The Dish

Last week California declared a drought emergency. Amelia Urry catches us up:

In the past two weeks, the percentage of the state experiencing extreme drought conditions shot from 28 percent up to a vertigo-inducing 63 percent, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is at a perilously low 17 percent of its usual level this time of year [as seen above]. Since as much as 65 percent of Cali’s water comes from this virtual water cooler, and much of that goes toward the state’s multibillion-dollar agricultural industry, the effects of a catastrophic water shortage may be widely felt in the year to come.

Though droughts are not uncommon in the region’s Mediterranean climate, the pattern of the past few years points to a slow-mo climate crisis crashing into the West Coast. 2013 was California’s driest year on record, with about two thirds of the state experiencing severe water shortage and fire danger.

Christopher C. Burt details the agricultural impacts:

A major drought in California would have nation-wide implications.

California is the number one state in cash farm receipts with 11.3 percent of the U.S. total. The state accounts for 15 percent of national receipts for crops and 7.1 percent of the U.S. revenue for livestock and livestock products. California’s agricultural abundance includes more than 400 commodities. The state produces nearly half of U.S.-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables. Across the nation, U.S. consumers regularly purchase several crops produced solely in California. The state is also the nation’s largest agricultural exporter.

Chris Mooney examines the region’s fire potential:

Hotter, drier conditions favor wildfires. Indeed, California has already seen several significant fires since the October 31 end of the traditional fire season, including December’s Big Sur fire and the ongoing Colby Fire in the Los Angeles area. That’s a bad sign. So is the fact that in just the first 11 days of January, the state saw 154 fires that burned 598 acres. That’s way above the five-year average for this time of year.

For California, seven of the 10 largest fires in state history have occurred since the year 2000. And if these dry conditions persist throughout 2014, another new fire may be added to that list.

And the future looks drier and drier:

Over the longer term, climate projections suggest that this [drought] risk will continue or increase. According to the draft National Climate Assessment, the US Southwest—which includes California and five other states—can expect less precipitation, hotter temperatures, and drier soils in the future, meaning that by 2060, there could be as much as a 35-percent increase in water demand. Along with that comes a 25- to 50-percent increased risk of water shortages.

(Image: NOAA/NASA)

Julie Myerson calls her mother-in-law’s passing “as good as I can imagine a 21st-century death to be.” She urges others to share their positive experiences:

Helen’s death felt oddly like the labor of birth: exhausting and devastating, yes, but natural too and, in some strange way, productive. More crucially, and reassuringly, the nurses understood this far better than we did. As the moment drew near and, inevitably distressed on Helen’s behalf, we requested pain relief, these nurses explained, with real gentleness and compassion, that it would be far better for her if they did not intervene. And they were right. Her final moments were peaceful. And to be allowed to be there with her as they ticked on past – it’s not something I can put into words. …

I’ve thought often about whether or not to write about this, especially when I read yet another newspaper account of how the medicalization of death, the obsession with intervention and saving at all costs, is robbing us all of our right to die in peace. But I’ve always hesitated. Partly because death, any death, is such an intensely intimate experience and seeking to describe it may be, for lots of reasons, a step too far. And partly, of course, because this particular death belongs at least as much to the others who were present as it does to me. All you have here is a purely subjective description from someone who loved her children’s grandmother very much.

And yet. It seems to me that what we all experienced on the 11th floor of St Thomas’ Hospital on that April evening was something that ought to be known about, appreciated, celebrated even. We surely can’t be the only family who’ve had such an experience? So I hope that Helen – whose love and friendship I feel moved to have known – would forgive me. Because how can we possibly debate these issues with any honesty if we don’t seek to share our most positive experiences of intensely private moments?

Stan Alcorn investigates why Internet users almost never share audio the way they share, say, pet videos:

“Audio never goes viral,” writes radio and podcast producer Nate DiMeo. “If you posted the most incredible story – literally, the most incredible story that has ever been told since people have had the ability to tell stories, it will never, ever get as many hits as a video of a cat with a moustache.” It’s hardly a fair fight, audio vs. cat video, but it’s the one that’s fought on Facebook every day. DiMeo’s glum conclusion is an exaggeration of what [viral video-maker Bianca] Giaever reads as the moral of her own story: “People will watch a bad video more than [they will listen to] good audio,” she says.

Those in the Internet audio business tend to give two explanations for this disparity.

“The greatest reason is structural,” says Jesse Thorn, who hosts a public radio show called “Bullseye” and runs a podcast network called Maximum Fun. “Audio usage takes place while you’re doing something else.” You can listen while you drive or do the dishes, an insuperable competitive advantage over text or video, which transforms into a disadvantage when it comes to sharing the listening experience with anyone out of earshot. “When you’re driving a car, you’re not going to share anything,” says Thorn.

The second explanation is that you can’t skim sound. An instant of video is a still, a window into the action that you can drag through time at will. An instant of audio, on the other hand, is nothing. “If I send someone an article, if they see the headline and read a few things, they know what I want them to know,” a sound artist and radio producer told me. “If I send someone audio, they have to, like… listen to it.” It’s a lot to ask of an Internet audience.

For some radio makers, social media incompatibility is a sign of countercultural vitality. Thorn has called his own work “anti-viral,” and believes that entertaining his niche audience is “still so much better than making things that convince aunts to forward them to each other.”

(Image by Flickr user JB912)

The second round of Syria peace talks (“Geneva II”) kicks off this week. Colum Lynch and John Hudson explain how the talks were almost scuttled when the UN tried to invite Iran:

Ban [Ki Moon] said that he had granted Iran the invitation after Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif had assured him that his government supported the key goals of the conference, including its call for a transitional government. “Foreign Minister Zarif and I agree that the goal of the negotiations is to establish, by mutual consent, a transitional governing body with full executive powers,” he said. “Therefore, as convenor and host of the conference, I have decided to issue an invitation to Iran to participate.” A misunderstanding between Ban and Zarif appears to be the source of the problem. Shortly after Iran received its invitation to Geneva, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said it would attend the talks without preconditions — a statement that infuriated the Syrian opposition. Ban’s spokesman, Martin Nesirky, is now telling reporters that Zarif and Ban did in fact agree on preconditions.

The invitation was quickly withdrawn and the talks are back on track. To be honest, I don’t see why Iran cannot play a role here. They are Assad’s critical ally and have leverage over him no one else has. Assad is not going anywhere any time soon – even as the horrifying atrocities mount in a brutal war that could play out for years without resolution either way. And one of the points of the opening toward Iran is precisely that it can play a part in dealing with this kind of regional problem (even though it has played such a major role in fomenting the war and foiling the opposition forces). At some point, we have to get real and ask ourselves if we care enough about the war’s toll to try new avenues of diplomacy. Paul Pillar thinks the Iranians are being treated with unfair suspicion:

The episode has exhibited the general tendency, which appears on other issues as well, to worst-case what Iran might be up to.

Why would the Iranians be more likely to get in the way of negotiating the Syrian regime out of existence than the Syrian regime itself would be? A useful bit of background to remember is that the odd-couple alliance between Iran and Syria began as a response to both being rivals of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, which is no longer a factor. Yes, there are some other commonalities, such as economic ties and the relationships of each with Lebanese Hezbollah, but if Assad were on shaky enough ground to make an Assad-less transitional government a reality, his regime would be as much of a liability as an asset to Tehran.

It is hardly surprising that Iran would balk at the sort of conditions being imposed on it to participate in Geneva II. The Iranians are being called on to declare full allegiance to the outcome of an earlier conference from which they were pointedly excluded. Who else would be willing to do that? And if Iran’s assistance to one side in the Syrian civil war is some kind of disqualifier, it is hard to explain why similar conditions are not applied to those who have stoked the war by supplying lethal assistance to the other side.

Meanwhile, Steven Heydemann advises against expanding the scope of the talks beyond negotiating an end to the conflict:

To shift the focus of Geneva talks away from core political issues would be a significant mistake. It would continue a process of re-legitimating the Assad regime, further delay accountability to its tens of thousands of victims, and render even less likely the prospects for a political transition in the future. To broaden the agenda will be a vindication of the Assad regime’s strategy of diverting attention from Geneva I. It would send a clear signal that the Geneva I framework — already on life support — will be all but dead and buried. If the U.S. and other international actors wish to prepare for failure in Montreux, their best bet is not to change the subject, but to figure out how to change conditions on the ground and create the conditions for the next round of negotiations to succeed.

Morton Abramowitz takes a closer look at the humanitarian problem:

International aid goes to the needy in Assad controlled areas where the population is greater and apparently lesser amounts to the non-Assad controlled areas where the need is probably greater but more difficult to deliver. Assad forces and some rebel groups often prevent aid deliveries. The US is leaning now on Russia and through others on Iran to find ways of persuading mostly the Assad regime to allow more goods into encircled areas. There is the belief that the Sochi games and efforts to embarrass the Russians may help prod Moscow to persuade Assad to allow more goods into beleaguered areas. Assad has recently offered Moscow to allow goods into some encircled areas including Aleppo but only if there is a ceasefire. The rebels have looked with justifiable suspicion at the government’s behavior on this score. Even if Geneva produces increased internal deliveries, it is doubtful they will be permanent or proportionate to the need.

(Photo: from the Syrian opposition groups, detailing evidence of torture of those in Assad’s custody in the civil war. Via CNN. See the full slideshow here.)