Global Warming Reduces Deaths from Cold Temps Much More Than It Increases Deaths From Hot Temps

(p. A15) Globally, a recent Lancet study found 4.5 million cold deaths, nine times more than global heat deaths. The study also finds that temperatures increased half a degree Celsius in the first two decades of this century, causing an additional 116,000 heat deaths annually. But warmer temperatures now also avoid 283,000 cold deaths annually. Reporting only on the former leaves us badly informed.

. . .

Even if all the world’s ambitious carbon-cutting promises were magically enacted, these policies would only slow future warming. Stronger heat waves would still kill more people, just slightly fewer than they would have. A sensible response would focus first on resilience, meaning more air conditioning and cooler cities through greenery and water features. After 2003’s heat waves, France required air conditioning in nursing homes, reducing heat deaths tenfold despite higher temperatures.

For the full commentary, see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “Adapting Will Be Key, Not Hype and Panic.” Omaha World-Herald (Sunday, Sept. 17, 2023): A15.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 16, 2023, and has the title “Bjorn Lomborg: Don’t panic about global warming.”)

The Lancet Planet Health study summarized in the passage quoted above is:

Qi Zhao, Yuming Guo, Tingting Ye, Antonio Gasparrini, Shilu Tong, Ala Overcenco, Aleš Urban, Alexandra Schneider, Alireza Entezari, Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera, Antonella Zanobetti, Antonis Analitis, Ariana Zeka, Aurelio Tobias, Baltazar Nunes, Barrak Alahmad, Ben Armstrong, Bertil Forsberg, Shih-Chun Pan, Carmen Íñiguez, Caroline Ameling, César De la Cruz Valencia, Christofer Åström, Danny Houthuijs, Do Van Dung, Dominic Royé, Eric Lavigne Ene Indermitte, Fatemeh Mayvaneh, Fiorella Acquaotta, Francesca de’Donato, Francesco Di Ruscio, Francesco Sera,, Haidong Kan Gabriel Carrasco-Escobar, Hans Orru, Ho Kim, Iulian-Horia Holobaca, Jan Kyselý, Joana Madureira, Joel Schwartz, Jouni J K Jaakkola,, Magali Hurtado Diaz Klea Katsouyanni, Martina S Ragettli, Masahiro Hashizume, Mathilde Pascal, Micheline de Sousa Zanotti Stagliorio Coélho,, Niilo Ryti Nicolás Valdés Ortega, Noah Scovronick, Paola Michelozzi, Patricia Matus Correa, Patrick Goodman, Paulo Hilario Nascimento Saldiva,, Samuel Osorio Rosana Abrutzky, Shilpa Rao, Simona Fratianni, Tran Ngoc Dang, Valentina Colistro, Veronika Huber, Whanhee Lee, Xerxes Seposo, Yue Leon Guo, Yasushi Honda, Michelle L Bell, Shanshan Li. “Global, Regional, and National Burden of Mortality Associated with Non-Optimal Ambient Temperatures from 2000 to 2019: A Three-Stage Modelling Study.” Lancet Planet Health 5 (July 2021): e415–e425.

Costly Sanctimonious Green New Skyscraper Already in Violation of Latest New York Environmental Regulations

(p. A13) One Vanderbilt, a commanding new skyscraper in the heart of Manhattan, seems to be reaching for the future. One of the world’s tallest buildings, it pierces the sky like an inverted icicle and fuses seamlessly with an expanding network of trains and other transport at its foundations.

It is also the rare skyscraper designed with climate change in mind.

. . .

But One Vanderbilt is also something else. It is already out of date.

Some of the building’s most important green features were the right answer to the climate problem in 2016, when design work was completed. “And then the answer changed,” Mr. Wilcox said.

Unlike many skyscrapers, One Vanderbilt generates much of its own electricity. This was a leap forward a decade or so ago — a way of producing power that saved money for landlords and was cleaner than the local grid.

However, One Vanderbilt’s turbines burn natural gas. And while natural gas is cleaner than oil or coal, it is falling from favor, particularly in New York City, which in recent years has adopted some of the most ambitious climate laws in the world, including a ban on fossil fuels in new buildings.

. . .

The truth is that most buildings in New York, big or small, old or new, are bad for the environment. Boilers and furnaces burning fuel in basements are the city’s single largest producer of carbon dioxide, emitting more than double the amount from millions of cars and trucks traveling its roads.

One Vanderbilt, according to its owner, is designed to be more energy-efficient than most new buildings. The structure features several design elements, some exorbitantly expensive, to minimize energy use, such as high ceilings to let in more natural light.

Yet because of the rapidly evolving energy-policy landscape, driven by increasing global concern over climate change, even the most ambitious attempts at sustainability often find themselves facing the possibility of retrofitting the moment the elevator doors open. One Vanderbilt is one such case.

. . .

Landlords such as SL Green say New York City’s new laws will force dramatic changes. Unlike energy codes of the past, one of the key laws, which restricts pollution, doesn’t merely apply to new construction: Existing buildings, no matter how small or how old, must gradually comply and retrofit as well, potentially at eye-watering cost.

For the full story, see:

Ben Ryder Howe. “Built to Be Green, Skyscraper Was Dated From the Beginning.” The New York Times (Thursday, February 16, 2023): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 16, 2023, and has the title “New Skyscraper, Built to Be an Environmental Marvel, Is Already Dated.”)

Nebraska Interest Cap Regulation Reduced Consumer Payday Loan Options

(p. A1) Nebraska’s payday lenders have all shut down in the two years since voters capped the interest rate they could charge.

The last handful gave up their delayed-deposit services business licenses in December [2021], according to records kept by the Nebraska Department of Banking and Finance.

Just six months earlier, there had been 19 such businesses.

. . .

. . ., Ed D’Alessio, executive director of INFiN, a national trade association representing delayed-deposit businesses, said the closures were predictable, based on the experience of other states that have imposed similar rate caps.

“Nebraska’s 36% rate cap on delayed-deposit loans was never about consumer protection,” he said. “It was about activists’ thinly veiled desire to eliminate a regulated service valued by many.

“But Nebraskans’ need for credit did not go away. Instead, they have been left with fewer options for managing their financial obligations,” D’Alessio said.  . . .

Payday loans, also known as cash advances, check advances or delayed-deposit loans, are a type of short-term, high-cost borrowing that people use to get small amounts of immediate cash.

For the full story, see:

Martha Stoddard. “Payday Lenders Disappear From State After Rate Cap.” Omaha World-Herald (Tuesday, Sept 13, 2022): A1-A2.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Oct. 18, 2023 [sic], and has the title “Payday lenders disappeared from Nebraska after interest rate capped at 36%.”)

Stigler’s Account of Friedman’s “Exhilarating” Conversion of 20 Chicago Economists to Coase’s Theorem

(p. C8) Although he never reached the renown of his lifelong friend Milton Friedman, George Stigler was a founding member of the Chicago school of economics. His charming and readable memoir—really a linked series of vignettes—recounts his time at Chicago, from graduate school to professor.

. . .

Riveting accounts of notable moments in the history of economic thought include the “Coase conversion evening”—a long argument that ended with Friedman convincing 20 economists to embrace a founding theorem of the law and economics movement. “What an exhilarating event,” Stigler recalls. “I lamented afterward that we had not had the clairvoyance to tape it.”

For the full review, see:

Jennifer Burns. “Five Best on Biographies of Economists.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, November 4, 2023): C8.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 3, 2023, and has the title “Five Best: Lives of Economists.”)

The book under review is:

Stigler, George J. Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1988.

Cancer “Vaccines Are Probably the Next Big Thing”

(p. A5) “Vaccines are probably the next big thing” in the quest to reduce cancer deaths, said Dr. Steve Lipkin, a medical geneticist at New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine, who is leading one effort funded by the National Cancer Institute. “We’re dedicating our lives to that.”

For the full story, see:

ARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press. “Vaccine Against Cancer Could Be Closer Than Ever.” Omaha World-Herald (Sunday, July 9, 2023): A11.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Nov 2, 2023, and has the title “The next big advance in cancer treatment could be a vaccine.”)

For Quick Spread of EVs, U.S. Regulators Need to Quickly Approve More Domestic Mines for Critical Minerals

(p. A6) For decades, a group of the world’s biggest oil producers has held huge sway over the American economy and the popularity of U.S. presidents through its control of the global oil supply, with decisions by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries determining what U.S. consumers pay at the pump.

As the world shifts to cleaner sources of energy, control over the materials needed to power that transition is still up for grabs.

China currently dominates global processing of the critical minerals that are now in high demand to make batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage. In an attempt to gain more power over that supply chain, U.S. officials have begun negotiating a series of agreements with other countries to expand America’s access to important minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite.

But it remains unclear which of these partnerships will succeed, or if they will be able to generate anything close to the supply of minerals the United States is projected to need for a wide array of products, including electric cars and batteries for storing solar power.

Leaders of Japan, Europe and other advanced nations, who are meeting in Hiroshima, agree that the world’s reliance on China for more than 80 percent of processing of minerals leaves their nations vulnerable to political pressure from Beijing, which has a history of weaponizing supply chains in times of conflict.

. . .

. . ., some U.S. officials argue that the supply of critical minerals in wealthy countries with high labor and environmental standards will be insufficient to meet demand, . . .

. . .

Jennifer Harris, a former Biden White House official who worked on critical mineral strategy, argued that the country should move more quickly to develop and permit domestic mines, . . .

. . .

“There’s so much that needs doing that this is very much a ‘both/and’ world,” she said. “The challenge is that we need to responsibly pull up a whole lot more rocks out of the ground yesterday.”

For the full story, see:

Ana Swanson. “The U.S. Needs Minerals for Electric Cars. So Does Everyone Else.” The New York Times (Monday, May 22, 2023): A6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated May 23, 2023, and has the title “The U.S. Needs Minerals for Electric Cars. Everyone Else Wants Them Too.”)

Biden’s Centrally Planned Cancer “Moonshot” Funds Surgery as Key to a Cure

(p. A5) WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday [July 27, 2023] announced the first cancer-focused initiative under its advanced health research agency, aiming to help doctors more easily distinguish between cancerous cells and healthy tissue during surgery and improve outcomes for patients.

The administration’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, is launching a Precision Surgical Interventions program, seeking ideas from the public and private sectors to explore how to dramatically improve cancer outcomes in the coming decades by developing better surgical interventions to treat the disease.

. . .

The initiative could markedly improve cancer treatments and make scientific breakthroughs that have as yet unknown applications, said Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology.

“What’s true is that many cancer treatments still start with surgery,” she told The Associated Press in an interview. “So being really smart and attacking and developing new technology to make that first step better could really revolutionize how we are able to treat cancer for so many Americans.”

For the full story, see:

ZEKE MILLER Associated Press. “Cancer Research Initiative Part of Biden ‘Moonshot’.” Omaha World-Herald (Friday, July 28, 2023): A5.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Nov. 2, 2023, and has the title “Biden announces an advanced cancer research initiative as part of his ‘moonshot’ effort.”)

FTX Fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried Gave “More Than $5 Million” to Biden’s Winning 2020 Presidential Campaign

Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud on November 2, 2023.

(p. B4) On the same day that Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial on federal fraud charges begins, the best-selling author Michael Lewis is set to publish a widely anticipated book on Tuesday [Oct. 3, 2023] about Mr. Bankman-Fried’s failed cryptocurrency exchange, FTX.

Mr. Lewis, the author of “The Blind Side,” “The Big Short” and “Moneyball,” spent months interviewing Mr. Bankman-Fried and other top FTX executives, and had access to the company’s headquarters in the Bahamas for the book, “Going Infinite.”

The book features previously unreported details about Mr. Bankman-Fried’s empire, from its founding in the Bay Area to its epic collapse in the Bahamas last year. Here are some takeaways.

. . .

Mr. Bankman-Fried started his first company, the hedge fund Alameda Research, alongside Tara Mac Aulay, an Australian mathematician who moved in the same philanthropic circles.  . . .

According to the book, Ms. Mac Aulay grew to consider Mr. Bankman-Fried “dishonest and manipulative,” and other senior figures at Alameda accused him of mismanagement.

. . .

When FTX was thriving, Mr. Bankman-Fried became a prolific political donor, contributing more than $5 million to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 presidential election effort.

For the full story, see:

David Yaffe-Bellany. “Takeaways From a New Book on Sam Bankman-Fried.” The New York Times (Tuesday, October 3, 2023): B4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 2, 2023, and has the same title as the print version. Where the online version has more detailed wording, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

The book reporting new details on the FTX debacle is:

Lewis, Michael. Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2023.

Highly-Taxpayer-Subsidized Lincoln Airline Collapses After Three Months

The “American Rescue Plan Act” was also called the “Covid-19 Stimulus Package” or the “American Rescue Plan.” (To paraphrase Shakespeare on a rose: a “boondoggle” by any other name smells just as foul.)

(p. B2) LINCOLN — Red Way, the startup airline that had been providing service from Lincoln to destinations such as Las Vegas and Orlando, is ceasing operations at the end of the month.

. . .

The Lancaster County Board issued a written statement Wednesday [Aug. 23, 2023], saying it “is deeply disappointed and troubled at this unexpected and sudden turn of events.”

The board said there are “many unanswered questions regarding the Red Way project, (and it) looks forward to receiving a full accounting of this situation as the Lincoln Airport Authority charts a new path forward to serve our community.”

Board member Matt Schulte lamented the $3 million in lost American Rescue Plan Act funds — $1.5 million each from Lancaster County and the City of Lincoln — but called the air travel experiment a chance worth taking.

“I personally voted for this project believing that the air service would develop long term service,” he said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t work. I hope this failed experiment does not have a negative impact on the ability to expand service to the city of Lincoln.”

. . .

Airport officials had seemed optimistic about the airline’s prospects, noting that it had sold 10,000 tickets in just its first two weeks of operation.

In fact, Red Way flew just over 13,000 total passengers in June and July.

But cracks had started to show recently.

Red Way announced in July that it was dropping seasonal flights to Atlanta, Austin and Minneapolis in early August, months earlier than planned, because of poor ticket sales. That news came just two days after the airline had announced new flights to Tampa and Phoenix over the winter months.

Nick Cusick, who resigned from the Airport Authority Board in July after serving more than 10 years, confirmed to the Lincoln Journal Star on Wednesday that Red Way had already burned through most of a $3 million incentive fund provided through ARPA dollars.

It used more than $900,000 in the first month and it withdrew even more in the second month, Cusick said.

For the full story, see:

MATT OLBERDING, Lincoln Journal Star. “Red Way Airline Ceasing Operations.” Omaha World-Herald (Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023): B2.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Sept. 30, 2023, and has the title “Lincoln’s Red Way ceasing operations less than 3 months after inaugural flight.”)

Environmentalist President Banned Chemical Fertilizers “to Turn Sri Lanka Into ‘the Organic Garden of the World’”

(p. A6) COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The president was cornered, his back to the sea.

Inside the dimly lit colonial mansion he had found lonely, Gotabaya Rajapaksa watched from a hastily arranged operations room as the monthslong protests demanding his ouster as Sri Lanka’s leader reached his very doorstep.

. . .

Three years after winning the election handsomely, and just two years after his family’s party had secured a whopping two-thirds majority in Parliament, Mr. Rajapaksa had become deeply resented. And the bill for his family’s years of entitlement, corruption and mismanagement, made worse by a global economic order plunged into chaos by Covid and war, had at last come due.

. . .

Even as the economic crisis deepened, the president’s focus was often elsewhere. In April 2021, he suddenly declared a ban on chemical fertilizers. His hope, his advisers said, was to turn Sri Lanka into “the organic garden of the world.”

Farmers, lacking organic fertilizer, saw their yields plummet. And a rift in the family grew: Gotabaya resisted attempts by his brother Mahinda, who was now prime minister, to change his mind on the fertilizer ban.  . . .

By the spring of 2022, long lines were forming for fuel, supermarkets were running low on imported foods, and the nation’s supply of cooking gas was almost exhausted as the government’s foreign reserves dwindled almost to zero.

The country was in free fall. And the one person who could do something about it was adrift. In meetings, the president was often distracted, scrolling through intelligence reports on his phone, according to officials who were in (p. A7) the room with him.

. . .

Gotabaya Rajapaksa eventually fled the country on a military plane, first to the Maldives and then to Singapore, before arriving in Thailand on Thursday [August 11, 2022].

For the full story, see:

Mujib Mashal, Emily Schmall and Atul Loke. “How the Middle Class In Sri Lanka Pushed A President Into Exile.” The New York Times (Saturday, August 13, 2022): A6-A7.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 12, 2022, and has the title “Showdown at the Mansion Gates: How Sri Lankans Rose Up to Dethrone a Dynasty.”)

Philosopher MacAskill’s “Effective Altruism” Was Neither Effective Nor Altruistic

(p. B1) In short order, the extraordinary collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX has vaporized billions of dollars of customer deposits, prompted investigations by law enforcement and destroyed the fortune and reputation of the company’s founder and chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried.

It has also dealt a significant blow to the corner of philanthropy known as effective altruism, a philosophy that advocates applying data and evidence to doing the most good for the many and that is deeply tied to Mr. Bankman-Fried, one of its leading proponents and donors. Now nonprofits are scrambling to replace millions in grant commitments from Mr. Bankman-Fried’s charitable vehicles, and members of the effective altruism community are asking themselves whether they might have helped burnish his reputation.

“Sam and FTX had a lot of good will — and some of that good will was the result of association with ideas I have spent my career promoting,” the philosopher William MacAskill, a founder of the effective altruism movement who has known Mr. Bankman-Fried since the FTX founder was an undergraduate at M.I.T., wrote on Twitter on Friday (Nov. 11, 2022). “If that good will laundered fraud, I am ashamed.”

Mr. MacAskill was one of five people from the charitable vehicle known as the FTX Future Fund who jointly announced their resignation on Thursday (Nov. 10, 2022).

. . .

(p. B5) Benjamin Soskis, senior research associate in the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, said that the issues raised by Mr. Bankman-Fried’s reversal of fortune acted as a “distorted fun-house mirror of a lot of the problems with contemporary philanthropy,” in which very young donors control increasingly enormous fortunes.

. . .

Mr. Bankman-Fried’s fall from grace may have cost effective-altruist causes billions of dollars in future donations.  . . .

His connection to the movement in fact predates the vast fortune he won and lost in the cryptocurrency field. Over lunch a decade ago while he was still in college, Mr. Bankman-Fried told Mr. MacAskill, the philosopher, that he wanted to work on animal-welfare issues. Mr. MacAskill suggested the young man could do more good earning large sums of money and donating the bulk of it to good causes instead.

. . .

A significant share of the grants went to groups focused on building the effective altruist movement rather than organizations working directly on its causes. Many of those groups had ties to Mr. Bankman-Fried’s own team of advisers. The largest single grant listed on the Future Fund website was $15 million to a group called Longview, which according to its website counts the philosopher Mr. MacAskill and the chief executive of the FTX Foundation, Nick Beckstead, among its own advisers.

The second-largest grant, in the amount of $13.9 million, went to the Center for Effective Altruism. Mr. MacAskill was a founder of the center. Both Mr. Beckstead and Mr. MacAskill are on the group’s board of trustees, with Mr. MacAskill serving as the chair of the United Kingdom board and Mr. Beckstead as the chair of the U.S. subsidiary.

For the full story, see:

Nicholas Kulish. “Collapse of FTX Strikes a Philanthropy Movement.” The New York Times (Monday, November 14, 2022): B1 & B5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed dates, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Nov. 14, 2022, and has the title “FTX’s Collapse Casts a Pall on a Philanthropy Movement.”)