Storm runoff can pose challenges for waterways like Paint Creek, which is known for being clear and cold. Runoff can disrupt a waterway's habitat by carrying sediment into the water. Hernz Laguerre, Jr., The Detroit News
Carol Thompson:
As climate change fuels storms and brings warmer average temperatures to the Midwest, it also is ushering in a challenging era for Michigan rivers and the fish and bugs that live in them.
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Detroit News File Photo
Melissa Nann and Burke Riley Beggin:
$1 billion for the federal Great Lakes restoration program from the bipartisan infrastructure bill will speed the cleanup of nine damaged areas in Michigan to completion by 2030, officials said.
The Michigan areas to be cleaned up, including the Detroit, Rouge and St. Clair rivers and River Raisin, are among 25 in the lakes region designated as "areas of concern" by the Environmental Protection Agency due to damage caused by industrial pollution and development.
President Joe Biden is expected to announce the new funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative during a trip Thursday to Lorain, Ohio.
MODIS satellite image of the Great Lakes showing maximum ice extent on March 4, 2009. Image credit: NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory
Nearly all scientific sampling of the Great Lakes is done between May and October, when the lakes are free of ice and the water is warmer.
But this month, scientists from more than a dozen U.S. and Canadian institutions, including Central Michigan University, will brave the elements to sample all five Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair in a first-of-its-kind coordinated campaign called the Winter Grab.
Teams will drill through ice to collect water samples, measure light levels at various depths and net tiny zooplankton as part of a broader effort to better understand the changing face of winter on the Great Lakes, where climate warming is increasing winter air temperatures, decreasing ice-cover extent and changing precipitation patterns.
The specific goal of the Winter Grab is to help fill key wintertime knowledge gaps about ice properties, water movement, nutrient concentrations and lake biology. The event is funded in part by the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan, a partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Scientists have studied the Great Lakes extensively, but surprisingly, we know very little about what takes place during the winter,” said Don Uzarski, director of the CMU Institute for Great Lakes Research. …
Shankar Vedantam and NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast:
The value of local newspapers can hardly be overstated right now. We read our local papers to track the spread of COVID-19 in our states, and the availability of ICU beds at nearby hospitals. We read to get a sense of how nearby businesses are faring, and what nursing homes are doing to keep residents safe. More of us are reading more news all the time. But at the same time that readership is soaring, advertising revenue—which keeps newspapers financially afloat—is plummeting. As a result, a number of newspapers across the country are laying off workers, even shuttering. …
Whereas most of us treat newspapers like consumer products, new research from Paul Gao, Chang Lee, and Dermot Murphy suggests that they might be more like police departments. Gao, Lee, and Murphy looked at how newspaper closures might affect the cost of borrowing in local governments. What they found is a price tag that may give many taxpayers sticker shock.
This week on Hidden Brain, we look at an unusual case of what economists refer to as a free-rider problem. And we ask, who bears the cost when nobody wants to pay?
From Washington Post China correspondent Gerry Shih:
As new coronavirus cases and the sense of panic ebb in China, the country that was first struck by the disease has been gripped by a wave of nationalist pride, conspiracy theories and a perennial mix of anti-American sentiments: suspicion, superiority, schadenfreude.
NPR’s Sam Gringlas, February 26, 2020: “With An Election On The Horizon, Older Adults Get Help Spotting Fake News.”
Special thanks to WCMU’s Amy Robinson for alerting us to this story.
From the Post Reports podcast, Kim Bellware on how disinformation about the coronavirus is spreading online.
→ See also, from the same source, “The coronavirus is spreading rapidly. So is misinformation about it.”
CARLOS GARCIA RAWLINS / REUTERS
Alexis C. Madrigal, reporting for the Atlantic.
Fresh Air’s Geoff Nunberg:
My choice of “disinformation” needs some explaining. It isn't a new word — just one of the family of names we give to the malignancies that contaminate the public discourse, along with “propaganda,” and in particular “misinformation” and “fake news.” Each of those last two was chosen as word of the year by some dictionary or organization in 2017.
But over the past couple of years “disinformation” has been on a tear — it's 10 times as common in media headlines as it was five years ago, to the point where it's nudged its siblings aside. That rise suggests a basic shift in focus: What most troubles us now isn't just the plague of deceptive information on the Internet, but the organized campaigns that are spreading the infection.
In 2015, an anti-vaccination campaign in Ireland caused a sudden fall in the uptake of the HPV vaccine. Then Laura Brennan got involved. New York Times Video Op-Ed by Adam Westbrook, featuring cancer researcher David Robert Grimes.
BBC Witness History (9 minutes, audio) on “Britain’s Secret Propanda War: How Sex, Jazz and ‘Fake News’ Were Used to Undermine the Nazis in World War Two”:
In 1941, the UK created a top secret propaganda department, the Political Warfare Executive, to wage psychological warfare on the German war machine. It was responsible for spreading rumours, generating fake news, leaflet drops and creating fake clandestine German radio stations to spread misinformation and erode enemy morale. We hear archive recordings of those involved and speak to professor Jo Fox of the Institute of Historical Research about the secret history of British “black propaganda.”
Kevin Roose, writing for the New York Times:
As impeachment looms, disinformation experts are bracing for a fresh cyclone of chaos, complete with fast-twitch media manipulation, droves of false and misleading claims, and hyper-polarized audiences fiercely clinging to their side’s version of reality.
CNN‘s David Robson on “How to be a human lie detector of fake news, according to the latest science” (September 16, 2019). Overview, analysis, advice, and useful links to “the literature.”
News About Truth
In the West African nation of Gambia, people are tuning in — on TV, radios and cellphones — to testimony about alleged abuses by former president Yahya Jammeh. NPR’s Jason Beubien on the hearings of the Gambian Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations Commission.
Is the future urban? Is geography fate? Why and where are we polarized? The CE theme for 2022–2023 is “Cities, Coasts, and Everywhere Else.”
→ Details, events, and resources
Critical Engagements is a collaborative project housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences that makes the academic mission of Central Michigan University concrete by highlighting how our students, faculty, and community are tackling the world’s most pressing and difficult questions. → More details
