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            <h1 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Hurricane Harvey Lays Bare Our New Bargain With Nature</h1>
            
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        <section id="article-section-1"><p>As I write this, the disaster of Hurricane Harvey is still unfolding. Buckets of rain are still falling in Houston and the waters are still rising. The flood damage, biblical in proportion, is frightening to behold. Even as the rescue efforts continue, many are wondering, “Is this the new normal for our coastal cities?”</p><p>As Earth’s climate changes we can expect more destructive hurricanes. As sea level and surface temperatures rise, more solar energy is trapped in the atmosphere, revving up the hydrological cycle of evaporation and precipitation, and sometimes manifesting in terrifying storms. Add to this the rapid and sometimes careless development of our urban areas in patterns which are, shall we say, not always strictly motivated by long-term planning for runoff management and neighborhood safety.</p><p>In all these ways this disaster reflects changing circumstances in this new time of enhanced human influence which many are calling the Anthropocene—the geological age of humans. With this title we recognize that we have become a planetary-scale force.</p></section><div class="ad-boxinjector-wrapper"><gpt-ad id="boxinjector1" targeting-pos="boxinjector1" class="ad ad-boxinjector" lazy-load="2" data-object-pk="1" data-object-name="boxinjector"><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[0, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250], [320, 350], [300, 350], [1, 3], [320, 520], [320, 430], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[760, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1010, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1050, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1024, 350], [1, 3], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset></gpt-ad></div><section id="article-section-2"><p>Some developments of the Anthropocene are cause for celebration. Consider the fleet of Earth-observing satellites that we now take largely for granted. Scientists and historians have not agreed on a start date of the Anthropocene, but one candidate might be the moment in the late 1950s when Earth began launching small metallic pieces of itself back out into the void. The first successful weather satellite, TIROS-1, was launched in 1960 and returned the first television image of Earth from space. Since 1962, we’ve had continuous satellite coverage of Earth’s weather patterns. Our planet had entered a new phase—it had begun to self-monitor.</p><p>Before the 1960s, we had only a vague idea of what a hurricane looked like. Today, even the smallest tropical storm will be noticed and intensely scrutinized, modeled and forecast as soon as, or sometimes even before, it forms. Most of us experience hurricanes as immense magnificent swirls on the map that sweep across the ocean, their menacing arms swiping at our coastlines, their central eyes sometimes making landfall, to devastating effect. On the ground, those in the path experience them as fearsome torrents of wind and rain. Thanks to the quotidian experience of TV weather reports, in little over a generation we’ve internalized and integrated this bizarre Anthropocene abstraction, leaping mentally between grounded experience and orbital views of our weather systems.</p></section><div class="ad-boxright-wrapper" data-pos="boxright"><gpt-ad id="boxright1" targeting-pos="boxright1" class="ad ad-boxright" lazy-load="2" data-object-pk="3" data-object-name="boxright"><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[0, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1010, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250], [300, 600]]"></gpt-sizeset></gpt-ad></div><section id="article-section-3"><p>Our planet has grown a new sensory organ, a diffuse and orbital mycelium of detectors, radio transmissions, and microprocessors. Instantaneous global views are available from anywhere and, together with models run on supercomputers, they give us unprecedented foresight into the immediate future. Our continuous record of seasonally changing landscapes and roiling weather patterns reveal previously hidden patterns that aid disaster response, and the global web of communication satellites insures that this information is available to a large and growing portion of Earth’s inhabitants.</p><aside class="pullquote instapaper_ignore">Our technological interventions both endanger us and come to our rescue.</aside><p>Now we see storms coming. Governments have a chance to shore up resources and defenses, to warn or evacuate. Institutions have a chance to prepare and make contingency plans, and residents have more chance to leave, to stock up, or to fortify.</p><p>Hurricane Harvey is showing us both the benefits and the limits of our ability to predict storms and act on our foresight. A major rainfall event was predicted many days in advance but with cruel timing the storm strengthened just before making landfall and then stalled out, gushing colossal amounts of water over a heavily populated region with poor drainage. Decisions about evacuations will be analyzed and second-guessed for years. The city will sustain considerable damage. Yet imagine how vulnerable a modern city like Houston or New Orleans would be without our satellite eyes and computerized warning systems.</p></section><div class="ad-boxinjector-wrapper"><gpt-ad id="boxinjector2" targeting-pos="boxinjector2" class="ad ad-boxinjector" lazy-load="2" data-object-pk="1" data-object-name="boxinjector"><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[0, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250], [320, 350], [300, 350], [1, 3], [320, 520], [320, 430], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[760, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1010, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1050, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1024, 350], [1, 3], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset></gpt-ad></div><section id="article-section-4"><p>On September 8, 1900, a Category 4 hurricane slammed into the gulf coast of Texas. Back then, nobody saw it coming. (There were some warnings from Cuba, where the storm had passed through, but these were ignored.) The residents of Galveston were helpless, with no chance to evacuate or prepare. Something like 20 percent of the population was washed away. An estimated 8,000 people perished. It was the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. As long as we retain our capacity for vigilant satellite monitoring, we will never suffer that magnitude of loss from another storm. This illustrates an Anthropocene paradox: Our technological interventions both endanger us and come to our rescue. Even as our unwitting alterations to Earth’s carbon and hydrological cycles slowly make storms more damaging, our ability to monitor our planet from space and make reliable short-term forecasts have equipped us enormously to withstand them.</p><p>Humans are possessed, to some degree, with the power of foresight. Yet we so often learn things the hard way, through disaster. In addition to tracking storms, Earth observations also reveal to us a planet with warming temperatures, disappearing glaciers, and declining arctic sea ice.</p><p>As a child I was enthralled by the Apollo astronauts based in Houston, whose exploits inspired me to study climate change on Earth and other planets. Through space-based climate studies my colleagues and I have learned that a stable and comfortable climate is not something to take for granted. We know that we humans must rapidly change our energy supply, or suffer more and more devastating heat waves, droughts, floods and storms. If we take the slow road to our inevitable non-carbon energy future, these changes may also bring wars, famines, and displaced peoples. We need a rapid transformation in our energy systems and our urban-planning paradigms so that Hurricane Harvey does not become an emblematic 21st-century experience.</p></section>
    
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        <p class="dek">A case study in the political right’s capitulation to Trump, and the threat it poses to its political future.</p>
        
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            <p>Last month, Mollie Hemingway, the Fox News contributor and senior editor at <em>The Federalist</em>, declared herself a Donald Trump supporter for the first time. “I wasn’t a Trump supporter,” the headline of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-wasnt-a-trump-supporter-i-am-now/2018/01/19/58abd43a-fca2-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html?utm_term=.fd413a319354">her <em>Washington Post</em> op-ed </a>stated.<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-wasnt-a-trump-supporter-i-am-now/2018/01/19/58abd43a-fca2-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html?utm_term=.fd413a319354"> </a>“I am now.”</p>

<p>She cited his actions on judicial nominees, climate policy, regulatory reform, tax cuts, guidelines on how colleges should adjudicate sexual assault, and foreign policy.</p>

<p>Large swaths of the Republican Party and the conservative movement have now reconciled themselves to supporting President Trump, including figures far more famous, powerful, and influential than any journalist. A strong case could be made that this particular endorsement didn’t really change anything, especially since its author was already openly anti-anti-Trump in her orientation.</p>


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        <p class="dek"><span><span>Its faith-based 12-step program dominates treatment in the United States. But researchers have debunked central tenets of AA doctrine and found dozens of other treatments more effective.</span></span></p>
        
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            <p><span class="smallcaps">J.G. is a lawyer</span> in his early 30s. He’s a fast talker and has the lean, sinewy build of a distance runner. His choice of profession seems preordained, as he speaks in fully formed paragraphs, his thoughts organized by topic sentences. He’s also a worrier—a big one—who for years used alcohol to soothe his anxiety.</p>

<p>J.G. started drinking at 15, when he and a friend experimented in his parents’ liquor cabinet. He favored gin and whiskey but drank whatever he thought his parents would miss the least. He discovered beer, too, and loved the earthy, bitter taste on his tongue when he took his first cold sip.</p>

<p>His drinking increased through college and into law school. He could, and occasionally did, pull back, going cold turkey for weeks at a time. But nothing quieted his anxious mind like booze, and when he didn’t drink, he didn’t sleep. After four or six weeks dry, he’d be back at the liquor store.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">The Precedent for Trump's Administration Isn't Nixon—It's Clinton</h3>
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        <p class="dek">A network analysis of the structure of the president's inner circle suggests some surprising parallels.</p>
        
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            <p>History is at least as much about the structures of power as it is about the personalities of “great men”—or terrible ones. Of course, a president’s idiosyncrasies matter, and the outsized and outrageous personality of the current president of the United States has riveted the public and press. But most condemnations of President Donald Trump are also, if only implicitly, accusations that his administration has broken with precedent and violated the norms of presidential government. We are not so sure. Trump’s manner of exercising power certainly has a precedent. In terms of the structure of politics—a term associated with the Cambridge historian Lewis Namier—Trump’s presidency is not so new, even if his personality is <em>sui generis</em>.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Syria's War Is Fueling Three More Conflicts</h3>
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            <p>When an Israeli jet crashed after being shot down over Syria over the weekend, it marked a serious escalation in the Syrian Civil War. But it also reflected an ongoing reality, one that is growing more dangerous: Syria’s war encompasses at least three other international conflicts, each of which are heating up.</p>

<p>In the last few weeks alone, Turkey has clashed with Syrian Kurds and threatened a U.S.-controlled town in Syria; an Israeli fighter jet that was part of a response to an incursion into Israeli territory by an Iranian drone launched from Syria <a href="https://www.idf.il/en/minisites/israeli-air-force/air-force-strikes-iranian-targets-in-syria/">took Syrian anti-aircraft fire</a>, forcing its two pilots to eject and parachute into Israeli territory; and U.S. forces repelled an attack by Russian fighters, killing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/europe/russia-syria-dead.html?action=click&amp;contentCollection=Middle%20East&amp;module=Trending&amp;version=Full&amp;region=Marginalia&amp;pgtype=article">an unknown number of them</a> that <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-13/u-s-strikes-said-to-kill-scores-of-russian-fighters-in-syria">reports</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/europe/russia-syria-dead.html">suggest</a> could be in the hundreds.   </p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Google’s Guinea-Pig City</h3>
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        <p class="dek">Will Toronto turn its residents into Alphabet’s experiment? The answer has implications for cities everywhere.</p>
        
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            <p class="dropcap" dir="ltr">Q<span class="smallcaps">uayside is a</span> nondescript, 12-acre chunk of land on the southern edge of Toronto’s downtown. It’s just three miles from my apartment, but getting there takes almost an hour by subway, bus, and foot. When I finally arrive at 333 Lake Shore Boulevard East on a windy day in early January, I find a vacant parking lot full of snow. The abandoned Victory Soya Mills silos loom at its edge—a remnant of the city’s industrial heyday. The plot is half of the future site of Sidewalk Toronto, a “<a href="https://sidewalktoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Sidewalk-Labs-Vision-Sections-of-RFP-Submission.pdf">neighborhood built from the internet up</a>” by Google’s sister company, Sidewalk Labs. Lake Ontario is frozen and it’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/cold-weather-united-states-mars/549386/">colder</a> than the surface of Mars the day I go to look at the site.</p>

<p>It’s a far cry from the vision that fills the Sidewalk Toronto <a href="https://sidewalktoronto.ca/">webpage</a>, where a crisp video shot on a sunny day makes the Victory silos look cheerful and full of potential. Torontonians in puffer vests and toques describe a vibrant city bursting at the seams. Toronto’s population <a href="http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/Page.cfm?Lang=E&amp;Geo1=CSD&amp;Code1=3520005&amp;Geo2=PR&amp;Code2=35&amp;Data=Count&amp;SearchText=Prince&amp;SearchType=Begins&amp;SearchPR=01&amp;B1=All">grew</a> by 4.5 percent between 2011 and 2016. The city tolerates a <a href="https://www.lowestrates.ca/blog/finance/how-much-it-costs-live-young-person-toronto-2018">high cost of living</a> and a <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/11/28/rental-vacancy-rates-lowest-in-16-years.html">low rental-vacancy rate</a>.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Winners of the 2018 Underwater Photographer of the Year Contest</h3>
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        <p class="dek">The organizers of the Underwater Photographer of the Year have just announced the winning photographers and images for 2018.</p>
        
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            <p>Organizers of the <a href="http://www.underwaterphotographeroftheyear.com/">Underwater Photographer of the Year Contest</a> have just announced the winning photographers and images for 2018, with German photographer Tobias Friedrich being named Underwater Photographer of the Year 2018. More than 5,000 images were submitted this year by photographers from around the world. Prizes and commendations were handed out in a number of categories including Wide Angle, Macro, Wrecks, Behavior, Portrait, Black &amp; White, Compact, Up &amp; Coming, and, in British waters, Wide Angle, Compact, and Macro shots. UPY was once again kind enough to share some of this year's honorees with us below, with captions written by the photographers.</p>

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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">A Better Way to Look at Most Every Political Issue</h3>
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        <p class="dek">Americans would be less alienated from one another and solve problems more easily if they recognized one little-noticed distinction in policy debates.</p>
        
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            <p>We sometimes think of political issues in binary terms. Is someone pro-life or pro-choice? But most individuals hold views that are more complicated than a binary can capture.</p>

<p>An alternative is to describe a given position on a spectrum. On abortion, an outright ban sits at one extreme; at the other is the elimination of all restrictions on the procedure. In between are a staggering array of coherently distinguishable positions.</p>

<p>Politicians seeking to win votes express their stances either in terms of a binary or as a spot on a spectrum, depending on where they see the greatest advantage. Though their beliefs don’t change, how they frame them makes a political difference.</p>

<p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p>

<p>There’s a different set of frames, though, that are as relevant as binaries and spectrums, though they are less familiar and less discussed: equilibriums and limits.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Stop Saying 'Smart Cities'</h3>
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        <p class="dek">Digital stardust won’t magically make future cities more affordable or resilient.</p>
        
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            <p>The term “smart city” is interesting yet not important, because nobody defines it. “Smart” is a snazzy political label used by a modern alliance of leftist urbanites and tech industrialists. To deem yourself “smart” is to make the <span class="smallcaps">NIMBY</span>ites and market-force people look stupid.</p>

<p>Smart-city devotees all over this world will agree that London is particularly smart. Why? London is a huge, ungainly beast whose cartwheeling urban life is in cranky, irrational disarray. London is a god-awful urban mess, but London does have some of the best international smart-city conferences.</p>

<p>London also has a large urban-management bureaucracy who emit the proper smart-city buzzwords and have even invented some themselves.  The language of Smart City is always Global Business English, no matter what town you're in.</p>


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        <p class="dek">Mitch McConnell promised an open, freewheeling process to finally resolve the fate of DACA and the Dreamers. But amid more partisan bickering, the attempt has stalled before it even began.</p>
        
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            <p>This was supposed to be the week when the Senate strutted its stuff, when the vaunted committee of 100 held an open, freewheeling debate to resolve—for now—the weighty issue of immigration and the fate of 700,000 young undocumented immigrants whose protection from deportation could soon expire. There would be no precooked deals foisted upon senators by their leadership, no pointless political grandstanding.</p>

<p>Under an agreement reached between Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/democrats-relent-government-shutdown-over/551144/">that ended last month’s government shutdown</a>—not to be confused with <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/the-us-government-may-shut-down-and-reopen-while-you-sleep/552893/">this month’s</a>—the Senate would spend a week debating immigration, border security, and the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Trump plans to end on March 5. Senators would consider amendments from all sides, vote them up or down, and hopefully arrive at a consensus that could muster 60 votes and move on to the House.</p>


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