Trumpism and being in worlds that fall between worlds

In response to Kyle McGee’s Heathen Earth, this paper says something about the place of toxic legacies in the rise and sustenance of ‘Trumpism’. It takes an interest in rusting factories, melting ice, etc., but as assemblages that are tricky because they concern a build up of externalities and relational factors for which there is a deficit of known co-ordinates. The term ‘sludge’ is sometimes affixed to these unexplained accumulations, which attend the (productive) neglect of externalities in overlapping schemas of relationality. The paper relates this ‘sludge’ to the emergence of a void, somewhere below the legal thresholds of accountability, into which words and actions can be thrown ‘at will’. This void is muddy, and makes politics unbearable to watch; and, yet, we are caught in a loop of reproducing the void through our own charting and supervision of action and, then, being shocked by the filth that comes out. The comment ends with a brief reflection on attending to the situation of forgotten existences and living with the ruins of past and present worlds

Greenhouse gas emissions, inventories and validation

The emission of greenhouse gases has become a very high priority research and environmental policy issue due to their effects on global climate. The knowledge of changes in global atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution is well documented, and the global budgets are reasonably well known. However, even at this scale there are important uncertainties in the budgets, for example, in the case of methane while the main sources and sinks have been identified, temporal changes in the global average concentrations since the early 1990s are not understood. In the absence of a quantitative explanation with appropriate experimental support, it is clear that current knowledge of the causes of changes in the global methane budget is inadequate to predict the effect of changes in specific emission sectors. In developing control strategies to reduce emissions it is necessary to validate national emissions and their spatial disaggregation. The methodology to underpin such a process is at an early stage of development and is not fully implemented in any country, even though target emission reductions have already been announced. Furthermore, the scale of the emission reductions is large (eg of 60% reductions by 2050 relative to 1990 baseline). There is therefore an urgent requirement for measurement based verification processes to support such challenging emission reductions. In this paper we provide the background in greenhouse gas emissions globally and in the UK followed by examples of approaches to validate emissions at the UK scale and within the regions

Scaling properties of velocity and temperature spectra above the surface friction layer in a convective atmospheric boundary layer

International audienceWe report velocity and temperature spectra measured at nine levels from 1.42 meters up to 25.7 m over a smooth playa in Western Utah. Data are from highly convective conditions when the magnitude of the Obukhov length (our proxy for the depth of the surface friction layer) was less than 2 m. Our results are somewhat similar to the results reported from the Minnesota experiment of Kaimal et al. (1976), but show significant differences in detail. Our velocity spectra show no evidence of buoyant production of kinetic energy at at the scale of the thermal structures. We interpret our velocity spectra to be the result of outer eddies interacting with the ground, not "local free convection". We observe that velocity spectra represent the spectral distribution of the kinetic energy of the turbulence, so we use energy scales based on total turbulence energy in the convective boundary layer (CBL) to collapse our spectra. For the horizontal velocity spectra this scale is (zi ?o)2/3, where zi is inversion height and ?o is the dissipation rate in the bulk CBL. This scale functionally replaces the Deardorff convective velocity scale. Vertical motions are blocked by the ground, so the outer eddies most effective in creating vertical motions come from the inertial subrange of the outer turbulence. We deduce that the appropriate scale for the peak region of the vertical velocity spectra is (z ?o)2/3 where z is height above ground. Deviations from perfect spectral collapse under these scalings at large and small wavenumbers are explained in terms of the energy transport and the eddy structures of the flow. We find that the peaks of the temperature spectra collapse when wavenumbers are scaled using (z1/2 zi1/2). That is, the lengths of the thermal structures depend on both the lengths of the transporting eddies, ~9z, and the progressive aggregation of the plumes with height into the larger-scale structures of the CBL. This aggregation depends, in top-down fashion, on zi. The whole system is therefore highly organized, with even the smallest structures conforming to the overall requirements of the whole flow

Do antidepressants cure or create abnormal brain states?

Moncrieff and Cohen argue that psychotropic drugs create abnormal states that may co-incidentally relieve symptoms of mental illness

Can seasonal and interannual variation in landscape CO2 fluxes be detected by atmospheric observations of CO2 concentrations made at a tall tower?

The coupled numerical weather model WRF-SPA (Weather Research and Forecasting model and Soil-Plant-Atmosphere model) has been used to investigate a 3 yr time series of observed atmospheric CO₂ concentrations from a tall tower in Scotland, UK. Ecosystem-specific tracers of net CO₂ uptake and net CO₂ release were used to investigate the contributions to the tower signal of key land covers within its footprint, and how contributions varied at seasonal and interannual timescales. In addition, WRF-SPA simulated atmospheric CO₂ concentrations were compared with two coarse global inversion models, CarbonTrackerEurope and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's CarbonTracker (CTE-CT). WRF-SPA realistically modelled both seasonal (except post harvest) and daily cycles seen in observed atmospheric CO₂ at the tall tower (<i>R</i>² = 0.67, rmse = 3.5 ppm, bias = 0.58 ppm). Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations from the tall tower were well simulated by CTE-CT, but the inverse model showed a poorer representation of diurnal variation and simulated a larger bias from observations (up to 1.9 ppm) at seasonal timescales, compared to the forward modelling of WRF-SPA. However, we have highlighted a consistent post-harvest increase in the seasonal bias between WRF-SPA and observations. Ecosystem-specific tracers of CO₂ exchange indicate that the increased bias is potentially due to the representation of agricultural processes within SPA and/or biases in land cover maps. The ecosystem-specific tracers also indicate that the majority of seasonal variation in CO₂ uptake for Scotland's dominant ecosystems (forests, cropland and managed grassland) is detectable in observations within the footprint of the tall tower; however, the amount of variation explained varies between years. The between years variation in detectability of Scotland's ecosystems is potentially due to seasonal and interannual variation in the simulated prevailing wind direction. This result highlights the importance of accurately representing atmospheric transport used within atmospheric inversion models used to estimate terrestrial source/sink distribution and magnitude

Claims for sickness and disability benefits owing to mental disorders in the UK: trends from 1995 to 2014

Abstract Background There is international concern about the levels of sickness and disability benefits, with mental disorders known to account for a large proportion of claims. Aims To examine trends in sickness and disability benefits awarded for mental disorders in the UK. Method The researchers analysed UK Government data from 1995 to 2014. Results Mental disorders have become the most common cause of receiving benefits, with the number of claimants rising by 103% from 1995 to 1.1 million in 2014. Claimants with other conditions fell by 35%. In 2014, 47% of claims were attributed to a mental disorder. The number of long-term claimants (claiming over 5 years) with mental disorders increased by 87% from 2000 to 2011. Two-thirds of mental disorder claimants were classified as having a depressive or anxiety disorder. Conclusions Common mental disorders may involve greater morbidity and social costs than usually recognised. Availability of suitable employment, as well as individual support, may be necessary to reduce benefit levels

'Freedom is more important than health': Thomas Szasz and the problem of paternalism

When Thomas Szasz summed up his philosophical principles at the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ annual meeting in Edinburgh in 2010, he declared that ‘freedom is more important than health’. Psychiatry is the arena in which the conflict between freedom and health comes most sharply into focus, according to Szasz. This paper proposes some parallels with medicine in low-income countries for pointers towards a resolution of this conflict