for some purpose, but Grossman predicted the likely result would be similar to the 2013 government shutdown, when then president Barack Obama and the Democrats refused the GOP’s demands to dismantle his signature health care law.

“With McCarthy it just seems like he is a go along,” he said. “He’s going to be a go-along speaker and that’s going to be the case with a pretty fractious caucus.”

Photos show the Mississippi River is so low that it’s grounding barges, disrupting the supply chain, and revealing a 19th-century shipwreck

Business Insider

Photos show the Mississippi River is so low that it’s grounding barges, disrupting the supply chain, and revealing a 19th-century shipwreck

Morgan McFall-Johnsen, Paola Rosa-Aquino – October 21, 2022

man sits on rock watches people walk across exposed river bottom to big rock island in the mississippi river — Randy Statler sits on a rock to watch people walk to Tower Rock, an attraction normally surrounded by the Mississippi River and only accessible by boat, in Perry County, Missouri, on October 19, 2022.Jeff Roberson/AP Photo

The Mississippi River is receding to historic lows amid drought across the Midwest.
Barges are getting stuck on sandbars and forced to reduce their cargo, disrupting a critical shipping route.
The low waters also revealed human remains and a 19th-century shipwreck.

The waters of the Mississippi River have fallen to historic lows, driving a shipping and industry crisis in the heart of the US.

The Mississippi is a major channel for shipping and tourism, running from northern Minnesota down through the Midwest plains and emptying through Louisiana, with numerous tributaries stretching east and west. All that boat-based commerce relies on the river’s deep waters, which can accommodate hefty vessels carrying cargo like soybeans, corn, fertilizer, and oil, or cruise-line passengers.

tow trailing five barges floats under bridge in low river waters with exposed dirt banks — A barge tow floats past the exposed banks of the Mississippi River in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on October 11, 2022.Rogelio V. Solis/AP Photo

For the past month, though, the water has dwindled so low that ships are getting stuck in the mud and sandbars at the river bottom. The Coast Guard imposed new restrictions on how low ships and barges can sit in the water. The price of shipping goods along the river skyrocketed, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, and the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began emergency dredging to deepen the river at more than a dozen key choke points, where a backup of about 2,000 barges built up.

A NASA satellite image from October 7 shows the parched river, with barges queued up along its shorelines.

satellite image mississippi river low levels with dry banks exposed barges lined up along shores — An image from a Landsat satellite shows the parched Mississippi River north of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on October 7, 2022.NASA Earth Observatory/USGS Landsat

“This is the most severe we’ve ever seen in our industry in recent history,” Mike Ellis, the CEO of American Commercial Barge Line, told CNBC on Wednesday.

satellite image mississippi river with arrows pointing to barges lined up on shore — A close look at the satellite image reveals barges waiting on the river’s shores.NASA Earth Observatory/USGS Landsat

“That’s a significant impact to our supply chain,” Ellis said, adding, “We can’t get the goods there.”

The water receded so much that it revealed human remains and a 200-year-old shipwreck along the river’s new banks. In Missouri, people are walking across the dry, exposed riverbed to an island that’s normally only accessible by boat.

man looks at wooden shipwreck on banks of low river waters — A man walking along the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, stops to look at a shipwreck revealed by the low water level on October 17, 2022.Sara Cline/AP Photo

On the Louisiana coast, the river is so low that ocean water from the Gulf of Mexico began pushing upstream. USACE is racing to build a 1,500-foot-wide underwater levee to prevent saltwater from creeping further up the river, where it could contaminate drinking water, CNN reported on Tuesday. Already, there’s a drinking water advisory in effect for the coastal region of Plaquemines Parish.

Drought is drying the Mississippi River to record lows

paddlewheel boat full of windows passes between two bridges with low water on mississippi river — A passenger paddle wheeler passes between the river bridges in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on October 11, 2022.Rogelio V. Solis/AP Photo

Just a few months ago, the Mississippi River basin was flooding. This summer, historic rainfall caused flash flooding and overflowing rivers in Kentucky, St. Louis, Missouri, parts of Illinois, and Jackson, Mississippi.

Despite these extreme sporadic rainfall events, overall, the Midwest is in an abnormal drought. The Ohio River Valley and the Upper Mississippi aren’t getting enough rain to feed the giant river.

us drought map october 11 2022 — US Drought Monitor

Up and down the Mississippi, waters have dropped to levels approaching the record low set in 1988. In Memphis, Tennessee, the waters plunged below that record on Monday, according to data from the National Weather Service.

“There is no rain in sight, that is the bottom line,” Lisa Parker, spokeswoman for the USACE Mississippi Valley Division, told the Journal. “The rivers are just bottoming out.”

dock full of boats sits on mud with river waters receding in the background — Boats rest in mud at Mud Island Marina as the water on the Mississippi River continues to recede in Memphis, Tennessee, on October 19, 2022.Scott Olson/Getty Images

Scientists must conduct rigorous analysis to attribute any single event to climate change. However, this year’s extreme conditions of both drought and floods is consistent with what scientists have been predicting and observing: Rising global temperatures are driving more weather variability in the central US, fueling both more severe droughts and one-off rainfall events.

That’s because climate change, driven by all the greenhouse gasses that humans have released into the atmosphere, is changing the planet’s water cycle. Rising temperatures are increasing water evaporation and changing the atmospheric and ocean currents that distribute moisture across the globe.

Droughts are unearthing relics and remains of the past

wooden remains of a ship in dry dirt near green grass and trees — The remains of a ship lay on the banks of the Mississippi River after recently being revealed due to the low water level, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on October 17, 2022.Sara Cline/AP Photo

The severe drought along the river is so intense that it uncovered a centuries-old shipwreck. In early October, low water levels revealed the old sunken ship along the banks of the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Archaeologists believe these remains are from a ferry that sunk in the late 19th or early 20th century, The Associated Press reported.

Though this is the first time the ship has been fully exposed, it’s not a new discovery. Small parts of the vessel emerged from low waters in the 1990s.

“At that time the vessel was completely full of mud and there was mud all around it so only the very tip tops of the sides were visible,” Chip McGimsey, Louisiana’s state archaeologist, told the AP. “They had to move a lot of dirt just to get some narrow windows in to see bits and pieces,” McGimsey said.

aerial photo show long wooden shipwreck on dry banks of low green river — A shipwreck is exposed along the banks of the Mississippi River due to low water levels, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on October 18, 2022.Stephen Smith/AP Photo

McGimsey thinks the ship could be the Brookhill Ferry, which carried people and possibly horse-drawn wagons across the Mississippi, until it sunk in a storm in 1915, according to news stories from the State Times archives.

The river’s receding waters also led to a more gruesome discovery. On Saturday, a Mississippi woman found human remains while searching for rocks with her family on the banks of the drought-stricken river. The remains included a lower jawbone, rib bones, and some unidentified bone pieces, Scotty Meredith, Coahoma County’s chief medical examiner, told CNN.

“Because these water levels are so low that we knew it was only a short matter of time before human remains were found,” Crystal Foster, the woman who found the remains, told WMC.

They are the latest in a bevy of discoveries to surface from receding waters. Over the summer, multiple set of remains were found in Nevada’s Lake Mead, which fell to historically low levels amid climate change-fueled drought.

But it’s not all bad news. Shrinking bodies of water could be a boon for experts tasked with solving missing persons cases, according to Jennifer Byrnes, a forensic anthropologist who consults with the Clark County coroner’s office, which reviews deaths in Lake Mead.

“A big body of water disappearing is going to help us, from a forensic perspective,” Byrnes told Insider.

Correction: October 21, 2022 —A photo caption in an earlier version of this story misstated the location of Vicksburg. The city is in Mississippi, not Louisiana.

Study: Cancer-causing gas leaking from CA stoves, pipes

Associated Press

Study: Cancer-causing gas leaking from CA stoves, pipes

Drew Costley – October 20, 2022

Gas stoves in California homes are leaking cancer-causing benzene, researchers found in a new study published on Thursday, though they say more research is needed to understand how many homes have leaks.

In the study, published in Environmental Science and Technology on Thursday, researchers also estimated that over 4 tons of benzene per year are being leaked into the atmosphere from outdoor pipes that deliver the gas to buildings around California — the equivalent to the benzene emissions from nearly 60,000 vehicles. And those emissions are unaccounted for by the state.

The researchers collected samples of gas from 159 homes in different regions of California and measured to see what types of gases were being emitted into homes when stoves were off. They found that all of the samples they tested had hazardous air pollutants, like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX), all of which can have adverse health effects in humans with chronic exposure or acute exposure in larger amounts.

Of most concern to the researchers was benzene, a known carcinogen that can lead to leukemia and other cancers and blood disorders, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The finding could have major implications for indoor and outdoor air quality in California, which has the second highest level of residential natural gas use in the United States.

“What our science shows is that people in California are exposed to potentially hazardous levels of benzene from the gas that is piped into their homes,” said Drew Michanowicz, a study co-author and senior scientist at PSE Healthy Energy, an energy research and policy institute. “We hope that policymakers will consider this data when they are making policy to ensure current and future policies are health-protective in light of this new research.” 0:01 0:38 Scroll back up to restore default view.

Homes in the Greater Los Angeles, the North San Fernando Valley, and the San Clarita Valley areas had the highest benzene in gas levels. Leaks from stoves in these regions could emit enough benzene to significantly exceed the limit determined to be safe by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazards Assessment.

This finding in particular didn’t surprise residents and health care workers in the region who spoke to The Associated Press about the study. That’s because many of them experienced the largest-known natural gas leak in the nation in Aliso Canyon in 2015.

Back then, 100,000 tons of methane and other gases, including benzene, leaked from a failed well operated by Southern California Gas Co. It took nearly four months to get the leak under control and resulted in headaches, nausea and nose bleeds.

Dr. Jeffrey Nordella was a physician at an urgent care in the region during this time and remembers being puzzled by the variety of symptoms patients were experiencing. “I didn’t have much to offer them,” except to help them try to detox from the exposures, he said.

That was an acute exposure of a large amount of benzene, which is different from chronic exposure to smaller amounts, but “remember what the World Health Organization said: there’s no safe level of benzene,” he said.

Kyoko Hibino was one of the residents exposed to toxic air pollution as a result of the Aliso Canyon gas leak. After the leak, she started having a persistent cough and nosebleeds and eventually was diagnosed with breast cancer, which has also been linked to benzene exposure. Her cats also started having nosebleeds and one recently passed away from leukemia.

“I’d say let’s take this study really seriously and understand how bad (benzene exposure) is,” she said.

Trump drops F-bombs and shares potentially sensitive information in newly released audio

Yahoo! Entertainment

Trump drops F-bombs and shares potentially sensitive information in newly released audio

Stephen Proctor – October 19, 2022

Previously unheard audio featuring former President Donald Trump aired Tuesday on Anderson Cooper 360. Famed journalist Bob Woodward recorded 20 conversations he had with the former president, with Trump’s knowledge, from 2016 through 2020. Trump, who is facing possible legal peril for taking classified documents when he left office, appears in one recording to share sensitive information with Woodward.

“I have built a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before,” Trump said. “We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before.”

Trump also spoke of Russia’s nuclear capabilities.

“Getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing, alright?” Trump said. “Especially because they have 1,332 nuclear f***ing warheads.”

Throughout his presidency, Trump was criticized for his apparent affinity for authoritarian leaders, which he spoke about to Woodward.

“It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You know? Explain that to me someday, OK,” Trump said. “But maybe it’s not a bad thing. The easy ones are the ones I maybe don’t like as much or don’t get along with as much.”

In another recording, Trump brags about how he handled being impeached, while at the same time taking shots at two of his predecessors who also faced impeachment.

“There’s nobody that’s tougher than me,” Trump said. “Nobody’s tougher than me. You asked me about impeachment. I’m under impeachment, and you said, you know, you just act like you won the f***ing race. Nixon was in a corner with his thumb in his mouth. Bill Clinton took it very, very hard. I just do things, OK?”

In 2016, Woodward asked then-candidate Trump about having his staff sign non-disclosure agreements. Woodward recorded Trump talking to his staff about who had and who had not yet signed one. Trump was confident in the effectiveness of these agreements at the time, but a multitude of former officials wrote tell-all books after leaving the administration.

Woodward plans to release the more than eight hours of recordings as an audiobook titled The Trump Tapes on Oct. 25.

The real story behind America’s population bomb: Adults want their independence

USA Today

The real story behind America’s population bomb: Adults want their independence

Clay Routledge and Will Johnson – October 12, 2022

Declining birth rates are a major concern for the United States and many countries around the world, so we – an expert in existential psychology and an expert in pulsing public opinion – surveyed the Americans choosing not to have children to learn the reasons why.

Americans are having fewer children than are needed to keep population numbers stable.

Low birth rates are not only an American problem. In 2020, researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected that the global fertility rate will drop below 1.7 by the end of this century. And countries such as Italy, South Korea, Spain and Thailand will lose more than half their population within the lifetimes of children being born this year.

Fear of not just climate change and affordable housing

Much of the conversation in the United States about this issue has focused on fears about the future of the world or major economic challenges. For instance, the threat of climate change and the affordability of housing are frequently referenced as reasons that Americans don’t want to have kids.

While those are concerns of course, when you look at the data, family planning appears to be influenced more by people’s personal views about the independent life they want to live than their worries about potential environmental or economic issues.

This has important implications for how we as a nation approach the demographic challenge of declining birth rates.

A Harris Poll found that of those without children, about half do not want to have a child in the future, while 20% remain unsure. The only factor that the majority (54%) of Americans who don’t want to have kids endorsed as influencing their decision was maintaining personal independence.

Specifically, we surveyed a representative sample of just over 1,000 U.S. adults about their future family planning. Of those without children, about half (52%) do not want to have a child in the future, while 20% remain unsure.

We then asked these individuals whether their decision to not have children was influenced by a wide range of factors. Only 28% of them reported that climate change influenced their decision to not have kids. Similarly, only 33% indicated that housing prices influenced their decision.

Other factors we asked about including the political situation in the United States (31%), safety concerns (31%), personal financial situation (46%) and work-life balance (40%) were endorsed by less than half of respondents.

The only factor that the majority (54%) of Americans who don’t want to have kids endorsed as influencing their decision was maintaining personal independence.

Chrissy Teigen’s Q&A with Feeding America: How can we help children who are going hungry?

Desire for personal independence is most powerful

Moreover, since respondents were able to indicate multiple reasons for not having kids, we also asked them which of those factors most influenced their decision. Further suggesting that this decision is more about personal preferences than other factors, we found that maintaining personal independence was reported as the most influential factor for more respondents than any other factor; 43% of those who considered independence to be a factor indicated that it was the most influential reason for not having kids.

For comparison, only 26% of those who considered climate change when deciding whether to have children reported that it was the most influential reason and only 9% of those who considered housing prices indicated such.

Americans may have multiple reasons for opting out of parenting, but their desire for personal independence is the most powerful one.

Children’s mental health: Alarm on children’s mental health has been ringing for decades. Too few have listened.

It is also worth noting that men and women were generally similar in their reasoning; 53% of females and 55% of males reported that their desire to maintain their personal independence influenced their decision to not have children. No other reason for not having kids was cited by a majority of men or women.

We shouldn’t oversimplify the story of why more and more Americans are choosing to not start families. It is undoubtedly complex and involves facets that public opinion surveys can’t fully capture. However, our results have important implications for cultural and political discussions around this issue.

Changes in public policy may not help

Perhaps most important, our findings suggest that public policy solutions are unlikely to have much impact on birth rates. Because Americans who are opting out of having children are more influenced by their desire to maintain their personal independence than concerns about climate change or affordable housing, or other issues such as work-life balance and safety, efforts to promote a more pro-natal society will need to be more cultural in nature.

More specifically, these efforts will need to address psychological needs related to individuals’ life goals and priorities.

How do we change people’s attitude about how children will affect their lives if they privilege personal freedom over other ideals? A good place to start is to focus on one of the most fundamental psychological needs, the need for existential meaning.

Humans are highly motivated to perceive their lives as meaningful. And it is when they perceive their lives as full of meaning that they are most mentally healthy, resilient, goal-driven, self-disciplined and self-reliant. In this way, meaning can be thought of as a key ingredient to achieving personal independence.

The Americans concerned about how having children may affect their personal independence may not realize that meaning is so empowering and that family is a fundamental source of meaning. For instance, surveys find that when people are asked what makes their lives feel meaningful, the most common response is family.

In addition, studies find that parents report higher levels of meaning than adults without children and have a greater sense of meaning when they are taking care of their children than when they are engaged in other activities.

Goldie Hawn on mental health issues: ‘Don’t turn a blind eye’ to kids

Cultural narratives that treat parenting as a threat to personal independence and a roadblock to a fulfilling life may contribute to declining birth rates more than many realize.

There are of course environmental, economic and other challenges that can make people worried about bringing another human into this world and that can make raising children difficult.

But this is not new. For much of our history, most humans lived far more perilous lives than we live today. Our challenge is less about our material conditions and more about our mindset.

If we want a world with more children, we are going to have to convince people that having and raising kids is a critical ingredient of, not a barrier to, the good life.

Republicans Plan to Use Debt Limit Leverage to Reduce Social Security, Medicare: Report

The Fiscal Times

Republicans Plan to Use Debt Limit Leverage to Reduce Social Security, Medicare: Report

Michael Rainey – October 12, 2022

Republicans in the House are planning to use a potential showdown next year over raising the federal debt limit to make changes in Social Security and Medicare, Bloomberg’s Jack Fitzpatrick reports.

The developing plan hinges on Republicans winning control of the House in the midterm elections, an outcome that is looking likely. Four GOP lawmakers who are vying for leadership of the House Budget Committee in the event of a Republican victory told Fitzpatrick that the need to raise the debt ceiling could give them the leverage they need to force Democrats to make concessions.

“The debt limit is clearly one of those tools that Republicans — that a Republican-controlled Congress — will use to make sure that we do everything we can to make this economy strong,” Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), the senior Republican on the current Budget Committee, said.

Republicans are still discussing exactly what changes they might try to enact. “What would we consider a win?” said Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), who is interested in the top spot on the Budget Committee. “What would we consider to be a fiscally responsible budget?”

Although the details are still up in the air, one theme is clear: House Republicans want to reduce federal spending, and the major entitlement programs are a target. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) Carter said that Republicans’ “main focus has got to be on nondiscretionary — it’s got to be on entitlements.”

Shrinking the safety net: One option reportedly being discussed is raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare, the two largest mandatory spending programs. Each faces financial squeezes in the coming years as the baby boomers age and continue to retire. Under current rules, the Social Security system would be forced to cut benefits starting in 2034, while Medicare could run short of funds by 2028.

Earlier this year, the Republican Study Committee released a plan to raise the eligibility age for Social Security to 70 and the eligibility age for Medicare to 67. The increases would be phased in over time and once the target is reached, the eligibility age would then be indexed to life expectancy. The lawmakers also called for increased means testing in the Medicare program, and a privatization option for Social Security.

Other options being considered include more stringent work requirements and income limits for what Smith called “welfare programs,” including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program more commonly known as food stamps. And new caps on discretionary spending could limit spending increases over 10 years.

One thing that won’t be cut: defense spending. Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX) told Bloomberg that he wants to cut nondefense spending in order to provide more money for the military.

Willing to risk “catastrophe”? Republicans say they are leery about pushing too far in their demands, but many experts think that any effort to use the debt limit as leverage in negotiations is unacceptably risky. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that defaulting on U.S. debt payments — which would occur if the U.S. failed to raise the debt ceiling — would cause a “catastrophe” in the global economy.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) accused the GOP of taking huge risks in order to cut important social programs. “House Republicans are openly threatening to cause an economic catastrophe in order to realize their obsession with slashing Medicare and Social Security,” a Pelosi spokesperson told Bloomberg. “As House Republican leaders’ own words constantly reveal, dismantling the pillars of American seniors’ financial security is not a fringe view in the extreme MAGA House GOP, it is a broadly held obsession at the core of their legislative agenda.”

House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth (D-KY) also criticized Republican plans. “Holding the full faith and credit of the United States hostage to implement an extreme and unpopular agenda is not governing, it’s desperation,” Yarmuth said in a statement. “Congressional Republicans are so hellbent on gutting Social Security and ending Medicare as we know it that they are willing to risk economic catastrophe to get it done. This is a desperate attempt to shower the wealthy and big corporations with even more tax giveaways by intentionally sacrificing the needs of American families.”

Democrats do have one option for disarming Republicans ahead of a debt ceiling showdown: They could attempt to raise the ceiling on their own during the lame-duck session at the end of the year, potentially denying the GOP the use of that weapon. But both Yarmuth and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told Bloomberg there has been no discussion among Democrats about such a plan.

The bottom line: Taking a page from the tea party playbook from a decade ago, expect to see Republicans attempting to force spending reductions in the next Congress — reductions that could involve fundamental changes in the way the country’s top safety net programs operate.

Spanish Vineyards Use Solar Panels to Protect Wine Grapes

EcoWatch

Spanish Vineyards Use Solar Panels to Protect Wine Grapes

By Paige Bennett, Edited by Irma Omerhodzic – October 12, 2022

As global wineries are hit with impacts of climate change, a new project called Winesolar in Spain is innovating ways for vineyards to protect their grapes while also generating clean energy.

Iberdrola, an energy company based in Bilbao, Spain, has created a shelter for growing wine grapes at vineyards in Guadamur. The shelter is made with a few solar panels that generate about 40 kW of energy, which will be used by the González Byass and Grupo Emperador wineries. The solar panel shelter creates a microclimate by shading or exposing plants from the sun and offering some relief from high temperatures while also minimizing evaporation after watering crops.

While combining solar energy and agricultural land is not new, one component that makes the Winesolar project stand out is that it will have a tracking system, with trackers from PVH, that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to determine the most efficient solar panel positioning over the vines at any time, according to Iberdrola. Techedge, an IT firm, will help the solar panel project further the wineries’ agricultural goals.

Sensors in the vineyards will record data including soil humidity, wind conditions, solar radiation, and even vine thickness to find the optimal position for the solar panels, giving the vines a fighting chance against the effects of climate change.

“The installation will help to improve the quality of the grapes, allow a more efficient use of the land, reduce the consumption of irrigation water and improve the crop’s resistance to climatic conditions in the face of rising temperatures and increasingly frequent heat waves,” Iberdrola explained in a statement.

While the project is a small pilot, Iberdrola has plans to expand the idea into other Spanish vineyards, in addition to adding another 1,500 megawatts of solar panels across Spain. The company has installed 2,200 MW so far in 2022 and installed 800 MW last year, as CleanTechnica reported.

The project is an example of growing interest in agrovoltaics, or a balance between photovoltaic energy and agriculture through the installation of solar panels on farms. Agrovoltaic projects are meant to improve sustainability and make farming more efficient. While it isn’t a new concept — it was first conceived in the early 1980s — it has become increasingly popular in recent years for its potential environmental and economical benefits.

“When it comes to the environment, the main benefit of agrovoltaics is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector,” Iberdrola said on its website. “What’s more, the dual use of land for both agriculture and for energy relieves pressure on ecosystems and biodiversity, which are affected when cultivation areas are expanded.”

Climate change is causing more billion-dollar weather disasters

Yahoo! News

Climate change is causing more billion-dollar weather disasters

David Knowles, Senior Editor – October 12, 2022

When Hurricane Ian barreled into Florida’s Gulf Coast last month, it became the 15th extreme weather event in the U.S. this year to rack up damages totaling more than $1 billion. Climate change, data shows, is helping to make expensive disasters much more frequent in recent years.

In fact, 2022 marks the eighth straight year that at least 10 separate $1 billion weather-related disasters occurred, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“In the last five years [2017-2021], there were just 18 days on average between billion-dollar disasters—compared to 82 days in the 1980s,” Climate Central, a consortium of scientists and journalists, found in a new analysis posted to its website.

This year’s extreme weather disasters in the U.S. have resulted in over 340 deaths, the NOAA said, and the financial toll is still being tallied. The insurance losses alone from Hurricane Ian are projected to cost between $53 billion and $74 billion, according to an estimate by RMS, a risk modeling company. In addition to that staggering sum, the National Flood Insurance Program could face an extra $10 billion in losses, Insurance Business America reported.

“The number and cost of weather and climate disasters are increasing in the United States due to a combination of increased exposure (i.e., more assets at risk), vulnerability (i.e., how much damage a hazard of given intensity — wind speed or flood depth, for example — causes at a location), and climate change is also supercharging the increasing frequency and intensity of certain types of extreme weather that lead to billion-dollar disasters — most notably the rise in vulnerability to drought, lengthening wildfire seasons in the western states, and the potential for extremely heavy rainfall becoming more common in the eastern states,” Adam Smith, a climatologist at the National Centers for Environmental Information and a lead analyst on the NOAA’s findings on $1 billion disasters, told Yahoo news in an email. “Sea level rise is worsening hurricane storm surge flooding.”

Among the other $1 billion or greater weather-related disasters to hit the U.S. this year are the extreme flooding that occurred in Kentucky and Missouri from July 26 to 28, the prolonged drought and heat waves that gripped the western U.S. between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, devastating wildfires that consumed thousands of acres in New Mexico this spring, a derecho that plowed through Indiana on July 13, and the extreme precipitation event in Summerville, Ga., on Sept. 4 that dumped more than 12 inches of rain.

While climate change is not the sole cause of events like hurricanes, drought, rainfall or wildfires, ample scientific research has shown that rising global temperatures are amplifying all of them, making each potentially more destructive.

Workers clearing debris in Fort Myers, Fla., in the wake of Hurricane Ian, Oct. 1. (Giorgio Viera/AFP)

“The year-to-date average temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 56.8 degrees F — 1.7 degrees above average — ranking in the warmest third of the YTD record. California and Florida saw their third- and fourth-warmest January-through-September periods on record, respectively,” the NOAA stated on its website.

Across the West, nearly 1,000 heat records were broken in early September, the NOAA said, a month that will go down as the fifth-warmest on record. In all, the last seven years have been the warmest on record, according to data from NASA, the NOAA and Berkeley Earth.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has for years been sounding the alarm about the risks related to global temperature rise and tried to convince world governments to agree to limit greenhouse gas emissions so as to keep average temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

In its most recent report, which was issued in February, the IPCC reiterated that the planet could expect an increase in the kinds of severe weather consequences seen in recent years that have been liked to climate change.

“This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” Hoesung Lee, chair of the IPCC, said in a statement that accompanied the release of the report. “It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our well-being and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks.”

The big reason Florida insurance companies are failing isn’t just hurricane risk – it’s fraud and lawsuits

The Conversation

The big reason Florida insurance companies are failing isn’t just hurricane risk – it’s fraud and lawsuits

Shahid S. Hamid – October 5, 2022

Shahid S. Hamid is Professor of Finance, Florida International University.

The big reason Florida insurance companies are failing isn’t just hurricane risk – it’s fraud and lawsuits

Hurricane Ian’s widespread damage is another disaster for Florida’s already shaky insurance industry. Even though home insurance rates in Florida are nearly triple the national average, insurers have been losing money. Six have failed since January 2022. Now, insured losses from Ian are estimated to exceed US$40 billion

Hurricane risk might seem like the obvious problem, but there is a more insidious driver in this financial train wreck.

Finance professor Shahid Hamid, who directs the Laboratory for Insurance at Florida International University, explained how Florida’s insurance market got this bad – and how the state’s insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance, now carrying more than 1 million policies, can weather the storm.

What’s making it so hard for Florida insurers to survive?

Florida’s insurance rates have almost doubled in the past five years, yet insurance companies are still losing money for three main reasons.

One is the rising hurricane risk. Hurricanes Matthew (2016), Irma (2017) and Michael (2018) were all destructive. But a lot of Florida’s hurricane damage is from water, which is covered by the National Flood Insurance Program, rather than by private property insurance.

Another reason is that reinsurance pricing is going up – that’s insurance for insurance companies to help when claims spike.

But the biggest single reason is the “assignment of benefits” problem, involving contractors after a storm. It’s partly fraud and partly taking advantage of loose regulation and court decisions that have affected insurance companies.

It generally looks like this: Contractors will knock on doors and say they can get the homeowner a new roof. The cost of a new roof is maybe $20,000-$30,000. So, the contractor inspects the roof. Often, there isn’t really that much damage. The contractor promises to take care of everything if the homeowner assigns over their insurance benefit. The contractors can then claim whatever they want from the insurance company without needing the homeowner’s consent.

If the insurance company determines the damage wasn’t actually covered, the contractor sues.

So insurance companies are stuck either fighting the lawsuit or settling. Either way, it’s costly.

Other lawsuits may involve homeowners who don’t have flood insurance. Only about 14% of Florida homeowners pay for flood insurance, which is mostly available through the federal National Flood Insurance Program. Some without flood insurance will file damage claims with their property insurance company, arguing that wind caused the problem.

How widespread of a problem are these lawsuits?

Overall, the numbers are pretty striking.

About 9% of homeowner property claims nationwide are filed in Florida, yet 79% of lawsuits related to property claims are filed there.

The legal cost in 2019 was over $3 billion for insurance companies just fighting these lawsuits, and that’s all going to be passed on to homeowners in higher costs.

Insurance companies had a more than $1 billion underwriting loss in 2020 and again in 2021. Even with premiums going up so much, they’re still losing money in Florida because of this. And that’s part of the reason so many companies are deciding to leave.

Assignment of benefits is likely more prevalent in Florida than most other states because there is more opportunity from all the roof damage from hurricanes. The state’s regulation is also relatively weak. This may eventually be fixed by the legislature, but that takes time and groups are lobbying against change. It took a long time to pass a law saying the attorney fee has to be capped.

How bad is the situation for insurers?

We’ve seen about a dozen companies be declared insolvent or leave since early 2020. At least six dropped out this year alone.

Thirty more are on the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation’s watch list. About 17 of those are likely to be or have been downgraded from A rating, meaning they’re no longer considered to be in good financial health.