#doom loop

[classic8media]

The Manipulation of Elections: How the Ruling Class Weaponizes "Agents of Chaos"

A short series on HBO called Agents of Chaos details how no more than 100 people were able to overthrow the 2016 United States election in favor of President Donald Trump in an intricate Russian troll farm psyop operation. A similar pattern appears to create a “doom loop” narrative in Bay Area elections and across the country using local networks of Tech Billionaires, Real Estate and Landlord…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Insurance companies are making climate risk worse

Tomorrow (November 29), I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

Conservatives may deride the "reality-based community" as a drag on progress and commercial expansion, but even the most noxious pump-and-dump capitalism is supposed to remain tethered to reality by two unbreakable fetters: auditing and insurance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

No matter how much you value profit over ethics or human thriving, you still need honest books – even if you never show those books to the taxman or the marks. Even an outright scammer needs to know what's coming in and what's going out so they don't get caught in a liquidity trap (that is, "broke"), or overleveraged ("broke," again) exposed to market changes (you guessed it: "broke").

Unfortunately for capitalism, auditing is on its deathbed. The market is sewn up by the wildly corrupt and conflicted Big Four accounting firms that are the very definition of too big to fail/too big to jail. They keep cooking books on behalf of management to the detriment of investors. These double-entry fabrications conceal rot in giant, structurally important firms until they implode spectacularly and suddenly, leaving workers, suppliers, customers and investors in a state of utter higgeldy-piggeldy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/29/great-andersens-ghost/#mene-mene-bezzle

In helping corporations defraud institutional investors, auditors are facilitating mass scale millionaire-on-billionaire violence, and while that may seem like the kind of fight where you're happy to see either party lose, there are inevitably a lot of noncombatants in the blast radius. Since the Enron collapse, the entire accounting sector has turned to quicksand, which is a big deal, given that it's what industrial capitalism's foundations are anchored to. There's a reason my last novel was a thriller about forensic accounting and Big Tech:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

But accounting isn't the only bedrock that's been reduced to slurry here in capitalism's end-times. The insurance sector is meant to be an unshakably rational enterprise, imposing discipline on the rest of the economy. Sure, your company can do something stupid and reckless, but the insurance bill will be stonking, sufficient to consume the expected additional profits.

But the crash of 2008 made it clear that the largest insurance companies in the world were capable of the same wishful thinking, motivated reasoning, and short-termism that they were supposed to prevent in every other business. Without AIG – one of the largest insurers in the world – there would have been no Great Financial Crisis. The company knowingly underwrote hundreds of billions of dollars in junk bonds dressed up as AAA debt, and required a $180b bailout.

Still, many of us have nursed an ember of hope that the insurance sector would spur Big Finance and its pocket governments into taking the climate emergency seriously. When rising seas and wildfires and zoonotic plagues and famines and rolling refugee crises make cities, businesses, and homes uninsurable risks, then insurers will stop writing policies and the doom will become undeniable. Money talks, bullshit walks.

But while insurers have begun to withdraw from the most climate-endangered places (or crank up premiums), the net effect is to decrease climate resilience and increase risk, creating a "climate risk doom loop" that Advait Arun lays out brilliantly for Phenomenal World:

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the-doom-loop/

Part of the problem is political: as people move into high-risk areas (flood-prone coastal cities, fire-threatened urban-wildlife interfaces), politicians are pulling out all the stops to keep insurers from disinvesting in these high-risk zones. They're loosening insurance regs, subsidizing policies, and imposing "disaster risk fees" on everyone in the region.

But the insurance companies themselves are simply not responding aggressively enough to the rising risk. Climate risk is correlated, after all: when everyone in a region is at flood risk, then everyone will be making a claim on the insurance company when the waters come. The insurance trick of spreading risk only works if the risks to everyone in that spread aren't correlated.

Perversely, insurance companies are heavily invested in fossil fuel companies, these being reliable money-spinners where an insurer can park and grow your premiums, on the assumption that most of the people in the risk pool won't file claims at the same time. But those same fossil-fuel assets produce the very correlated risk that could bring down the whole system.

The system is in trouble. US claims from "natural disasters" are topping $100b/year – up from $4.6b in 2000. Home insurance premiums are up (21%!), but it's not enough, especially in drowning Florida and Texas (which is also both roasting and freezing):

https://grist.org/economics/as-climate-risks-mount-the-insurance-safety-net-is-collapsing/

Insurers who put premiums up to cover this new risk run into a paradox: the higher premiums get, the more risk-tolerant customers get. When flood insurance is cheap, lots of homeowners will stump up for it and create a big, uncorrelated risk-pool. When premiums skyrocket, the only people who buy flood policies are homeowners who are dead certain their house is gonna get flooded out and soon. Now you have a risk pool consisting solely of highly correlated, high risk homes. The technical term for this in the insurance trade is: "bad."

But it gets worse: people who decide not to buy policies as prices go up may be doing their own "motivated reasoning" and "mispricing their risk." That is, they may decide, "If I can't afford to move, and I can't afford to sell my house because it's in a flood-zone, and I can't afford insurance, I guess that means I'm going to live here and be uninsured and hope for the best."

This is also bad. The amount of uninsured losses from US climate disaster "dwarfs" insured losses:

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/hurricanes-floods-bring-120-billion-insurance-losses-2022-2023-01-09/

Here's the doom-loop in a nutshell:

As carbon emissions continue to accumulate, more people are put at risk of climate disaster, while the damages from those disasters intensifies. Vulnerability will drive disinvestment, which in turn exacerbates vulnerability.

Also: the browner and poorer you are, the worse you have it: you are impacted "first and worst":

https://www.climaterealityproject.org/frontline-fenceline-communities

As Arun writes, "Tinkering with insurance markets will not solve their real issues—we must patch the gaping holes in the financial system itself." We have to end the loop that sees the poorest places least insured, and the loss of insurance leading to abandonment by people with money and agency, which zeroes out the budget for climate remediation and resiliency where it is most needed.

The insurance sector is part of the finance industry, and it is disinvesting in climate-endagered places and instead doubling down on its bets on fossil fuels. We can't rely on the insurance sector to discipline other industries by generating "price signals" about the true underlying climate risk. And insurance doesn't just invest in fossil fuels – they're also a major buyer of municipal and state bonds, which means they're part of the "bond vigilante" investors whose decisions constrain the ability of cities to raise and spend money for climate remediation.

When American cities, territories and regions can't float bonds, they historically get taken over and handed to an unelected "control board" who represents distant creditors, not citizens. This is especially true when the people who live in those places are Black or brown – think Puerto Rico or Detroit or Flint. These control board administrators make creditors whole by tearing the people apart.

This is the real doom loop: insurers pull out of poor places threatened by climate disasters. They invest in the fossil fuels that worsen those disasters. They join with bond vigilantes to force disinvestment from infrastructure maintenance and resiliency in those places. Then, the next climate disaster creates more uninsured losses. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Finance and insurance are betting heavily on climate risk modeling – not to avert this crisis, but to ensure that their finances remain intact though it. What's more, it won't work. As climate effects get bigger, they get less predictable – and harder to avoid. The point of insurance is spreading risk, not reducing it. We shouldn't and can't rely on insurance creating price-signals to reduce our climate risk.

But the climate doom-loop can be put in reverse – not by market spending, but by public spending. As Arun writes, we need to create "a global investment architecture that is safe for spending":

https://tanjasail.wordpress.com/2023/10/06/a-world-safe-for-spending/

Public investment in emissions reduction and resiliency can offset climate risk, by reducing future global warming and by making places better prepared to endure the weather and other events that are locked in by past emissions. A just transition will "loosen liquidity constraints on investment in communities made vulnerable by the financial system."

Austerity is a bad investment strategy. Failure to maintain and improve infrastructure doesn't just shift costs into the future, it increases those costs far in excess of any rational discount based on the time value of money. Public institutions should discipline markets, not the other way around. Don't give Wall Street a veto over our climate spending. A National Investment Authority could subordinate markets to human thriving:

https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/industrial-policy-requires-public-not-just-private-equity/

Insurance need not be pitted against human survival. Saving the cities and regions whose bonds are held by insurance companies is good for those companies: "Breaking the climate risk doom loop is the best disaster insurance policy money can buy."

I found Arun's work to be especially bracing because of the book I'm touring now, The Lost Cause, a solarpunk novel set in a world in which vast public investment is being made to address the climate emergency that is everywhere and all at once:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

There is something profoundly hopeful about the belief that we can do something about these foreseeable disasters – rather than remaining frozen in place until the disaster is upon us and it's too late. As Rebecca Solnit says, inhabiting this place in your imagination is "Completely delightful. Neither utopian nor dystopian, it portrays life in SoCal in a future woven from our successes (Green New Deal!), failures (climate chaos anyway), and unresolved conflicts (old MAGA dudes). I loved it."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/28/re-re-reinsurance/#useless-price-signals

[california-slow-take]

The story of San Francisco is a tale not of two cities, but a constellation of physical and cultural landscapes that overlap yet feel distinct.

Now more than ever.

The media narrative in recent months has focused so intently on the crises in areas like the Tenderloin and Union Square that outsiders might think all 49 square miles had spun downward into a cesspool of crime-plagued streets and drug bazaars.

But for most of the city, the nooks and crannies and neighborhood scenes, the story is more complex. Even the smallest crossroad has its own identity, shaped by historic and social forces that leave clues in the built terrain around you.

Think of San Francisco, then, as a mosaic of realities that reveal their connections the more closely you look. Here are six vignettes that hint at the facets of this nuanced place — and how even in a city of neighborhoods, the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts.

[dsmith62]

"The Doom Loop "- Walking Through Downtown San Francisco

Downtown San Francisco, we are told, is in a “doom loop”. You probably have heard. Everyday, the San Francisco Chronicle, publishes the latest report on employers leaving downtown, retailers closing their doors, wasted public money on poorly managed programs (2 million dollar toilets!), the latest staggering statistics on homelessness, and so on. And if you didn’t hear it there, the national…

[ausetkmt]

The New Statesman: To tackle the climate “doom loop”, embrace the hope spiral

It’s always useful when someone names a monster, and this week that task fell to the Institute for Public Policy Research and Chatham House think tanks. Their new paper described as a “doom loop” the way climate disasters risk syphoning resources away from efforts to lower emissions and restore nature, and lead, in turn, to yet further warming and loss.

Doom loops are not confined to the external world, the paper argues – they beginwith us. Of particular potency is debate around whether or not the world will breach the Paris Agreement’s advised limit of 1.5°C of global warming compared with pre-industrial levels. Claiming that a breach is already inevitable could encourage fatalism or support for risky and potentially harmful solutions like geo-engineering. On the other hand, failing to sufficiently recognise the extent of the risk of a breach may breed complacency.

The IPPR and Chatham House researchers have some helpful proposals for policymakers. These include more honesty in outlining risks and the scale of response to the climate crisis that is needed. As their emphasis on communication suggests, people’s emotional reactions are just as important as policy actions. Procrastination can lead to feelings of anxiety, guilt and shame. If these are not acknowledged they can turn into anger. Take, for example, the vitriol directed towards Greta Thunbergwhen she dares to call out inaction.

To counter the emotional doom loops, therefore, we should perhaps reach instead for spirals of hope. And while the paper’s authors don’t carry their imagery that far, the doom loop’s counterpoint is almost irresistible. It’s even mirrored in nature: from the pinecone’s helix to the snail shell’s whorl.

Such alternative patterns of response would recognise that new information can reverse the direction of a doom loop. They would accept that the costs of the green transition are significant, but also note that inaction would be costlier because of escalating climate impacts and would miss opportunities for growth. They would acknowledge that, yes, many green technologies rely on harmful mining, but fossil fuel extraction requires much more.

[thoughtlessarse]

The world is at risk of descending into a climate “doom loop”, a thinktank report has warned. It said simply coping with the escalating impacts of the climate crisis could draw resources and focus away from the efforts to slash carbon emissions, making the situation even worse. The damage caused by global heating across the globe is increasingly clear, and recovering from climate disasters is already costing billions of dollars. Furthermore, these disasters can cause cascading problems including water, food and energy crises, as well as increased migration and conflict, all draining countries’ resources. The researchers, from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Chatham House, said a current example of the impact of the climate crisis complicating efforts to reduce emissions and other action was the debate over whether keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5C – the international goal – was still possible. Those arguing 1.5C was still possible risked perpetuating complacency that today’s slow pace of action was sufficient, the researchers said, while those arguing it was not possible risked supporting fatalism that little that could now be done, or “extreme approaches” such as geoengineering. Avoiding a doom loop required a more honest acceptance by politicians of the great risks posed by the climate crisis, the researchers said, including the looming prospect of tipping points and of the huge scale of the economic and societal transformation required to end global heating. This should be combined with narratives that focused on the great benefits climate action brought and ensuring policies were fairly implemented.

continue reading

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this Washington Post story:

The devastating effects of climate change on Earth could become so overwhelming that they undermine humanity’s capacity to tackle climate change’s root causes, researchers warned Wednesday.

They are calling it a “doom loop.”

Want to know how your actions can help make a difference for our planet? Sign up for the Climate Coach newsletter, in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.

The self-reinforcing dynamic, outlined in a report jointly published Wednesday by two British think tanks, warns of a spiral effect: Governments risk expending so much money and attention on merely coping with the impacts of climate change that they neglect efforts to reduce global emissions, exacerbating the crisis.

“We’re pointing to a potential situation where the symptom of the climate and ecological crisis — the storms, the potential food crises, and things like this — start to distract us from the root causes,” report author Laurie Laybourn, an associate fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank, said in an interview. “You get a feedback that starts to run out of control.”

The report’s authors do not believe that climate change has already triggered a global “doom loop” that is irreversible, but warn that in some places the dynamic could begin to take hold.

“We could get to the point where societies are faced with relentless disasters and crises, and all the other problems that the climate and ecological crisis is bringing, and will increasingly distract them from delivering decarbonization,” said Laybourn.

Humanity has a ‘brief and rapidly closing window’ to avoid a hotter, deadly future, U.N. climate report says

One example of the doom loop is economic. As African nations spend increasing sums on simply mitigating escalating climate change crises, they have less money to invest in reducing long term emissions targets, Laybourn said.

According to the African Development Bank, the impact of climate change is already costing the entire continent between 5 and 15 percent of its annual GDP growth, per capita.

[explosionshark]

Cause when you’re with me I don’t wanna leave

When you’re with me flowers in my teeth

[blogkinhdoanh-net]

Doom Loop: Định nghĩa, Nguyên nhân và Ví dụ

Doom Loop: Định nghĩa, Nguyên nhân và Ví dụ

Vòng lặp doom (doom loop) mô tả một tình huống trong đó một hành động hoặc yếu tố tiêu cực kích hoạt một hành động hoặc yếu tố tiêu cực khác, từ đó lại kích hoạt một hành động tiêu cực khác hoặc khiến yếu tố tiêu cực đầu tiên trở nên tồi tệ hơn, tiếp tục chu kỳ. Nó tương đương với một vòng luẩn quẩn trong đó xu hướng giảm trở nên tự củng cố. Thuật ngữ này đã được phổ biến trong cuốn sách quản lý…

[swarmborn]

Mansions // Two Suits

You turn off the radio Whenever i enter the room Pass it off, stay white as snow But everyone knows that it’s you

[phae]

The term "Responsive Web Design" has failed

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and although Alex’s recent slide is a bit full on, it’s not entirely wrong.

I think what he should have said was that Responsive Web Design alone has failed so far in keeping the web at the forefront of users experiences where most users are most of the time — on mobile. Of course, that’s much more nuanced than he had time for in his talk, but if that is a goal of RWD then it has failed. If the goal of RWD is just to be a practice to making things visually work on different screen sizes, then gold stars all around.

Responsive web design in and of itself is a really smart way to think about developing sites, assuming that you’re taking it from the mobile-first strategy. It’s been a while since I’ve come across a major digital service that hasn’t had a mobile-optimised layout of some nature, so I think on the whole that’s worked. Although, I have to ask where the “so focused on mobile they didn’t bother with a desktop optimisation” crew are – I sort of expected that to happen, but I’ve not yet hit a serious site that has a mobile-only view and presents that to it’s end users on desktop as a fallback. I have, however, seen buckets of splash screens that block me entirely and point me at the native app as the exclusive and only way to access their content and services. That’s scary.

What’s lacking about the responsive web design story is it has always focussed so heavily on the visual, dimensional, aspects of digital design. What are the snap points? How do we scale the images, the text? Can we trim content for some or enhance for others?

As a movement, it’s failed to capture the true otherness of being on a small screen. The fact that CPU, memory, network speed, storage and so many other aspects need to be first-level concerns. I’d argue that for most sites, the compromise for small screen devices has gone about as far as the ever-maligned hamburger menu and largely stopped there.

What I think I, and folks like Alex and Jeremy, who are fearful of the future of the Open Web really want to see is the sort of design work that Jad spoke about at Fronteers. That deep, close, observation of what our users _really_ expect on their devices – given that a majority of their experiences are with native apps and we’re trying very much to slip in our non-native experiences and pass them off as as reliable, integrated and valuable as those. RWD also isn’t taking us into where people find their online experiences (app stores). It could, but it needs to be tightly coupled with a strong PWA game with Trusted Web Activities, for example.

Jad’s excellent Fronteer’s talk

So, in short, RWD didn’t fail so much as it stopped short. Let’s not bicker about the specifics and just focus on getting out of our doom loop, eh?

[tevinho]

https://mansions.bandcamp.com/album/doom-loop

[ausetkmt]

Newsweek: Feedback Loops Could Heat Earth 'Beyond Anything Humans Can Control'

Feedback loops identified in a study could heat the Earth beyond anything humans can control, scientists have found.

A team of international scientists, including ones from Oregon State University, identified 27 amplifying climate feedback loops in a study published in the journal One Earth. These feedback loops could drastically worsen the effects of climate change.

As the climate warms, it can trigger a process known as a feedback loop, which can either increase or decrease the effects of greenhouse gases. Amplifying feedback loops—those that worsen the effects of climate change—cause even more warming, as they initiate a chain reaction that keeps repeating itself.

Scientists are concerned that some of the amplifying feedback loops identified in the new study are not fully accounted for in many models that aim to tackle climate change.

William Ripple, professor of ecology at Oregon State University and co-author of the report, told Newsweek: "Climate feedback loops are crucial to study because they help us accurately predict future climate change. For example, reinforcing feedbacks amplify the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to additional warming. Thus, understanding feedbacks and their interactions can inform mitigation and adaptation strategies."

The study calls for drastic action from policymakers, as these feedback loops could bring the earth to a climate "tipping point." If this point is reached, it will be significantly more difficult to reverse the effects.

Ripple said that in the worst-case scenario, these amplifying feedback loops will be strong enough to trigger a "tragic climate change that's moved beyond anything humans can control."

"In some cases, it may be possible to weaken the effects of a feedback loop by reducing the factors that contribute to it. For example, reducing greenhouse gas emissions can help to mitigate the effects of the amplifying feedback loops that contribute to global warming," Ripple told Newsweek.

This means action from policymakers is needed immediately. The study notes that the feedback loops identified make up the most-extensive list available. During their research, scientists identified the 27 amplifying feedback loop, seven dampening feedbacks, and seven uncertain feedbacks.

Research and modeling that accounts for all feedback loops is urgently needed, the study said.

"Now that we have identified many amplifying climate feedback loops, it is important to scale up and accelerate climate mitigation efforts. Priorities for policymakers should include phasing out the use of fossil fuels and restoring natural ecosystems. In addition, funding is needed for climate adaptation efforts, especially in the developing world," Ripple added.

[someboutard]

You’re out for blood in the older south Picture yourself in your dad’s old house, alright The doors are locked and you can’t see straight You’re lost for good in that pitch black state, alright Go on and hunt me down It’s way too late to turn back now

I don’t hear it when you whisper in your sleep But every morning it’s just waiting there for me I got this feeling i can’t shake I got this broken heart that I just can’t set straight

No I can’t get away

I’m out for blood and I’m not sure why I had a dream all my friends will die, alright And every since it’s been a real weird day Pick up the phone and I forget my name, alright Come on and snap me out It’s way too late to turn back now

I don’t hear it when you whisper in your sleep But every morning it’s just waiting there for me An open door I can’t escape I got this broken heart that I just can’t set straight

No I can’t get away

I don’t hear it when you whisper in your sleep But every morning it’s just waiting there for me I got this feeling i can’t shake I got this broken heart that I just can’t set straight

No I can’t get away

[holdsteady]

We’ve got our hands in your mouth And you say that you’re gonna change We won’t get close, we won’t get near ‘Cause you just say what you think I wanna hear If you won’t talk about it How could I find a way around it?