Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1054

A Warmer Climate Could Lead to 90% More Heat-Related Deaths in Manhattan

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As the weather in New York City creeps back toward summer-like temperatures, a bit of warning: Enjoy it while you can. By the 2080s, Manhattan could see as many as 91 percent more heat-related deaths thanks to global warming.

Scientists from Columbia University created projections for the affect on mortality, month by month, of temperature increases under various warming scenarios. Below are the mean projections for the 16 models, under lower emissions and higher emissions scenarios.

If you're curious what that means in raw numbers, the researchers can answer that, too. If the population of Manhattan remains the same, the worst-case scenario 70 years from now will mean 250 more temperature-related deaths each year. A small fraction of the population — but a huge increase in effect.

By the 2020s, the mean projection is that the number of temperature-related deaths will increase 5.3 percent over 1980s figures, under a low emissions scenario. That's the result of heat-related deaths going up 21 percent and cold-related deaths dropping 12 percent. (The net change is calculated from the net change of each model.) That's a drop of about 50 cold-related deaths a year — and an increase of about 100 heat-related ones.

By the 2050s, that's changed substantially. Under the lower emissions model, deaths will increase 11 percent annually — or 15 percent under faster warming.

And by the 2080s, assuming a worst-case warming scenario, 31 percent more people will die each year for temperature-related reasons — with the number of people dying from heat almost doubling to about 1,000 people.

Manhattan served as an interesting case study for the effects of climate change primarily because of its density and historical record. From the university's overview:

Daily records from Manhattan’s Central Park show that average monthly temperatures already increased by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2000—substantially more than the global and U.S. trends. Cities tend to concentrate heat; buildings and pavement soak it up during the day and give it off at night. Many records have been set in Manhattan recently; 2012 was its warmest year on record, and in each of the past three years, it has seen temperatures at or above 100 degrees F. Projections for the future vary, but all foresee steep future average increases : 3.3 to 4.2 degrees F more by the 2050s, and 4.3 to 7.1 degrees by the 2080s.

(Last year, the National Weather Service created charts showing record high and low temperatures in Central Park. The last record low at that point had been set in 2004; there were 29 record highs in the interim.)

The researchers used 16 different climate models — mathematical tools developed to predict the effect of warming — and two emissions scenarios — anticipating either slow population growth and rapid emissions cuts or the opposite — to generate predictions for the warming effect on Manhattan. They then used that data to calculate temperature-related deaths. During the 1980s, just over 700 people a year died from excessive heat or cold. As winter months get warmer, the number of cold-temperature-related deaths will decline. But when the summers get hotter, the number of warm-temperature-related deaths will increase. The net effect in every scenario is more deaths.

Those deaths won't be uniformly distributed. As the report summary notes:

The study also found that the largest percentage increase in deaths would come not during the traditionally sweltering months of June through August, but rather in May and September—periods that are now generally pleasant, but which will probably increasingly become incorporated into the brutal dog days of summer.

       

Kate Hudson Teams Up With Zach Braff

Today in show business: Zach Braff has put Kate Hudson in the movie you bought him, the Angry Birds movie really is happening, and Claire Danes has a teen daughter.

Well, the Zach Braff Kickstarter movie keeps getting more interesting! He's just added Kate Hudson to the cast, she'll play his character's wife. So that will be something, huh? Zach Braff and Kate Hudson, together at last! In a Zach Braff-directed movie, funded by you. Oh and Josh Gad is in the movie too! Isn't that great? This is probably the exact cast that everyone dreamed of when they decided to send their money to Zach Braff, right? A Josh Gad and Kate Hudson joint. That you made happen. Thanks, everyone! (I kid. Kate Hudson's not so bad, I like her in things. But she's certainly not universally beloved. And, y'know, Josh Gad is Josh Gad, so. I'm just glad I haven't already paid $200 to see this movie. That's all.) [Deadline]

Speaking of promising film projects, the Angry Birds movie has found a writer! Yes, the Angry Birds movie. You know, the movie based on the cellphone game. That's actually happening. I mean, what the hell, there's already a TV show, might as well make a movie too, right? At least it's going to be a cartoon, not some live action adventure film or anything. And the writer they hired is Jon Vitti, who wrote "Mr. Plow," "Cape Feare," and several other amazing Simpsons episode. So maybe this isn't such a terrible thing? It's not like it's a Snapchat movie, for heaven's sake. (There will definitely be a Snapchat movie.) However it turns out, though, I can't watch it. Because, knowing me, I'll watch it for hours and hours until my thumb hurts and my phone is dead and I've completely wasted yet another day. Can't have that happen. No sir. Never again. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Actor Christian Borle, who plays (sigh, played?) Tom on musical muddle Smash, is make the leap to the big screen. He's been cast in Michael Mann's new cyber crime thriller, alongside Viola Davis and Chris Hemsworth. No word on who he'll be playing, or who anyone will be playing, but it's safe to say that Borle is probably happy to do anything in a Michael Mann movie with big stars. I mean, he is a Tony winner (for the lovely Peter and the Starcatcher) so it's not like he's some desperate nobody, but this is probably still an upgrade. Meanwhile, Katherine McPhee is sitting in her car across the street from her agent's house waiting to see if he's home. And Debra Messing has decided to sit in an Adirondack chair for a while, starting at the trees and figuring things out. [Deadline]

[image error]Here is a first glimpse of Jennifer Lawrence back in her Mystique regalia for X-Men: Days of Future Past. She looks mostly the same as she did in the first one, except maybe a little bluer and, if we're honest, a little sexier? I don't know, the look seems sexed-up now that she's not supposed to be a kid. Which is a little creepy, but I suppose that's the world we live in. [Entertainment Weekly]

Good news, fans of The Chuck. Everyone's favorite show about Chuck, The Chuck made a star of Zachary Levi, and now he's going to burn even brighter on the Broadway stage. He's just landed the lead male role in First Date, a musical comedy about an old married couple. Haha, no, it's about a first date, ya dodo! Specifically: "a quick drink at a busy New York restaurant turns into a hilarious, high-stakes dinner. As the date unfolds in real time, the couple quickly finds they are not alone on this date as Casey and Aaron's inner critics take on a life of their own when other restaurant patrons and the wait staff get into the act. Dinner is served with sides of Google background checks, fake emergency phone calls, supportive best friends, manipulative exes and protective parents, who sing and dance them through ice-breakers, appetizers and potential conversational land mines." Which sounds... well, a little exhausting. But hey, good for Chuck. Good luck, Chuck. Or, erm, break a leg. [Playbill]

Here is a trailer for a new movie featuring Claire Danes as the mother of a smart, somewhat angsty teenage girl. Yes, Angela Chase with her own Angela Chase. Time has flown. I mean, she's supposed to be a young mom, but still. Pretty strange to see. The movie is called As Cool As I Am, which is a very bad name for a movie. It's based on a book of the same name, but oddly that title works fine for a book and not for a movie, doesn't it? Anyway, James Marsden plays the dad, Thomas Mann plays the love interest, and Claire does her crumpleface in a supermarket. Seems to hit all the bases.

       

How to Give Ugly Landfills a Second Life

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The Daily Beast on the second life of landfills Miranda Green observes a new trend among communities hoping to conceal unsightly landfills and garbage dumps: covering the sites with solar panels. "Many states and cities have long been turning trash into treasure by burning garbage to create heat and electricity, or by harvesting the methane gas that is released as junk decomposes," Green writes. "But in a new twist on this theme, several cities and municipalities are transforming capped landfills—the ultimate waste of space—into solar-power plants. ... Benefits come in the form of renewable electricity. Instead of letting landfills sit for years as the land settles and compacts, towns can place solar panels on the wide-open space and continue to make money from the energy collected."

Ars Technica on “climigration” John Timmer discusses a recent paper that takes note of a phenomenon called "climigration" — where communities and even entire towns threatened by climate change decide to uproot and move to a less volatile area. "As climate change and sea level rise are permanently altering the landscape, it may not make sense to rebuild in precisely the same location," he writes. "That reality has already arrived for many communities in northern Alaska, where the vanishing sea ice and permafrost have left entire towns at risk of being washed away. If the experience of those residents is anything to go by, we're woefully unprepared for the new reality."

The Washington Post on the left's reaction to Obama's energy deliberations "If you want to get a sense of how impatient some of President Obama’s most loyal supporters are getting when it comes to climate change," begins Juliet Eilperin, "consider this: They’re planning to conduct protests at meetings of the grassroots advocacy organization run by his former top campaign aides." Eilperin explains the dilemma facing activists trying to influence the President: "Obama may very well address environmentalists’ concerns this year by rejecting TransCanada’s application to build the Keystone across the U.S.-Canada border, and by regulating greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. But the longer he takes to act, the more likely his primary organizing group will face an organized rebellion of its own."

Reuters on how fracking caused a battle over water Ernest Scheyder begins with a saying common in the parts of North Dakota affected by a recent oil boom: "In towns across North Dakota, the wellhead of the North American energy boom, the locals have taken to quoting the adage: 'Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting.'" The maxim hints at what is in fact an ongoing battle to secure usable water in the area. "It's not that they lack water, like Texas and California," the author says. "They are swimming in it, and it is free for the taking. Yet as the state's Bakken shale fields have grown, so has the fight over who has the right to tap into the multimillion-dollar market to supply water to the energy sector."

The New Yorker on the Keystone XL pipeline's impact What does the decision about the Keystone XL pipeline boil down to? In the midst of a heavy lobbying campaign in Washington, D.C., Elizabeth Kolbert weighs the principle arguments driving the debate. First, the pro side: "The arguments in favor of Keystone run more or less like this: Americans use a lot of oil—more than eighteen million barrels per day. It has to come from somewhere, and Canada is a more reliable trading partner than, say, Iraq." And the con: " If we take the future at all seriously, which is to say as a time period that someone is going to have to live in, then we need to leave a big percentage of the planet’s coal and oil and natural gas in the ground."

       

Astronaut Sally Ride Awarded the Medal of Freedom

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On Monday afternoon President Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former astronaut, physicist, and entrepreneur Sally Ride, who died last July at age 61.

In the announcement, Obama is quoted: “Sally showed us that there are no limits to what we can achieve, and I look forward to welcoming her family to the White House as we celebrate her life and legacy.” The release adds that Ride's "partner, mother, and sister were notified last week of the President’s decision to award her with the Nation’s highest civilian honor."  In 1983 Ride was the first American woman (and third woman ever) to enter Earth's orbit as a crew member aboard Space Shuttle Challenger. The announcment coincides with Monday's tribute to Sally Ride's life at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in D.C.

Ride joined NASA in 1978 after answering a newspaper ad placed by the space agency, and worked as a capsule communicator on the ground for six years before deploying to space at the age of 32. She completed a second space mission in 1984 and was preparing for a third when, in January 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger exploded off the coast of Florida in the middle of its vertical ascent, killing all seven passengers aboard. Ride served on the Presidential Commission that investigated the Challenger disaster before leaving NASA, in 1987, to become a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. In 2001, Ride founded her own educational company, Sally Ride Science, which worked educate young people, especially girls, about science.

Ride was an intensely private person, concealing a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer up until the day she died in 2012, as well as her 27-year relationship with her nearly lifelong partner, a 61 year old professor of psychology named Tam O'Shaughnessy. Ride has since been acknowledged as the first and only openly gay astronaut.

       

What's Missing in the 'Saturday Night Live' Cast Now

Saturday Night Live will look pretty different in September, as this past weekend's season finale saw the departure of mainstay favorites Fred Armisen and Bill Hader. Armisen was on the show for 11 years and Hader for eight, so their exits leave a pretty large hole in the cast. And then there are the persistent rumors that Jason Sudeikis is likely to quit the show too, meaning SNL is potentially losing a third of its repertory players, not to mention the imminent departure of Seth Meyers for Late Night. There are, in other words, going to be a lot of new faces around Studio 8H.

To my mind, the biggest loss of the bunch is Armisen. Weird and occasionally cerebral (a mode that's better showcased on Portlandia), Armisen was the indie/Brooklyn-y cast member. Which might sound like an insult, but is really not meant to be. Armisen often went broad and ridiculous, but also had an insightful, exacting side, a real specificity to his humor, that will be sorely missed on the show. No one else in the remaining cast seems quite as interested in doing that kind of humor-of-the-particular, but the still frustratingly underused Kate McKinnon has offered hints of an intellectual weirdness that we should see more of. I like Saturday Night Live when it's big and silly, but it was also fun having Armisen around, being a bit more sly, tweaking things in subtler ways. Here's hoping they let McKinnon really go for it next year, and that they hire someone else with those sorts of vaguely -- yes I'm going to say it -- hipstery interests.

For a long time Hader was best known for two things: impersonations that were a little gonzo while still accurate enough, and goofy straight-men (game show hosts and the like). But then he found a hit character in club wraith Stefon and he became one of the staples of the Weekend Update desk. With his rubbery, malleable face and boggling vocal range, he was a multi-use player who always seemed game and genial. I think the closest current analogue on the show is Taran Killam, who has the same kind of wacked-out wholesomeness. Killam is used a fair deal these days, but he hasn't quite been given a chance to truly stand out. (He doesn't appear in desk segments all that often, for example.) It's also a little weird that they have him playing a particular kind of gay man so often — it feels repetitive and occasionally problematic, as if he and the writers think he "does gay well." Stefon was a specific character, these other characters are just random gay dudes who all sound the same. I don't know, it's a minor gripe. Given the opportunity, Killam could move to the top of the food chain next season and I'd be happy about it.

Which is supposed to be the way of things on Saturday Night Live, isn't it? That people move up after putting in the work. Keenan Thompson finally got to the top of the heap after nearly a decade of working hard on the sidelines, though he's still doesn't have quite as much heat as other cast members. Maybe because he doesn't work outside the show terribly often. Bobby Moynihan seems poised to break out bigger soon, on the strength of his popular Drunk Uncle character and because these other guys are leaving, clearing the way. The women's side is strong, with Vanessa Bayer getting more attention than she used to and Cecily Strong proving a good addition, while McKinnon finishes out her first full season in good (if, again, underused) form. I'm not so sure about Aidy Bryant, or her fellow Featured cast member Tim Robinson. Him especially. Perhaps we should give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he can do with another year, but he really didn't do anything this season. I'd have to say the same thing about Jay Pharoah, who is an uncanny impressionist but is somehow never that funny.

So there is a lot of room to fill, and while some current cast members are waiting in the wings, ready to take the lead, that means we've got to restock the other shelves. Who should join the company?  I'll offer some suggestions tomorrow.

       

Seven Days in 100 Words: The Samsung Galaxy S IV

The typical gadget review these days can run thousands of words and cover hundreds of features before telling you what you really want to know: is this thing any good? The Atlantic Wire will cut to the chase after spending a week with a device and give you just the bottom line. 

THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S IV

Price: $199, which is how much top-of-the-line phones cost now.

Hardware: The plastic case feels like an arcade toy, but the crisp 5-inch screen is like your own personal Claritin commercial after the iPhone's tiny window onto the Internet.

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Battery Life: Considering that big beautiful screen, the day or so of intense use you get on one charge is pretty good.    

Best Feature: Audio translation. It only works with WiFi but is very impressive.  

Deal Breaker: Feature glut — Group Play! S Health! — creates so much clutter that it's hard to find the useful apps.

       

Massive Tornado Devastates Oklahoma

A massive tornado with winds nearing 200 miles-per-hour — which would make it an F-4 — swept through Moore, Oklahoma this afternoon. The storm carved a destruction path perhaps two miles wide and encompassing about 30 square miles. So far, 51 are confirmed dead, according to the state medical examiner's office, with that number expected to rise. 20 of those confirmed dead are children, KOCO reported late Monday. Hospitals across the region are reporting dozens of injuries. A local news anchor called the storm the "biggest destructive tornado in the history of the world," based on what he's seen.

President Obama spoke on the phone with Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin on Monday evening, and has directed the federal government and FEMA to provide her with any help she needs, according to the Associated Press. According to a statement from FEMA, the agency has sent a Incident Management Assistance Team, a FEMA liaison officer, and a damage assessment team to the area, and are offering assistance in coordinating any additional needed federal response. Later Monday, President Obama declared a major disaster in Oklahoma. 

Oklahoma City's KFOR-TV is streaming live coverage of the damage.

 

A lot of the media focus has been on the recovery efforts surrounding Plaza Towers Elementary. Students from grades 4, 5, and 6 were evacuated before the storm, according to a KFOR reporter, but there may have been a third grade class in the building. One reporter saw a young child being walked away from the school after the storm, and the AP reported that several children were rescued from the building later on Monday. But then the news took a turn for the worse: The bodies of seven children have been recovered from the school, and 20 - 30 more children, all dead, are still believed to be inside the rubble. The rescue effort at the school has now ended; officials are now on a recovery mission. 

The two images below show Plaza Towers Elementary School from a close and more distant perspective.
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Other fatalities, first reported by CBS Radio executive producer Charlie Kaye, included four people at a 7-11 in Moore. A KFOR reporter at the scene described pulling four bodies — a man, two women, and a child — from the rubble of the store. Several of the group apparently sought refuge in a freezer. Kaye also indicated that two children were killed elsewhere. 

According to the Associated Press, hospitals are treating about 120 people, including 70 children. 

Another hospital was severely damaged by the storm, as seen in the image below, its entrance clogged with a pile of automobiles.
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A Memphis TV station has a timelapse video of the tornado.
Action News 5 - Memphis, Tennessee

 

Google has published a map with shelter information, storm reports, and the destruction path of the storm: 

This man rode out the storm in a horse stall. He believes that all but one of the horses at the ranch, on which his livelihood depends, are dead. 

Meanwhile, @nycjim has found what is arguably one of the most stunning, frightening videos of a tornado, ever: 

A photo of one of the storm's survivors, via the county sheriff's office: 

Scared, but this little pup survived @cityofmoore #tornado.#okwx #okcoso twitter.com/OkCountySherif…

— Oklahoma Co. Sheriff (@OkCountySheriff) May 20, 2013

Earlier images from TV broadcasts and live on the ground show massive destruction from the tornado, which was estimated to be at least a mile wide — and perhaps as much as two miles.

Via Reuters' Anthony DeRosa, men search rubble for a missing child.

Also via DeRosa, this Vine clip of devastation in a nearby neighborhood — including people yelling for help.

Moore Oklahoma is flattened..... I haven't seen anything like this since 1999 #news twitter.com/MikeFrancisWX/…

— Mike Francis (@MikeFrancisWX) May 20, 2013

"THERE'S NOTHING" in wake of tornado, says @kfor chopper over Plaza Towers Elementary in Moore, OK. twitter.com/NewsBreaker/st…

— NewsBreaker (@NewsBreaker) May 20, 2013

Worst tornado damage I have seen since Joplin. Picture of what's left of a daycare in Moore, Oklahoma. Brings tears. twitter.com/StormCoker/sta…

— Georgia Storm Chaser (@StormCoker) May 20, 2013

NEW PHOTO: Fire burning in Moore, Oklahoma following massive #tornado twitter.com/nbcnightlynews…

— NBC Nightly News (@nbcnightlynews) May 20, 2013

WOW. RT @michaelhayes: Huge pile of debris in Moore, OK from tornado twitter.com/michaelhayes/s…

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) May 20, 2013

Mass destruction as far as the eye can see. I'm at the corner of Santa Fe and SW 19th St. #Moore #okwx @kellyogle twitter.com/EvanWAnderson/…

— Evan Anderson (@EvanWAnderson) May 20, 2013

A massive tornado struck a suburb of Oklahoma City. Follow complete coverage on cnn.com and CNN TV. twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/…

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) May 20, 2013

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A destroyed horse farm in Moore, at which at least 100 animals died.

This was the tornado at SE 4th and Sunny Lane. Tornado went right in front of us as debris flying overhead. #okwx twitter.com/DanielleDozier…

— Danielle Dozier (@DanielleDozier) May 20, 2013

PRELIMINARY tornado damage track for the Newcastle-Moore-South OKC tornado. Based on radar and damage reports. #okwx twitter.com/NWSNorman/stat…

— NWS Norman (@NWSNorman) May 20, 2013

The Associated Press has video that apparently shows the funnel cloud touching down.

Moore was devastated by an F5 in 1999 and an F4 in 2003. The CBS show Mike and Molly has pulled a tornado-themed episode planned for tonight.

       

And Now Back to Tenacious D with the Weather

We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cellphone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

Jack Black and Kyle Gass almost make you wish you lived in New Zealand. The key word here is almost. 

So, this next video of Josh Turnbull, the 2-year-old son of Chelsea goalie Ross Turnbull, is enough to convince you that there is a market in the U.S. for soccer. Do not let anyone tell you differently: 

Apparently the ostriches have no concept of the word moderation:

And finally, we showed you our favorite commencement speeches this year but we think the University of Arizona might have the right idea with this pyrotechnic light show: 

       

Everybody is Dreading Monday's 'Carmageddon'

Friday's horrifying crash on the Metro North railway in Connecticut has halted train service for hundreds of thousands of daily commuters in and out of New York City. And as the big Monday commute approaches, officials want you to know that the highways probably can't handle the anticipated influx of extra cars.

With little warning, a holiday weekend coming up, and no telling when the trains will start running as normal again, it looks like commuters this week are going to have a pretty brutal time getting into the city. On Monday, Metro North will run limited service on the tracks that are still operable (with busses doing a lot of heavy lifting), while     

Washington is Trying to Meditate Itself into Sanity

Buddhism, apparently, is blowing up in the Beltway. Or rather, meditation is. In any case, Tara Brach, the subject of a Washington Post profile out this weekend, has seemingly managed to "yogify" the spiritual practice of meditation for the urban elite masses. 

Here's Brach, who is also a therapist, giving a verbal chill pill to a room full of busy professionals: 

"Hundreds of people were rushing to the weekly class of Buddhist meditation teacher Tara Brach, a therapist who has become a must-listen for many urban professionals. Inside, her calm voice fills the silence.

'What does it matter for us to be in touch with our deepest aspiration?' she says into a headset. 'Was today a trance? How much was I here today?'

While the conceptual contrast of Brach calmly entrancing a room full of Washington stress addicts is kind of delicious, it sounds like her appeal goes far beyond the capitol region. Brach taps into the Oprah-like generic "spirituality" that seems so native to modern America. She's a bit of a hybrid version of the typical American spiritual advisor: she is the kind of person who puts Ph. D. after her name on the cover of her (bestselling) books. And according to the profile's author, Brach has a thing for folksy stories. But she's also busy, sophisticated, and smart. In other words, exactly the sort of person who would appeal to D.C.-types, too: 

"She’s a Type A go-getter. The petite 60-year-old juggles talks on not rushing with Skype interviews with reporters and focuses on pragmatic struggles such as body image, divorce and being controlled by your To Do list. She drives a BMW and lives in posh Great Falls. She talks about aspiration."

Boorstein's article connects the "trend" of meditation among the professionals of D.C. to another religion trend story from this year: the so-called "rise of the nones," or Americans who don't adhere to any particular religion, including those who would see themselves as spiritual, but not religious. Because of this, the article raises one big question: can meditation be the new, "secular" version of prayer?

Her connection makes demographic sense: Brach's adherents in Washington are of the professional economic class, and well-educated. And that lines up with the "nones," who make up about 20 percent of the population according to a recent Pew study. Plus most of her students don't identify themselves as Buddhist, though she herself is Buddhist clergy, indicating that she's not so much preaching to the converted as she is advocating for a particular religious practice in a more secular context. On the other hand, the "nones" are not by any means uniformly secular: A majority believe in God, while a plurality already pray regularly.  

In any case, if Boorstein is right, then the so called "secular" meditation movement should pay attention to the debate still surrounding yoga, another religious practice with a large cosmopolitan presence, which has been pretty thoroughly isolated in the U.S. as a practice that's not tightly tethered to its Hindu origins. Despite that, some Christians still shun it, with some parents in one California town threatening legal action over one public school's introduction of a yoga class. 

Photo: via Flickr by thisisbossi.