OBLIGATORY COVERAGE OF THE THINGS YOU PROBABLY EXPECTED ME TO WRITE ABOUT THIS WEEK

A lot of the things that happened this week were considered super-important, and they are in fact important things, but they're important things that weren't terribly surprising or just sort of expected. Still, they're important, so let's talk about them a bit.

First off: Donald Trump's impeachment trial progressed, with the Republican majority in the Senate voting to not hear testimony from any witnesses or any other new evidence. This of course is nonsensical in and of itself (a trial without witnesses?), and the excuses the Republicans have been making for their decision are moreso - blaming the impeachment investigation for not calling witnesses when the Trump administration made clear they wouldn't allow anybody to testify, that sort of thing. After the vote, Republican senatros just started straight-up admitting that the impeachment investigation had in fact proven that Trump was worthy of being impeached - they just sort of decided that it wasn't worth punishing him for it. Anyway, after all of this happened, Trump rescinded the standing order preventing the USA from using land mines and then extended his travel ban to encompass more countries, openly admitting that it was only to prevent citizens of those (non-white) countries from emigrating to the USA permanently, because Donald Trump is a garbage human and possibly one of the worst people on the planet.

Meanwhile, over in the UK, Brexit happened, and now the UK is on a one-year temporary EU deal where they still have access to the EU single market for now while they work out new trade deals. Boris Johnson is already proclaiming that the UK won't abide by EU regulations in any EU trade deal, and is saying that the UK wants a trade deal with the EU like Australia has. (As I have written before: Australia does not currently have a trade deal with the EU.) It'll probably take a few months for the Brits to realize how fucked they in fact are now, with the exception of Scotland, which is already agitating for a new independence referendum because of course they are, they didn't actually want to leave the EU in the first place.

Oh, and the coronavirus is still happening. Disputing reports as to whether the "dormant carrier state" that was previously discussed is in fact a thing - right now the money seems to be on it not being a thing, which means this is just your average scary flu epidemic (which is bad enough), and one where people are using it as an excuse to be racist towards Chinese people - or, in the case of Italy, anybody who's Asian because I guess they all sort of look the same, and also there's an advisory there against Chinese restaurants now? (My wife and I are going to Italy for a long-deserved vacation in little over a week and now I guess we have to eat at a Chinese place at least once, because fuck that.)

LES CRABITANTS

A new report from a scientific journal ("Science of the Total Environment") has bad news about ocean acidification, which - like practically everything else about climate change - is happening faster and worse than scientists expected, and what scientists expected was worse than what everybody else expected because the scientists pay a lot more attention than most people do. Anyway, this report showed that Dungeness crabs' shells are being corroded. Which is bad! But let's talk about why it's bad and how it happened.

Ocean acidificiation is one of the byproducts and feedback effects of climate change. More CO2 in the atmosphere means, inevitably, more CO2 in the ocean as well, because of the basic water cycle - when water vapour in the air collects into water and then rain, that vapour takes along stuff in the air with it, so if there's more carbon dioxide in the air then of course you ultimately end up with more of it in the water as well. Adding CO2 to water lowers its PH level and makes it slightly more acidic (as anybody who has ever mixed soda water with baking soda knows).

This is a problem because all life in the ocean evolved to live in specific types of seawater, and climate change changing the seawater means it's changing habitats for the stuff living in the water. (This goes for temperature as well as acidity, obviously, but today we're only talking about acidity and not, for example, fish populations migrating north to avoid warmer waters they can't survive in. Which is also happening, but I digress.) Some stuff - like algae and some species of jellyfish - thrive when seawater is slightly more acidic. But others don't - especially not sea life which build shells or exoskeletons. That includes coral, of course (and at this point the Great Barrier Reef is very likely going to be dead within a decade or two at most, with other coral reefs soon to follow, because we were warned about coral bleaching twenty years ago and all decided to do nothing), but it also includes most shellfish.

In the case of the Dungeness crab - which is an important harvest stock for fishermen in the Pacific Northwest - increased acidity in the water means that young crabs have their shells corroded, which makes them easier prey both because their shells are softer and because they use their shell weight to control their buoyancy to help them travel when they're underwater. It also appears to be harming the little hairs the crabs have which they use to help them navigate, which means they'll move more slowly and have trouble finding food. Basically all of this handicaps the crab for life, assuming the crab lives to see adulthood.

And all of these impacts were sort of expected, because "what happens if the water is more acidic" is something the crab experts figured out a while ago. The problem is that this wasn't expected to happen for another fifty years. Like I said at the beginning: faster and worse.

SPEAKING OF CLIMATE CHANGE, LET'S TALK ABOUT LOCUSTS

Although you've probably heard the phrase "a plague of locusts" before, it turns out that a plague of locusts is a real and definable thing, which surprised the hell out of me. I just thought it was a dramatic expression, like "hotter than Georgia asphalt" or "colder than Stephen Harper's heart" but no, it turns out a plague of locusts is when locust swarms capable of devouring entire crops remain in an area for longer than one year. So now you know that.

East Africa isn't suffering from a plague of locusts yet (the last plague of locusts in the region lasted from 1985 to 1987), but unusually heavy and unseasonal rains in Somalia and Ethopia (cliiiiiiimaaaaate chaaaaaaange) have led to much, much larger locust swarms than the region has seen in almost two decades. Somalia has declared the locusts a national emergency because the locusts are eating all of their grain crops, Ethiopia is considering doing the same and Kenya is currently trying to stop the locusts from advancing through Kenya and into Uganda and South Sudan. Meanwhile, Djibouti is shaking. (No, actually they're fighting the locusts too, but I never miss the opportunity to make that one sorry-ass Djibouti joke in the appropriate context.)

Kenya's agriculture ministry has appealed to the UN for aid, and they've warned that if the locust swarms aren't checked now, the swarms could grow 500 times in size by June. (June is when the dry season starts and locust populations either stabilize or shrink.) 500 times sounds like a lot, but it's way more when you realize we're already talking about billions and billions of locusts. And of course it's not like East African countries were terribly food-secure in the first place, and locusts devouring all of their crops will mean a lot of people will starve - or flee somewhere more stable. Oh, and famines do tend to start wars as often as not.

THE ENTERTAINMENT SECTION

Movies watched this week:

Big Night (1996, Stanley Tucci/Campbell Scott, theatre) - 4/5

We've caught up on the first few episodes of Avenue 5, Armando Iannucci's new show about a dysfunctional space cruise ship, and I am enjoying it thus far - the first episode suffers from a bit of set-up-the-premise-itis but after that it starts to find its groove as, with every subsequent episode, they get progressively more fucked. We also watched the finale of The Good Place, which is the rare show which absolutely stuck the landing - I mean, most shows sort of just kind of struggle to get to the end rather than ending just about perfectly, you know?

See you in seven.