FORTUNE? -- They say a good man is hard to find, but that's not the case in China, where men overwhelmingly outnumber women. The ratio of men of marriageable/dating age (15-30 years old) to every woman is 1.15 -- an unusual imbalance that's created a rat race of bachelors vying for the affections of a limited pool of young women. Many may want to marry, but never will.
Oddly enough, China's lonely bachelors have actually helped the country experience extraordinary growth. And in the coming years, the trend will likely continue as the ratio gets progressively out of balance, said Columbia University professor Shang-Jin Wei recently at a symposium.
Because of the imbalance, many women can cherry-pick their life partners. There's of course an ugly side, too: The shortage of young women has also driven prostitution and human trafficking in some parts of the country. Nonetheless, since men started outnumbering women in 2002, it has become almost an unspoken prerequisite for bachelors to have enough for a down payment on a home before attracting a wife. Which, in turn, has bred fierce competition among the male population.
MORE:?If you could put?China's?problems in a bottle - Maotai
"Acquiring wealth becomes far more important," says Wei, director of?the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia. In fact, China's bachelors helped drive its growing housing market. Last year, Wei and other experts published a study that showed up to 48% or ($8 trillion worth) of the rise in property values across 35 major cities is linked to the country's gender imbalance.
Over the past 10 years, China's economy has grown about 10% annually. Wei estimates the gender imbalance, on average, contributed 2 percentage points?annually during that period. Investors often speculate how long China can grow at such a fast pace, and whether it's in for a hard landing.
History suggests the growth has to slow. Typically when income per capita reaches about $17,000, growth on average starts declining about 2% a year.?In China, income per capita in 2011 stood at $5,445. It will be some time before it reaches its peak, but growth has already started decelerating. In 2012, GDP?growth slowed to 7.8% from 9.3% in 2011 and 10.4% in 2010.
Yet the country's demographic kink could offset future slowdown, Wein says. Over the next 10 years, the male-to-female ratio will rise to 1.2 men per woman, in part, one of the many unintended consequences of China's three-decade-old policy limiting couples to one child in a culture where parents overwhelmingly favor males over females.
To be sure, China has many other demographic challenges. It also has a rapidly aging population, which has contributed to the shortage of working-age people. And it remains to be seen how these obstacles will help or hurt its economy.
IF YOU?RE A BOSS, BE LIKE JOHN TODAY: A foggy little bird says that at the start of the State Department?s daily senior staff meeting in the Secretary?s seventh-floor suite on Tuesday, Secretary of State Kerry had a diplomatic warning for his team. ?Thursday is Valentine?s Day,? he said, ?and I want you all out of here.? No late meetings! Yesterday, when he again met with the staff and raised the possibility of an evening meeting today, the secretary was reminded it was Valentine?s Day. ?Can?t break my own rule,? he said, before scotching the idea.
PANETTA?S FAREWELL ? A senior Defense official: ?On what may be his final day in Washington after nearly 50 years of service, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will spend time in and out of the Pentagon thanking those who have worked to protect the nation these past four years. At 1000, Panetta will be joined by General Dempsey in presenting former Secretary Clinton with the Department's highest awards for public service at a ceremony attended by DoD and State Department workers. This will likely be Panetta's final open-press speech? and Clinton's first since she left office. After lunchtime, Panetta will make one final trip up the river to CIA to thank his former deputy and acting Director Michael Morell in an all-hands call for agency staff.? He'll then quietly go to Section 60 at Arlington one last time to thank those we've lost on the battlefield. Panetta will return to the Pentagon to see immediate staff and then is expected to go wheels up for Monterey late this afternoon. He promised his wife, Sylvia, he would be home in time for Valentine's Day dinner.? Panetta will remain Secretary of Defense -- and will execute those responsibilities -- until Chuck Hagel takes the oath of office.?
FIRST LOOK ? ROBERT DRAPER has cover of N.Y. Times Magazine, which shows a black, rotary-dial phone with the headline, ?G.O.P. SMARTPHONE: Can young, tech-savvy Republicans overthrow their party?s disconnected old guard? ? THE LATE ADOPTERS: Can young Republican dissidents rise up and drag their party into the 21st century??: ?Romney?s senior strategist, Stuart Stevens, may well be remembered by historians, as one House Republican senior staff member put it to me, ?as the last guy to run a presidential campaign who never tweeted.? (?It was raised many times with him,? a senior Romney official told me, ?and he was very categorical about not wanting to and not thinking it was worth it.?) With palpable envy, they describe the forward-leaning impulses of the Obama campaign: Axelrod?s tweeting endlessly; the deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter?s becoming a YouTube dynamo with her sassy Web rebuttals to the Romney campaign; Jim Messina?s traveling westward to receive wisdom from Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs and Steven Spielberg. ? The person they are seeking is the Republican incarnation of David Plouffe ? the seemingly unremarkable Hill staffer and itinerant consultant who, like the Howard Dean strategist Joe Trippi before him, recognized that the only way his relatively unknown and underfinanced candidate could prevail over the front-runner would be to muster a guerrilla operation. ?
?I asked Plouffe, wasn?t the G.O.P. just one postmodern presidential candidate ? say, a Senator Marco Rubio ? away from getting back into the game?? Pouncing, he replied: ?Let me tell you something. The Hispanic voters in Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico don?t give a damn about Marco Rubio, the Tea Party Cuban-American from Florida. You know what? We won the Cuban vote! And it?s because younger Cubans are behaving differently than their parents. It?s probably my favorite stat of the whole campaign. So this notion that Marco Rubio is going to heal their problems ? it?s not even sophomoric; it?s juvenile! And by the way: the bigger problem they?ve got with Latinos isn?t immigration. It?s their economic policies and health care. The group that supported the president?s health care bill the most? Latinos.? ?
?The Republicans did in fact recently have a David Plouffe of their own. ? Referring to the campaign that re-elected George W. Bush, Plouffe told me: ?You know how in fantasy baseball you imagine putting up your team against the 1927 Yankees? We would?ve liked to have faced off against the 2004 Republicans. Beating the Clintons? ? during the 2008 primaries ? ?that was, in terms of scale of difficulty, significantly above beating Romney. But going up against the Bushies ? that would?ve been something we all would?ve relished. ? [Campaign manager Ken] Mehlman got technology and organization? ? He added that he and Mehlman were friends, and that during the 2012 cycle, Mehlman ? who had been informally advising the Romney campaign ? was also ?very free with advice about structure, how they dealt with an incumbent president, how they dealt with debate prep.? (Similarly, the former Bush senior strategist Matthew Dowd told me that Axelrod reached out to him for advice and they sat down together. ?Which never happened with me and Romney-world.?)?
--Inside art shows a manual typewriter as ?G.O.P. LAPTOP,? a megaphone as ?G.O.P. TWITTER,? a hardback book as ?G.O.P. TABLET? and a filing cabinet as ?G.O.P. HARD DRIVE.? http://nyti.ms/YfZJGh
YOU?RE INVITED ? SIMPSON-BOWLES, LIVE! Former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson, co-founders of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, will make a newsy announcement at Playbook Breakfast TUESDAY at 8 a.m. at the Newseum. Outside cameras welcome. Please RSVP here. http://bit.ly/PlaybookBfastSimpsonBowles
HIGH DRAMA ? ?Reid sets the stage for Chuck Hagel showdown,? by Manu Raju and Tim Mak: ?Senate Republicans see the writing on the wall: Chuck Hagel will get his job at the Pentagon, and John Brennan will soon be headed to Langley. But that doesn?t mean they won?t drag out the proceedings ? In an attempt to get Hagel installed as secretary of defense before next week?s recess, [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] set up a Friday vote to cut off debate, setting up a crucial 60-vote test. If Reid can find five Republicans to join the 55 members of the Democratic Caucus, the Senate could approve Hagel quickly ? possibly Saturday or earlier. But if he can?t, the White House could be forced to recalibrate its strategy as the nomination drags out into late February. And that could give the GOP more time to mount opposition ? Sen. John McCain, who previously opposed a filibuster on a defense secretary nominee, is now among those Republicans warning they may block Hagel until the White House coughs up more information over last September?s Benghazi attacks. ?
?Democrats are warning Republicans that the precedent they set by forcing a cloture vote on the national security nominees ? would come back to haunt them ? ?This is the first time in the history of our country that a presidential nominee for secretary of defense has been filibustered,? Reid said on the floor. ?What a shame, but that?s the way it is.?? ? McCain ? wrote a letter to Obama this week pressing him on the September 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, asking him if he personally spoke with Libyan government officials to ask for assistance for American personnel there. ? Brennan?s nomination hit a fresh snag on Wednesday when [Sen. Rand] Paul said that he would object to efforts to schedule a vote if the White House refuses to articulate its policy on whether government drones can kill Americans on U.S. soil.? http://politi.co/12jMr1g
**A message from the National Association of Manufacturers: Manufacturers released a Growth Agenda yesterday to get our economy moving again and create jobs! Let?s put pro-growth tax, energy, regulatory, trade and workforce policies in place. Manufacturing means jobs, and the 12 million men and women who make things in America are depending on it! Visit www.nam.org/stateofmanufacturing to read NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons? full remarks from the Detroit Economic Club.**
FIRST LOOK: ?The YG Network is launching a geo-targeted, six-figure digital campaign today in North Carolina, Georgia, Illinois, and other locations to megaphone a conservative policy vision contrasting the President?s liberal agenda tour. The new spots excerpt a recent AEI speech by original Young Gun Eric Cantor, who lays out a new direction focused on growth, opportunity and a commitment to conservative principles.? See the ad. http://bit.ly/UinUGn
EMAILS WE DIDN?T MOVE OUT OF OUR SPAM FOLDER: From MicheleBachmann.com, ?FWD: Did you watch the State of the Union??
SPOTTED LAST NIGHT, at Regal Cinemas: 500 people -- including Tracy's Kids founder Matt Gerson, Comcast EVP David Cohen, and Marcelle and Patrick Leahy ? at a movie-themed event to honor Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp and raise funds for the charity, which helps young cancer patients cope with the emotional stress and trauma of cancer and treatment.? Those watching one of seven award-winning films included Rep. Greg Walden, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Rep. Fred Upton, Sen. Ben Cardin, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Sen. Bob Casey, Sen. Jack Reed, Rep. Mel Watt, Rep. Ted Deutch, Rep. Jeff Miller, Rep. Sean Duffy, Rep. Adam Schiff, Rep. Jim McGovern, Rep. Peter Welch, Rep. Mike Pompeo, Rep. Mac Thornberry, Treasury Under Secretary David Cohen, White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel and outgoing FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz.
WASHINGTON, INC. -- ?The anti-establishment establishment,? by Alexander Burns with Kenneth P. Vogel: ?If you were to map the geographic center of the conservative uprising against the national GOP establishment, you might settle on ? Alexandria ? where a pair of ? public relations firms ? stoke and channel the fires of activist outrage. One peek at any Washington reporter?s email in-box would confirm the omnipresence of ? CRC Public Relations and Shirley & Banister Public Affairs ? a barrage of indignant subject lines ? cementing the backbone of what the national press calls the ?anti-establishment? message of the day. ? Last week?s uproar over the Conservative Victory Project, the American Crossroads-and Karl Rove-backed initiative to pick favorites in 2014 Senate primaries, ? neatly illustrates how quickly any given dispute can turn into a full-blown political firestorm ? [T]he current leadership of CRC and S&B looks a bit like the Pat Buchanan alumni association: CRC founder Greg Mueller worked with Banister on Buchanan?s insurgent 1996 campaign. Craig Shirley, the S&B partner, worked for the Reagan-era Republican National Committee and for the National Conservative Political Action Committee in 1984.? http://politi.co/14U6jXk
AMERICAN CROSSROADS VIDEO, ?Mystery Logic Theater 2013,? lampoons Obama's SOTU speech, ?Mystery-Science-Theater?-style: "These cuts, known in Washington as the sequester, are a really bad idea." ? "Um, wasn't that your idea?" http://bit.ly/Yt3ozu
THE WAY TO WIN ? ?Elizabeth Warren?s silent Senate approach,? by Kate Nocera and Patrick Reis: Senator ?Warren has kept the lowest of profiles, speaking only to select Massachusetts media outlets while [largely] shutting out the national press ? For a left-leaning icon and national media darling, the role of silent senator is a sharp departure from her rousing campaign and outspoken consumer advocacy. It?s the same tactic used by other first-term senators who entered the chamber to great fanfare ? former New York Sen. Hillary Clinton [and] Sen. Al Franken ?? [O]utlets hoping to nab Warren?s thoughts in the Capitol hallways are either ignored or offered a litany of excuses for why she can?t talk, including Warren?s own recent explanation that she?s ?walking right now.? ? By picking her battles and flying under the radar, Warren is working to convert her campaign star-power into a reputation as a serious legislator among her Senate colleagues. ? Warren?s conspicuously quiet entrance to Congress, as well as her laser-sharp focus on the Bay State, is in part a bid to prove she?s not the carpet-bagging bomb-thrower her critics predicted.? http://politi.co/X75fgD
MASSACHUSETTS SPECIAL ? Boston Globe A1, ?MARKEY?S HOME ... .AND MARKEY?S HOME: Long-running residency issue has 2 sides,? by Noah Bierman and Frank Phillips in Malden, Mass.: ?The yellow two-story house, squeezed snugly into a blue-collar neighborhood, has been the place Edward J. Markey has called home since he was a toddler and the link to his congressional district since he ran for office 37 years ago. But his critics view the house as the base he left behind when he became a figure in Washington, married a Beltway player [Susan Blumenthal], and purchased a grander house, triple the size, on a leafy cul de sac in the exclusive Rolling Hills neighborhood of Chevy Chase, Md. ? [Markey] polled potential voters, in an unreleased internal survey, on whether [the residency issue] mattered to them. ? Markey?s Malden water bills suggest he is there infrequently, paying only the monthly minimum for service. ? [L]ongtime neighbors in Malden, and local politicians, say Markey ? is active in using his position to push local development and public works projects.
?Around Washington, he and his wife, Susan Blumenthal, a health care consultant and former high-ranking official in the Clinton administration, appeared frequently for a time in the society pages. But Markey also makes it into local newspapers in his congressional district, cutting ribbons and speaking at City Council meetings. The congressman says he made 34 round trips from Washington to Boston last year, but he declined a Globe request to provide his daily schedules for the last two years. His opponent in the Democratic primary, Representative Stephen F. Lynch, also declined.? http://bo.st/XBcucQ
BIRTHDAYS: Jill Barclay, former Romney campaign travel director ? Mayor Michael Bloomberg is 71 ? Carl Bernstein is 69 (hat tips: Patrick Gavin) ? former Sen. Judd Gregg is 66 ? Karen Anderson, Hamilton Project visionary and? sweetheart of the economics set (h/t Jenny Backus) ? photographer Rod Lamkey (h/t Christina Bellantoni) ? the U.S. Chamber?s favorite Aussie, Mark Elliot, Executive Vice President of the Chamber?s Global Intellectual Property Center (h/t Blair Latoff Holmes) ? Jen Pihlaja ? Brooke Lierman ? Kate Sullivan (hat tips: Teresa Vilmain) ? Hugh Downs is 92 ? Florence Henderson is 79 ? Teller is 65 (h/ts AP)
**A message from the National Association of Manufacturers: The state of manufacturing is dependent on being able to hire the right people with the right skills. Talent and skills are without borders, and policymakers must address comprehensive immigration reform. Visit www.nam.org/stateofmanufacturing for more information.**
Taylor Swift has ditched the Alice in Wonderland / lion tamer cosplay get-up and donned some standard attire for the ?22? music video shoot at Zuma Beach in Malibu, CA. The star is seen in the above gallery riding in a shopping cart and running along the beach in tight jeans, a sweater and a knit hat along with her (hired?) gal pals for the music video. Also, there are ice cream cones, which we?re willing to bet are used as microphones at some point in the vid.
?22? is the next single off Swift?s mega-successful Red, and it drops on April 1.
Part I: Mental Health Checks Are Not The Answer To Gun Violence
Part II: Guns And Crazy Men
The Capital Times notes that Ann Althouse weighed in on the issue of gun violence and mental health checks.? Her blog ?lights up? on this issue, according to the report.? In fact Ann does have a smart and whimsical style of writing, interspersed with humor, and so one must usually read her thoughts more than one time in order to make sure that you?re not misinterpreting her prose.
But I think I?ve got what she says this time around, and I have some difficulty with her views.
Bonavia implies that we ought to make policy based on the percentages. But then she says, make a pervasive law that applies to everyone, without mentioning the very small percentage of perpetrators of gun violence within the truly vast category of Americans who buy guns. And by the way, the category ?gun violence? lumps things together. Gun control has become a hot issue because of a few massacres. If you make a category out of the set of incidents that has inflamed present-day opinion, people suffering from mental illness seem to be 100% of the perpetrators! You only get your very small percentage if you throw in other types of incidents, such as gangsters wiping each other out. Wake me up when 90% of Americans want to do something about that. And explain to me how background checks have any curative power over that problem.
The appeal to statistics and reason falls flat when you shape it to suit the policy you already want.
?Only 4 to 5 percent of violent crimes are committed by people with mental illness,? Dilip Jeste, the president of the [American Psychiatric Association], says in a statement. ?About one quarter of all Americans have a mental disorder in any given year, and only a very small percentage of them will ever commit violent crimes.?See what I mean? Questions for Dr. Jeste: 1. What percentage of school shootings are committed by persons with mental illness? 2. If we cut the category ?violent crimes? down to massacre-type shootings where the motive isn?t robbery and the victim isn?t someone with whom the shooter has a personal dispute, what percentage of those crimes are committed by persons with mental illness? 3. If we break the category ?mental disorder? into subparts, so that depression and schizophrenia aren?t lumped together, is there any category within which you cannot say that only very small percentage will ever commit violent crimes? 4. In your effort to shield the mentally ill from unnecessary stigma, are you giving cover to a set of persons who could and should be identified as dangerous?
Ann might be affirming the consequent, where given some mental malady, since some shooter (or several shooters) commit[s] a mass killing, therefore killings will be committed only by those with the identified mental malady.? But this error in propositional logic is too fundamental and I don?t think Ann is arguing in this way.
More likely, Ann is arguing (or has argued) in a probabilistic manner herself, that the preponderance of mass shootings have been committed by those with some identified mental malady.? Therefore, prohibiting people with that specific malady from owning weapons will decrease the number of mass shootings.
If I have interpreted Ann correctly, take careful note of the unstated presuppositions in her argument.? First, she is assuming that mental health professionals can correctly identify that malady, and second, she is assuming that only persons with that specific malady (or perhaps one or two others) will commit mass shootings.
Neither appears to bear the weight of scrutiny.? The mental health professionals I cite in the earlier reports on mental health checks and gun ownership state categorically that they cannot identify illness in many circumstances.? They also state rather categorically that violence of all kinds ? mass shootings or not ? are not a function of specific mental illnesses.
I usually roll my eyes at the lack of scholarship and honesty when I read Huffington Post.? But today there was refreshing honesty from yet another mental health professional concerning what his own profession cannot accomplish.
As we debate the steps to reducing gun violence in the society a couple points need to be understood: 1. The link between violent crime and mental illness is weak, and 2. Mental health professionals are poor at predicting anyone?s propensity for any specific behavior, including homicide.
Although it is mass shootings, particularly the massacre of school children in Newtown, that capture our attention and have accelerated the current discussion, Americans for the most part kill each other with guns in ones and twos. Of the total number of gun deaths in this country, around 30,000 a year, the majority are not the result of mental illness, but of ordinary human emotions like anger, hate, greed, and despair. In fact, about half of all shootings are suicides.
[ ... ]
The only real predictor of future violence in anyone turns out to be a past history of violent behavior. Absent this, professionals are little better than the average citizen at identifying those likely to harm others. Many people report violent fantasies (remember your reaction to the last person to cut you off in traffic); few act on them.
[ ... ]
As we confront the reality of these systemic deficits, however, we ought not to do so under the illusion that we are responding to the problem of gun violence. These are separate and largely unrelated issues, both of which deserve our immediate attention and informed response.
It is true that mental health checks can be abused and thus rights denied for incorrect reasons, and it is true that mental health professionals often disagree, and it is true that given a reason to deny rights, a totalitarian state will usually find a way to use it for totalitarian purposes.? All of these things concern me and in fact militate against such checks being a necessary prerequisite for gun ownership, in my opinion (See earlier discussions of the checks we must go through in my own county to obtain a concealed handgun permit, which I do have, and also the ?fitness for duty? program and managerial observation we must go through having unescorted access to nuclear power plants ? both checks being pretty much worthless in my view, and yet subject to unconstitutional denial of rights).
But the objection raised by the mental health professionals goes beyond my own objections.? In every case, they are saying that there is no identity between those who commit violent crime and any specific mental malady, and beyond that, they are little better than the average person at identifying propensity to violence anyway.
Laws only imperfectly supply incentive for certain behavior and disincentive for the opposite.? But what laws cannot do is ensure that certain behavior does not obtain.? That is a burden too far for legislation and ethics.? These issues ensconce squarely in the domain of morality, and laws do not change that.? Evil cannot be legislated (or medicated) away, and the best amelioration of risk associated with gun violence is to be prepared for self defense (including elimination of gun free zones).
Similarly, mental health professionals have weighed in telling us that their profession cannot possibly hope to shoulder the burden we wish to place on it.? It?s more than simply it is subject to abuse, which it is, or that the doctor-patient relationship is invaded, which it is.? It is that the ?science? ? if it can be called that at all, is simply incapable of sustaining the burden of gun violence, or any other form of violence, for that matter.? They cannot prevent it, regardless how much we may wish them to.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The makers of a popular carbonated alcoholic drink guzzled on college campuses are going to be changing the look of its Four Loko cans to settle the government's charges of deceptive marketing.
The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that Chicago-based Phusion Projects will be required to put an "alcohol facts panel" on the back of flavored malt beverage cans containing more than two servings of alcohol. The panel, similar to "nutritional facts" labels found on foods, would disclose the alcohol by volume and the number of servings in the container.
Phusion also will have to redesign cans of drinks containing more than 2 1/2 servings of alcohol so they can be resealed and the drink wouldn't have to be consumed in one sitting.
The FTC had accused Phusion of implying in ads that its supersized 23.5-ounce can of Four Loko was equal to one or two regular 12-ounce beers. In fact, the agency says, the can ? which contains up to 12 percent alcohol ? is really more like four to five beers.
Company co-founder Jaisen Freeman said Phusion did not agree with the allegations, but considered the agreement a way to move forward.
"We share a common interest with the FTC in providing consumers with information and packaging options to help them make informed, responsible decisions," Freeman said.
The commission had initially proposed a deal with Phusion requiring new label disclosures on products with more than 2 1/2 servings of alcohol. But the agency was flooded with complaints about the dangers of the supersized drinks, especially with underage drinkers ? so it lowered the disclosure trigger to more than two servings of alcohol.
The FTC also was going to require a label on the front of the can with an alcohol comparison to a regular beer, but some public commenters worried that might lead to binge drinking ? by suggesting Four Loko was a quick, cheap way to get drunk.
Four Loko gained national attention in 2010 after the hospitalization of college students in New Jersey and Washington state. Some states banned the drink, worried about the caffeine in Four Loko and its potential to mask how much alcohol one could safely consume. Amid a crackdown by the Food and Drug Administration, the drink's makers removed the caffeine and started selling Four Loko without the energy kick but still with plenty of alcohol.
In a number of public comments, the commission was urged to ban the drink altogether. But the FTC says it has no jurisdiction to force the product off the market.
European satellite confirms UW numbers: Arctic Ocean is on thin icePublic release date: 13-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Hannah Hickey hickeyh@uw.edu 206-543-2580 University of Washington
The September 2012 record low in Arctic sea-ice extent was big news, but a missing piece of the puzzle was lurking below the ocean's surface. What volume of ice floats on Arctic waters? And how does that compare to previous summers? These are difficult but important questions, because how much ice actually remains suggests how vulnerable the ice pack will be to more warming.
New satellite observations confirm a University of Washington analysis that for the past three years has produced widely quoted estimates of Arctic sea-ice volume. Findings based on observations from a European Space Agency satellite, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, show that the Arctic has lost more than a third of summer sea-ice volume since a decade ago, when a U.S. satellite collected similar data.
Combining the UW model and the new satellite observations suggests the summer minimum in Arctic sea ice is one-fifth of what it was in 1980, when the model begins.
"Other people had argued that 75 to 80 percent ice volume loss was too aggressive," said co-author Axel Schweiger, a polar scientist in the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. "What this new paper shows is that our ice loss estimates may have been too conservative, and that the recent decline is possibly more rapid."
The system developed at the UW provides a 34-year monthly picture of what's happening to the total volume of Arctic sea ice. The Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System, or PIOMAS, combines weather records, sea-surface temperature and satellite pictures of ice coverage to compute ice volume. It then verifies the results with actual thickness measurements from individual moorings or submarines that cruise below the ice.
"Because the ice is so variable, you don't get a full picture of it from any of those observations," Schweiger said. "So this model is the only way to reconstruct a time series that spans multiple decades."
The UW system also checks its results against five years of precise ice thickness measurements collected by a specialized satellite launched by NASA in 2003. The Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, measured ice thickness across the Arctic to within 37 centimeters (15 inches) until spring of 2008.
The U.K.'s CryoSat-2 satellite resumed complete ice thickness measurements in 2010; this is the first scientific paper to share its findings about the recent years of record-low sea ice.
Between 2008 and now, the widely cited UW figures have generated some controversy because of the substantial ice loss they showed.
"The reanalysis relies on a model, so some people have, justifiably, questioned it," Schweiger said. "These data essentially confirm that in the last few years, for which we haven't really had data, the observations are very close to what we see in the model. So that increases our confidence for the overall time series from 1979 to the present."
Arctic sea ice is shrinking and thinning at the same time, Schweiger explained, so it's normal for the summer ice volume to drop faster than the area covered, which today is about half of what it was in 1980.
Schweiger cautioned that past trends may not necessarily continue at the same rate, and predicting when the Arctic might be largely ice-free in summer is a different question. But creating a reliable record of the past helps to understand changes in the Arctic and ultimately helps to better predict the future.
"One question we now need to ask, and can ask, is what are the processes that are driving these changes in the ice? To what degree is it ocean processes, to what degree is this in the atmosphere?" Schweiger said. "I don't think we have a good handle on that yet."
The UW system was created by co-author Jinlun Zhang, an oceanographer at the Applied Physics Laboratory. The UW portion of the research was funded by NASA and the Office of Naval Research.
###
Other co-authors are first author Seymour Laxon, Katharine Giles, Andy Ridout, Duncan Wingham and Rosemary Willatt at University College London; Robert Cullen and Malcolm Davidson at the European Space Agency; Ron Kwok at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Christian Haas at York University in Canada; Stefan Hendricks at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany; Richard Krishfield at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and Nathan Kurtz at Morgan State University in Baltimore.
For more information, contact Schweiger at 206-543-1312 or axel@apl.washington.edu.
At the U.K.'s Natural Environment Research Council, contact pressoffice@nerc.ac.uk or Tamera Jones, +44 01793 411561.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
European satellite confirms UW numbers: Arctic Ocean is on thin icePublic release date: 13-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Hannah Hickey hickeyh@uw.edu 206-543-2580 University of Washington
The September 2012 record low in Arctic sea-ice extent was big news, but a missing piece of the puzzle was lurking below the ocean's surface. What volume of ice floats on Arctic waters? And how does that compare to previous summers? These are difficult but important questions, because how much ice actually remains suggests how vulnerable the ice pack will be to more warming.
New satellite observations confirm a University of Washington analysis that for the past three years has produced widely quoted estimates of Arctic sea-ice volume. Findings based on observations from a European Space Agency satellite, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, show that the Arctic has lost more than a third of summer sea-ice volume since a decade ago, when a U.S. satellite collected similar data.
Combining the UW model and the new satellite observations suggests the summer minimum in Arctic sea ice is one-fifth of what it was in 1980, when the model begins.
"Other people had argued that 75 to 80 percent ice volume loss was too aggressive," said co-author Axel Schweiger, a polar scientist in the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. "What this new paper shows is that our ice loss estimates may have been too conservative, and that the recent decline is possibly more rapid."
The system developed at the UW provides a 34-year monthly picture of what's happening to the total volume of Arctic sea ice. The Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System, or PIOMAS, combines weather records, sea-surface temperature and satellite pictures of ice coverage to compute ice volume. It then verifies the results with actual thickness measurements from individual moorings or submarines that cruise below the ice.
"Because the ice is so variable, you don't get a full picture of it from any of those observations," Schweiger said. "So this model is the only way to reconstruct a time series that spans multiple decades."
The UW system also checks its results against five years of precise ice thickness measurements collected by a specialized satellite launched by NASA in 2003. The Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, measured ice thickness across the Arctic to within 37 centimeters (15 inches) until spring of 2008.
The U.K.'s CryoSat-2 satellite resumed complete ice thickness measurements in 2010; this is the first scientific paper to share its findings about the recent years of record-low sea ice.
Between 2008 and now, the widely cited UW figures have generated some controversy because of the substantial ice loss they showed.
"The reanalysis relies on a model, so some people have, justifiably, questioned it," Schweiger said. "These data essentially confirm that in the last few years, for which we haven't really had data, the observations are very close to what we see in the model. So that increases our confidence for the overall time series from 1979 to the present."
Arctic sea ice is shrinking and thinning at the same time, Schweiger explained, so it's normal for the summer ice volume to drop faster than the area covered, which today is about half of what it was in 1980.
Schweiger cautioned that past trends may not necessarily continue at the same rate, and predicting when the Arctic might be largely ice-free in summer is a different question. But creating a reliable record of the past helps to understand changes in the Arctic and ultimately helps to better predict the future.
"One question we now need to ask, and can ask, is what are the processes that are driving these changes in the ice? To what degree is it ocean processes, to what degree is this in the atmosphere?" Schweiger said. "I don't think we have a good handle on that yet."
The UW system was created by co-author Jinlun Zhang, an oceanographer at the Applied Physics Laboratory. The UW portion of the research was funded by NASA and the Office of Naval Research.
###
Other co-authors are first author Seymour Laxon, Katharine Giles, Andy Ridout, Duncan Wingham and Rosemary Willatt at University College London; Robert Cullen and Malcolm Davidson at the European Space Agency; Ron Kwok at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Christian Haas at York University in Canada; Stefan Hendricks at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany; Richard Krishfield at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and Nathan Kurtz at Morgan State University in Baltimore.
For more information, contact Schweiger at 206-543-1312 or axel@apl.washington.edu.
At the U.K.'s Natural Environment Research Council, contact pressoffice@nerc.ac.uk or Tamera Jones, +44 01793 411561.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Flickr users' unknowingly had their photos shared publicly for nearly three weeks because of a "software bug" that made their photographs marked "private" open to viewing.
It's not known how many of the photo site's 51 million registered users were affected. A Flickr spokesperson told NBC News Tuesday it is believed to be a "small percentage" of Flickr users. But as Flickr notes on its own site, "The Flickr world is abuzz with action, with thousands of photos uploaded every minute (about 4.5 million daily)."
Flickr, owned by Yahoo, sent an email last Saturday to the users whose photos were made public, saying it was "deeply sorry that this happened."
In the email, Flickr vice president Brett Wayn wrote that "while performing routine site maintenance, we identified a software bug that may have changed the view setting on some of your photos from non-public (i.e., private or viewable only by family and friends) to public. Affected photos were visible on Flickr between January 18th and February 7th, 2013."
Users had been complaining about the problem on Flickr's help forum.
"I see that a huge amount of my 'private' photos (friends, family) has became public!" posted one on Feb. 7. "Now I am spending a lot of time to move such content to 'private area.' It is not good at all!"
Posted another: "What a mess. I have always with great precision sorted all my upload to private, friends only or public and now it's all screwed up. First I was annoyed about around 10 of my friends only pictures (many with my contact details) turn public, but now I'm much more pissed off about Flickr's decision to randomly turn my public pictures private so that I must comb though EVERY picture to see whether they are private, public or friends only and what to do about them."
User Barry Schwartz wrote on the Search Engine Roundtable site about the aggravation.
"All my family photos that were set to private" were "visible to anyone in the world ? anyone who wanted to see them. This is despite my privacy settings," he wrote.
He shared a copy of the email sent by Wayn:
The Flickr spokesperson told NBC News that if users didn't receive the email from Flickr, "then they were not affected" by the bug.
"The photos did not appear in search results and were limited to photos uploaded between April and December of 2012," the spokesperson said. "We've set all potentially affected photos to private so that they are now only viewable by the account holder. This was not widespread or an ongoing issue. It was a bug that has been fixed. At Yahoo!, we take security and privacy very seriously. We are deeply sorry this happened and have taken measures to ensure this doesn't happen again."
Check out Technology, GadgetBox, DigitalLife and InGame on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uy7sNS6MnFgwUpX-V4x4nqGQn7rFrflBlmpdbClsOBAgFUeaZLo_bO9-upN_Ah5aJ3UKlcgE23Ulj2-a8GLc_clAIU8okuU7WUlbcRck8=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 13-Feb-2013
Share ]