Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik (AP Photos, File)

Dear Commons Community,

Mayim Bialik won’t be giving answers as a host of “Jeopardy!” anymore.  “The Big Bang Theory” actor posted news of her departure on Instagram on Friday.

“Sony has informed me that I will no longer be hosting the syndicated version of Jeopardy!” Bialik wrote. “I am incredibly honored to have been nominated for a primetime Emmy for hosting this year and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of the Jeopardy! family.”

Former show champion Ken Jennings has been hosting season 40 of the syndicated show by himself.

Sony Pictures Television in a statement noted Bialik was the one who announced her departure.

“We made the decision to have one host for the syndicated show next season to maintain continuity for our viewers, and Ken Jennings will be the sole host for syndicated Jeopardy!” Sony said. “We are truly grateful for all of Mayim’s contributions to Jeopardy!, and we hope to continue to work with her on primetime specials.”

Bialik and Jennings had split hosting duties on “Jeopardy!,” but Bialik was the solo host for season 1 of “Celebrity Jeopardy!” In May, Bialik declared her support for the Hollywood writers’ strike and declined to appear on the game show.

As a “Jeopardy” viewer, I am not surprised.  Not that Bialik wasn’t good as an emcee but Jennings has been a  part of the “Jeopardy” family for quite a while.

Good luck to Mayim!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A detailed New York Times report published yesterday offers fresh insight into how a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives succeeded in overturning nationwide abortion rights nearly 50 years after Roe v. Wade — including how a coalition to preserve the landmark case broke down.

The Supreme Court’s decision in June 2022 came a month after a draft of the majority opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, had been leaked to Politico.

Internally, the leak had huge implications at the high court, the Times said. Before the draft was made public, Chief Justice John Roberts and now-retired Justice Stephen Breyer had reportedly been trying to pull together a compromise solution in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Breyer had even reportedly considered siding with the court’s conservatives in order to save Roe by taking a hammer to its abortion protections.

The Roe decision, made in 1973, preserved a person’s right to an abortion before the fetus could survive on its own. The Dobbs compromise might have set the new line at 15 weeks’ gestation, following the Mississippi law that the case was brought to challenge.

Breyer and Roberts had also reportedly hoped to convince newer Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to join them on middle ground.

But the leak stopped all that, the Times reported.

The leaker’s identity is still unknown. The Times argued, however, that the effect was clearly favorable for the court’s ultraconservatives, Justices Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

The Politico report indicated how most of the justices intended to vote, helping to lock them in — even though Barrett and Roberts had reportedly opposed taking up the case in the first place. (Barrett initially voted for taking up the case but changed her mind, the Times said.)

The outlet described a single-minded effort by Alito and Thomas to ram the Dobbs case through the court after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in order to accomplish the conservative legal movement’s decades long goal of killing Roe. The Times even presented evidence that Alito had secretly circulated his draft opinion among his conservative allies to strengthen support: Gorsuch reportedly signed off on Alito’s 98-page draft in just 10 minutes once it was shared by a staffer on Feb. 10, 2022.

The picture that emerges in the Times piece is that of a fractured court with tenuous power dynamics that Roberts may be struggling to control.

An investigation by the marshal of the Supreme Court failed to uncover the leaker’s identity earlier this year — although Alito said he has a “pretty good idea” of who it was.

There will probably be more to come at some point for this story.

Tony

Rudy Giuliani.  Phototgraph – The Wall Street Journal.

Dear Commons Community,

A jury said former Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani must pay $148 million for falsely accusing two Georgia election workers of rigging the 2020 presidential contest.

The stunning verdict in favor of Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, is the latest humiliation for the former New York City mayor in his remarkable fall from grace. It also marks another instance of those smeared by postelection conspiracy theories clearing their names through civil lawsuits.

Giuliani was ordered to pay each woman more than $36 million in compensatory damages and to pay another $75 million in punitive damages. Those figures far exceed amounts his lawyer told jurors earlier in the week “would be the end of Mr. Giuliani,” who earlier said in court filings that he was in financial trouble.

Emerging from court on Friday, Giuliani said he would appeal.  As reported by
The Wall Street Journal.

“The absurdity of the number really underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding,” Giuliani said.

“I am quite confident that when this case gets before a fair tribunal, it will be reversed so quickly it’ll make your head spin,” he added. “The absurd number that just came in will help that, actually.”

Appeals courts frequently reduce punitive-damage awards. The plaintiffs’ lawyers asked for $24 million for each woman in compensatory damages for defamation alone. They requested that the jury come back with appropriate amounts to compensate their clients for intentional infliction of emotional distress and for punitive damages.

Outside court, Freeman said Giuliani wasn’t alone in spreading lies about her and Moss, “and others must be held accountable, too.”

“But that is tomorrow’s work,” Freeman said. “For now, I want people to understand this: Money will never solve all my problems. I can never move back into the house that I called home. I will always have to be careful about where I go, and who I choose to share my name with. I miss my home, I miss my neighbors, and I miss my name.”

Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss.  Photograph – The Wall Street Journal.

A judge had already found Giuliani liable for defamation, so the weeklong trial dealt solely with the question of how much he should pay to the two women, who went into hiding amid a barrage of death threats from supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Punitive damages are a rare penalty, meant to punish outrageous conduct and deter others. Moss and Freeman both delivered emotional testimony about how the false claims upended their lives, cost them employment opportunities, and made them live in fear.

Giuliani’s lawyer Joseph Sibley cited the testimony of the plaintiffs, especially Freeman, as a factor in his courtroom approach.

“We made the decision not to ask her any questions—enough was out—and ultimately made the decision not to have my client even testify, because we feel like these women have been through enough,” Sibley said on Thursday as the trial wrapped up.

Sibley struck a conciliatory tone during his opening statement on Monday, saying Freeman and Moss were good people but were seeking an unjust and unrealistic amount from Giuliani.

Later that day, outside the courtroom, Giuliani undermined that messaging by telling reporters that he would testify and prove that everything he said about Moss and Freeman fabricating ballots was true.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said the next day that Giuliani’s comments during the press conference “could support another defamation claim.”

“My client, as you saw last night, likes to talk a lot, unfortunately,” Sibley said. In the end, Sibley didn’t put any witnesses on the stand as part of his defense.

On election night, Moss and Freeman were among the county workers who tabulated ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. Giuliani spread a false theory that video footage showed them removing ballots from suitcases underneath tables.

Giuliani repeatedly disparaged the two women—both of whom are Black—once even falsely claiming that video footage of Freeman handing her daughter a ginger mint showed them passing around USB drives “like vials of heroin or cocaine.”

Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, has overseen the civil defamation case for two years. In August, she found Giuliani liable for defamation and the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

She said that Giuliani repeatedly flouted his obligations to turn over evidence in the case and that this “willful discovery misconduct” was egregious enough to warrant an automatic judgment against him.

Giuliani has criticized Howell for imposing such harsh penalties on him, saying the legal system is being weaponized against him. He is likely to appeal the damages verdict and Howell’s earlier orders.

It might be difficult for the plaintiffs to collect the damages award from him.

Sibley said in an August court filing that his client was having “financial difficulties” and needed more time to pay a $90,000 sanction imposed on him by Howell.

Robert Costello, a lawyer who represented Giuliani in several other matters, sued him in September over an unpaid $1.4 million legal bill. The Internal Revenue Service put a lien on Giuliani’s property in Florida to cover an outstanding $550,000 tax debt, according to court records.

Giuliani has also been sued for defamation by Smartmatic USA Corp. and Dominion Voting Systems, two voting software companies he falsely accused of flipping votes from Trump to President Biden. Those cases are pending.

Dominion secured a $787.5 million settlement with Fox News in April. Fox News parent Fox Corp.shares common ownership with News Corp, parent of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co.

Giuliani also faces criminal charges in Georgia related to his postelection conduct. He was charged along with Trump and others in a sweeping racketeering case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Giuliani and Trump have pleaded not guilty in that case

Giuliani should have spoken with attorney Michael Cohen before he tied his destiny to Trump.

Justice served!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Turing’s Cathedral by the technology historian George Dyson. It is an in-depth look at the beginnings of digital technology here in the United States.  All of the luminaries in the early days of computing including John von Neumann, Alan Turing, Nils Barricelli, Julian Bigelow, Stan Ulam and others are included.  von Neumann and those affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) located in Princeton, New Jersey are the main focus.

I found the book a fascinating read but it isn’t for everyone.  Dyson at times can get deep in the weeds of computer science, mathematics, digital engineering, and physics. However, in between the science, he covers the biographies of the main characters in good depth.  Dyson himself is the son of the mathematician, Freeman Dyson, who was on the faculty of IAS.  Dyson also covers well the tension and antagonism at IAS between the theoretical mathematicians and those who wanted to apply mathematics to the building of the first computers.  He also devotes significant time to the development of nuclear weapons and the cold war in which von Neumann and others were deeply involved.  There were those at IAS including Albert Einstein who were completely opposed to these efforts.

Below is a review that appeared in The Guardian when Turing’s Cathedral was first published in 2012.

Tony

——————————————————————————————————————————————-

The Guardian

Turing’s Cathedral by George Dyson – review

This study of cold war academic John von Neumann and his early computer is engrossing and well-researched

Evgeny Morozov

Sat 24 Mar 2012

The foundation myth of the internet invariably involves an iconoclastic and romantic technology entrepreneur, who, free from government restraint, enlists free-floating venture capitalists in building the Next Great Thing. It’s a myth that borders on delusion, for some of the key technologies that led to the internet were underwritten by government subsidies and arose in the context of larger-than-life geopolitical battles.

Thus, cryptography, which powers much of today’s electronic commerce, advanced in the background of the second world war, while packet switching – a cold war-era technology that made the internet possible – was to guarantee resilient communications in the event of a nuclear attack. More recently, 9/11 and the wars it unleashed have magically transported biometric technologies such as automated facial recognition from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq into our offices and living rooms.

In Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson shows that the history of the modern computer belies the foundation myth as well. Dyson, who has previously written on the history of the Aleut kayak and a failed American attempt to send a mission to Mars, traces one particular effort to build and operate a computer – the unassumingly named Electronic Computer Project (EPC) based at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton.

EPC was underwritten by various parts of the American government shortly after the second world war. The idea was to use computers to forecast the consequences of a thermonuclear explosion; eventually, the IAS computer was also put to more peaceful uses in biology and meteorology.

The project’s godfather – the Hungarian émigré John von Neumann – was a polymath whose interest in computing had roots in both politics and academia. A superb mathematician who also made landmark contributions to economics and game theory, Von Neumann believed that computers might push mathematicians – who constituted the most powerful group at the institute – to appreciate the theoretical challenges posed by applied work. At the same time, his aversion to totalitarianism made him eager to help bolster the military might of his adopted homeland.

It took a genius of Von Neumann’s scale to overcome the immense opposition to the project at the institute, which was a fascinating microcosm of intellectual life at the time (Dyson’s book is worth reading for its treatment of the institute’s early history alone). Building and operating a computer on the institute’s premises meant opening its doors to engineers – a development that professional mathematicians, averse as they were to any work that didn’t require chalk, blackboard, paper and pencils, didn’t like at all. The institute’s humanists hated mathematicians and engineers alike and, now that the war was over, didn’t shy away from expressing their discontent.

It didn’t help that Einstein, who was then at the institute, opposed the idea of “secret war work” and feared that “the emphasis on such projects will further ideas of ‘preventive’ wars.” However, “preventive wars” were exactly what the hawkish Von Neumann wanted: in the immediate aftermath of the second world war, he briefly advocated the idea of a quick preventive war with the USSR to be followed by a Pax Americana. He also had no qualms about working with the government, eventually leaving the institute in 1953 to join the United States Atomic Commission – a government agency that would soon humiliate his friend and colleague Robert Oppenheimer by stripping him of his security clearance.

Strictly speaking, Von Neumann’s was not the first computer. However, it played an extremely important role in getting the nascent computer industry off the ground. First of all, its origins in academia made it easier to get working scientists to pay close attention to what computing had to offer. Second, Von Neumann wanted to ensure that any work that the institute did on the EPC was put in the public domain and widely disseminated rather than patented by engineers (this noble effort was marred by Von Neumann’s consulting gig with IBM – not well-publicised at the time – which required him to grant all of his own subsequent inventions to the company). Third – and most important – Von Neumann chose not to optimise his computer to do only pressing or lucrative tasks; he knew that its most useful applications had not been anticipated yet. By arguing that “the projected device… is so radically new that many of its uses will become clear only after it has been put into operation”, Von Neumann helped to usher in the era of general-purpose computing which, alas, may now be finally coming to a close, as consumers embrace single-purpose apps and tightly controlled computing devices.

While Dyson doesn’t shy away from discussing obscure technical and theoretical aspects of Von Neumann’s computer, he also provides ample social and cultural context. Gottfried Leibniz, Francis Bacon, and Bishop Berkeley appear next to more contemporary luminaries such as Norbert Wiener (the originator of cybernetics), Vladimir Zworykin (a pioneer of television) as well as numerous members of the Huxley family (Aldous, Julian and Thomas). Dyson, who grew up at the institute, where his father Freeman Dyson was a fellow, also brings a charming personal touch to the narrative.

Alas, the book is not perfect. Dyson, who spent a decade writing and researching it, bombards the reader with a mind-boggling stream of distracting information that adds little to his tale. We get to learn of the discrepancy between the British and Canadian war records of Jens Fredrick Larson, the architect of the institute’s main hall; the price of oysters served at lunch meetings of its building committee; the price of nappies in Los Alamos hospitals in the 1950s.

Dyson’s efforts to connect Von Neumann’s cold war computing to today’s Silicon Valley result in a slew of untenable generalisations. Is it really true that “Facebook defines who we are, Amazon defines what we want, and Google defines what we think”? Occasionally, Dyson makes mystical claims that no serious historian would endorse. What to make of his statement that “only the collective intelligence of computers could save us from the destructive powers of the weapons they had allowed us to invent”? This is a very odd way to tell the story of numerous disarmament campaigns, of fervent antiwar activism of the 1960s, of the emergence of groups like Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility that sought to draw clear ethical boundaries between academia and the defence industry. Surely, all of that mattered more than the “collective intelligence of computers”?

Despite these shortcomings, Turing’s Cathedral is an engrossing and well-researched book that recounts an important chapter in the convoluted history of 20th-century computing. An equally rich history of Google and Amazon is long overdue.

Evgeny Morozov is the author of The Net Delusion (Penguin)

Steer clear! A bull was spotted running along the tracks at New Jersey’s Newark Penn Station train station yesterday morning, delaying trains for commuters heading into New York City.  See video below.

New Jersey Transit said trains were experiencing up to 45-minute delays between Newark Penn Station and New York City due to the police activity.

The bull was first reported on the loose around 10:30 a.m.

By noon, the bull was taken into custody, New York ABC station WABC reported.

Commuter Jason Monticelli told WABC his train slowed down and the conductor pointed out the bull.

“It was just kinda trotting down the track,” he said. “We were just trying to figure out where it came from.”

Even New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy weighed in on the rare sighting, writing on social media, “I’ve always been bullish on Jersey’s future, but this is just a step too far folks.”

Not something you see everyday!

Tony

Paul Ryan

Dear Commons Community,.

Paul Ryan, the Republican former House speaker-turned-Fox Corp. board member, has summed up Donald Trump as a “populist, authoritarian narcissist.”

The former president is “not a conservative,” Ryan declared during a recent virtual interview hosted by CEO advisory firm Teneo that the Republican Accountability group unearthed and shared on X (née Twitter) on Wednesday.

Trump’s tendencies “are basically where narcissism takes him, which is whatever makes him popular, makes him feel good at any given moment,” Ryan said. “He doesn’t think in classical liberal-conservative terms. He thinks in an authoritarian way. And he’s been able to get a big chunk of the Republican base to follow him because he’s the culture warrior.”

Ryan talked about how former Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) had “paid for” their criticism of Trump with their congressional careers.

And he claimed more Republicans in Congress now wished they’d taken a stand against Trump when he was impeached for a second time for inciting the deadly U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

The House voted 232-197 in favor of impeaching Trump. The Senate voted 57 to 43 to convict Trump, 10 short of the 67 votes required for it to happen.

They thought “Trump was dead,” said Ryan. “They thought after Jan. 6, he wasn’t going to have a comeback, he was dead, so they figured, ‘I’m not going to take this heat, I’m not going to vote against this impeachment, because he’s gone anyway.’ But what’s happened is he’s been resurrected.”

There are “a lot of people who already regret not getting him out of the way when they could have,” he added. “So I think history will be kind to those people who saw what was happening and called it out, even though it was at the expense of their personal well-being.”

Ryan condemned Trump before the 2016 election before working alongside him as House speaker to pass major tax cuts. He left Congress in 2019 to become a director of Fox Corp., a position that has drawn him criticism for his apparent reluctance to call out the divisive rhetoric peddled on Fox News.

Last year, Ryan said “anybody not named Trump” would be a better option for the Republican Party in next year’s presidential election.

“We know we’re so much more likely to lose with Trump because of the fact that he is not popular with suburban voters that we’re gonna want to win,” Ryan told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney. “We lost the House, the Senate, the White House in the space of two years. I don’t want to repeat that. I want to win.”

“The only reason he stays where he is is because everybody’s afraid of him,” Ryan added in another interview. “They’re afraid of him going after them, hurting their own ambition. But as soon as you sort of get the herd mentality going, it’s unstoppable.”

In September, Ryan said February 2024 may mark a turning point for the party if Trump’s GOP presidential rivals consolidate to deprive him of the nomination.

Ryan has Trump right.  He just needs to persuade more of his Republican colleagues to come out from under their beds and speak their piece.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A powerful rally across Wall Street sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a record high yesterday after the Federal Reserve indicated that the cuts to interest rates investors crave so much may be coming next year.

The Dow jumped 512 points, or 1.4%, to top 37,000 and surpass its prior peak of 36,799.65 set at the start of last year.

Other, more widely followed indexes of U.S. stocks also leaped. The S&P 500 rose 1.4% and is within 2% of its own record. The Nasdaq composite also gained 1.4%.  As reported by The Associated Press..

Wall Street loves lower interest rates because they can relax the pressure on the economy and goose prices for all kinds of investments. Markets have been rallying since October amid rising hopes that cuts may be on the way.

Rate cuts particularly help investments seen as expensive, lower quality or that force their investors to wait the longest for big growth. Some of Wednesday’s bigger winners were bitcoin, which rose nearly 4%, and the Russell 2000 index of small U.S. stocks, which jumped 3.5%.

Apple was the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500, rising 1.7% to its own record close. It and other Big Tech stocks have been among the biggest reasons for the S&P 500’s 22.6% rally this year.

All the excitement came as the Federal Reserve held its main interest rate steady at a range of 5.25% to 5.50%, as was widely expected. It’s hiked that rate up from virtually zero early last year in hopes of slowing the economy and hurting investment prices by exactly the right amount: enough to snuff out high inflation but not so much that it causes a painful recession.

With inflation down sharply from its peak two summers ago and the economy still solid despite high interest rates, hopes have been rising that the Fed can pull off that perfect landing. And in a press conference Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said its main interest rate is likely already at or near its peak.

While acknowledging that inflation is still too high and the battle against it is not over, Powell said Fed officials don’t want to wait too long before cutting the federal funds rate, which is at its highest level since 2001.

“We’re aware of the risk that we would hang on too long” before cutting rates, he said. “We know that’s a risk, and we’re very focused on not making that mistake.”

That’s why Wall Street’s focus was squarely on the projections that the Fed released showing where policy makers see the federal funds rate ending 2024. They showed the median official expects it to be at roughly 4.6%.

While that implies a less steep cut than many traders on Wall Street are expecting, it’s more than the median Fed official was predicting three months ago.

Following the release of the projections, traders on Wall Street upped their bets for rate cuts in 2024. A majority of bets now expect the federal funds rate to end next year at a range of 3.75% to 4% or lower, according to data from CME Group.

Treasury yields tumbled in the bond market on such bets. The yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped to 4.01% from 4.21% late Tuesday. It was above 5% in October, at its highest level since 2007. The two-year yield, which moves more on expectations for the Fed, sank to 4.43% from 4.73%.

They both had already been down earlier in the morning, after a report showed prices at the wholesale level were just 0.9% higher in November than a year earlier. That was softer than economists expected.

More good economic news. 

Bidenomics anyone!

Tony

The Pyramid International Laboratory/Observatory climate station on Mount Everest has recorded hourly meteorological data for nearly three decades. – Franco Salerno/The Institute of Science and Technology Austria

Dear Commons Community,

Glaciers in the Himalayas are melting rapidly, but a new report showed an astonishing phenomenon in the world’s tallest mountain range could be helping to slow the effects of the global climate crisis.

When warming temperatures hit certain high-altitude ice masses, it sets off a surprising reaction that blows robust cold winds down the slopes, according to the study published December 4 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The warming climate creates a greater temperature gap between the surrounding air above Himalayan glaciers and the cooler air directly in contact with the ice masses’ surface, explained Francesca Pellicciotti, professor of glaciology at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria and lead author of the study.  As reported by CNN.

“This leads to an increase in turbulent heat exchange at the glacier’s surface and stronger cooling of the surface air mass,” she said in a news release.

As the cool, dry surface air gets cooler and denser, it sinks. The air mass flows down the slopes into the valleys, causing a cooling effect in the glaciers’ lower areas and neighboring ecosystems.

With ice and snow from the mountain range feeding into 12 rivers that provide fresh water to nearly 2 billion people in 16 countries, it’s important to find out whether the Himalayan glaciers can keep up this self-preserving cooling effect as the region faces a likely rise in temperatures over the next few decades.

Glacier melt

A June report previously covered by CNN showed that glaciers in the Himalayas melted 65% faster in the 2010s compared with the previous decade, which suggests rising temperatures are already having an impact in the area.

“The main impact of rising temperature on glaciers is an increase of ice losses, due to melt increase,” said Fanny Brun, a research scientist at the Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement in Grenoble, France. She was not involved in the study.

“The primary mechanisms are the lengthening and intensification of the melt season. They cause glaciers to thin and retreat, leading to deglaciated landscapes that tend to further increase the air temperature due (to) larger energy absorption by the surface,” Brun said.

That energy absorption at the surface is determined by something called the albedo effect. Light or “white” surfaces such as clean snow and ice will reflect more sunlight (high albedo) compared with “dark” surfaces such as the land that is exposed as glaciers retreat, soil and oceans (low albedo). In general, Brun said this phenomenon is interpreted as a positive feedback loop, or a process that enhances a change, but it is overall poorly studied and difficult to quantify.

At the base of Mount Everest, however, measurements of overall temperature averages appeared curiously stable instead of increasing. A close analysis of the data revealed what was really happening.

“While the minimum temperatures have been steadily on the rise, the surface temperature maxima in summer were consistently dropping,” said Franco Salerno, coauthor of the report and researcher for the National Research Council of Italy, or CNR.

However, even the presence of these cooling winds is not enough to fully counteract increasing temperatures and glacier melt due to climate change. Thomas Shaw, who is part of the ISTA research group with Pellicciotti, said the reason these glaciers are nevertheless melting rapidly is complex.

“The cooling is local, but perhaps still not sufficient to overcome the larger impact of climatic warming and fully preserve the glaciers,” Shaw said.  

Pellicciotti explained that the general scarcity of data in high-elevation areas across the globe is what led to the study team’s focus of using the unique ground observation records at one station in the Himalayas“

The process we highlighted in the paper is potentially of global relevance and may occur on any glacier worldwide where conditions are met,” she said.

The new study provides a compelling motivation to collect more high-elevation, long-term data that are strongly needed to prove the new findings and their broader impacts, Pellicciotti said.

Treasure trove of data

Located at a glacierized elevation of 5,050 meters (16,568 feet), the Pyramid International Laboratory/Observatory climate station sits along the southern slopes of Mount Everest. The observatory has recorded detailed meteorological data for almost 30 years.

It’s those granular meteorological observations that Pellicciotti, Salerno and a team of researchers used to conclude that warming temperatures are triggering what are called katabatic winds.

The cold winds, created by air flowing downhill, usually occur in mountainous regions, including the Himalayas.

“Katabatic winds are a common feature of Himalayan glaciers and their valleys, and have likely always occurred,” Pellicciotti said. “What we observe however is a significant increase in intensity and duration of katabatic winds, and this is due to the fact that the surrounding air temperatures have increased in a warming world.”

Another thing the team observed was higher ground-level ozone concentrations in connection with lower temperatures. This evidence demonstrates that katabatic winds work as a pump that’s able to transport cold air from the higher elevation and the atmospheric layers down to the valley, Pellicciotti explained.

“According to the current state of knowledge, Himalayan glaciers are doing slightly better than average glaciers in terms of mass losses,” Brun said.

Glacier loss in Asia vs. Europe

Brun explained that in Central Himalaya, on average, the glaciers have thinned about 9 meters (29.5 feet) over the past two decades.

“This is much lower than glaciers in Europe, which have thinned of about 20 meters (65.6 feet) over the same time span, but this is larger than other regions in Asia (for example in the Karakoram region), or in the Arctic region,” Brun said.

Understanding how long these glaciers are capable of locally counteracting global warming’s impacts could be crucial in order to effectively address our changing world.

“We believe that the katabatic winds are the response of healthy glaciers to rising global temperatures and that this phenomenon could help preserve the permafrost and surrounding vegetation,” said study coauthor Nicolas Guyennon, a researcher at the National Research Council of Italy.

Further analysis is needed, however. The study team next aims to identify the glacial characteristics that favor the cooling effect. Pellicciotti said more long-term ground stations for testing this hypothesis elsewhere are virtually absent.

“Even if the glaciers can’t preserve themselves forever, they might still preserve the environment around them for some time,” she said. “Thus, we call for more multidisciplinary research approaches to converge efforts toward explaining the effects of global warming.”

Good news for once on climate change and global warming!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York State lawmakers unveiled legislation yssterday that would eliminate enormous property tax breaks for Columbia University and New York University, which have expanded to become among New York City’s top 10 largest private property owners.

The bills would require the private universities to start paying their full annual property taxes and for that money to be redistributed to the City University of New York, the largest urban public university system in the country.  As reported by The New York Times.

Columbia and N.Y.U. collectively saved $327 million on property taxes this year. The amount the schools save annually has soared in recent decades as the two have bought more properties, and the value of their properties has also increased.

Repealing the tax breaks would face substantial obstacles. The exemptions — which apply to universities, museums and other nonprofits — are nearly 200 years old and part of the state constitution. Overriding them would mean lawmakers would have to adopt the changes in consecutive legislative sessions. Then, voters would have to approve them on a statewide ballot.

“When the constitution of the state was written, there was no idea that such an exemption could apply to two of the top landlords in New York City,” said Assemblyman Zohran K. Mamdani, a Queens Democrat who is introducing the bill in the Assembly. “This bill seeks to address universities that have so blatantly gone beyond primarily operating as institutions of higher education and are instead acting as landlords and developers.”

The proposed constitutional amendment follows an investigation by The New York Times and the Hechinger Report in September that revealed that the city’s wealthiest universities were bigger and richer than ever before, amassing vast real estate portfolios that have drained the city budget.

The investigation also found that as Columbia has grown its physical footprint to become the city’s largest private landowner, it has enrolled fewer students from New York City.

A Columbia spokeswoman said university officials were reviewing the legislation. But she added that Columbia was a driver of the city’s economy through its research, faculty and students, and its capital projects, including $100 million in upgrades to local infrastructure since 2009.

A spokesman for N.Y.U. said that repealing the tax exemptions would be “extraordinarily disruptive” and that the university “would be forced to rethink much of the way we operate.”

“To choose two charitable, non-profit organizations out of the thousands in the state and compel them to be treated like for-profits certainly strikes us as misguided and unfair,” the spokesman, John Beckman, said in a statement. “We are deeply appreciative of those policies, which have been in place for two centuries, but we also take some modest pride in the many, many ways, small and large, that N.Y.U. contributes to the city’s well-being and its economy.”

All 50 states offer property tax exemptions for some private, nonprofit entities, which supporters argue are crucial so that these organizations can provide social, economic and cultural benefits to their communities. But in some cities, officials have pressured private universities to make voluntary payments, known as payments in lieu of taxes, or similar annual donations. Private universities often have billion-dollar endowments and charge annual tuition in the high five figures.

The legislation would only apply to Columbia and N.Y.U. and not other large private universities that own significant land, such as Cornell University in Ithaca. Lawmakers said that other universities would be excluded because their tax breaks are far lower than those of Columbia’s and N.Y.U.’s; the annual real estate tax exemption threshold would be $100 million.

“I don’t fault these institutions for pursuing their tax breaks and using the tax breaks to greatly expand their empires,” said State Senator John C. Liu, a Queens Democrat who is introducing the legislation in the Senate. “But this is a point where we have to look where all revenues are coming from and where all revenues are leaking. We have to stop those leaks.”

The city is facing a series of budget cuts to K-12 schools, libraries and police, among other programs, in part, Mayor Eric Adams has said, because of rising costs to care for an influx of homeless migrants.

CUNY, which is made up of 25 campuses throughout the city and which serves 225,000 students, has also been eyed for city cuts. Most of the university’s $4.3 billion budget is provided by the state, but earlier this year, the mayor proposed a 3 percent cut to the funding the city provides.

If the constitutional amendment were approved, the property tax payments would be directed every year to CUNY. That would make a significant difference in the quality of education students receive, said James C. Davis, the president of the Professional Staff Congress, which represents 30,000 CUNY faculty and staff.

“Would an additional infusion of operating funding affect retention and graduation rates?” Mr. Davis said. “Clearly the answer is yes. Even a relatively small amount of money would make a big difference.”

He noted that 80 percent of first-year CUNY students are graduates of New York City public schools, and a majority are students of color. Half come from families with incomes under $30,000 a year.

“If you’re talking about the city making a commitment to economic equity and social mobility,” Mr. Davis added, “there really is not a wiser investment than CUNY.”

As someone who has worked at CUNY since 1970, I am all in for this!

Tony

Jack Smith. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

In a bold legal move, Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, asked the Supreme Court yesterday to rule on Mr. Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution. The justices quickly agreed to fast-track the first phase of the case.

Mr. Smith’s request was unusual in two ways: He asked the justices to rule before an appeals court acted, and he urged them to move with exceptional speed.  As reported by The New York Times.

“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin,” Mr. Smith wrote.

Last evening, just hours after Mr. Smith filed papers in the Supreme Court, the justices granted his initial request: to put their consideration of whether to hear the case on a fast track. The court ordered Mr. Trump’s lawyers to file their response to the petition seeking review on an abbreviated schedule, by Dec. 20.

Mr. Smith’s filings represented a vigorous plea to keep the trial on track by cutting off an avenue by which Mr. Trump could cause delays.

A speedy decision by the justices is of the essence, Mr. Smith wrote, because Mr. Trump’s appeal of a trial judge’s ruling rejecting his claim of immunity suspends the criminal trial. The proceeding is scheduled to begin on March 4 in Federal District Court in Washington.

Any significant delays could plunge the trial into the heart of the 2024 campaign season or push it past the election, when Mr. Trump could order the charges be dropped if he wins the presidency.

“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” Mr. Smith wrote. “This is an extraordinary case.”

The trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, rejected Mr. Trump’s sweeping claims that he enjoyed “absolute immunity” from the election interference indictment because it was based on actions he took while in office.

A number of legal pundits last night commented on Smith’s appeal.  Most thought it strategically interesting and could settle promptly the issue of whether Trump is immune from prosecution.

Tony