Donald Trump has decimated the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board and filled it up with his own people, but even they say his deregulation proposals conflict with established science:

For example, regarding the EPA’s plan to reverse a rule that limits what sort of dredging or pesticide applications can take place near smaller streams and wetlands, the advisory board said the proposal “neglects established science” that shows how contamination of groundwater, wetlands and waterways can spread to drinking water supplies. A separate report says the economic models used to justify reducing the average mileage targets for cars and light trucks between now and 2026 were “implausible” based on assumptions about the kinds of vehicles consumers will drive in the future.

….The moves come as the agency has overhauled how it factors science into its decision-making. More than a year ago, the EPA disbanded an expert panel charged with updating assessments of the public health risks posed by soot. In December, EPA’s inspector general concluded it failed to analyze how a plan to loosen emissions standards for truck components would affect children’s health. And it is now drafting a rule to restrict which scientific studies it uses to develop public health policies.

Needless to say, the EPA’s chief flack blew the whole thing off:

In an email, EPA spokeswoman Corry Schiermeyer said the agency “always appreciates and respects the work and advice of the SAB” but emphasized the reviews “may potentially be revised” before they are finalized in January and sent to the administrator.

I do not think this is going to get better in 2020.

Ooh, a long list of things we hope will die in 2020. Amazingly enough, I’m on board with almost all of them. I’ll even add a few of my own:

“Correlation is not causation.” Yeah, we know. This doesn’t make you sound nearly as smart as you think.

Kanye. And Kim too. And all the Kardashians. –My sister

Charts that don’t adjust for inflation. Just stop it unless you have a really good reason.

Cats who are too damn picky to drink from the water bowl unless you fill it up while they’re watching. But of course they’ll happily drink out of any disgusting puddle of goop if you let them outside.

Using your smartphone while driving. And not just on the freeway. Everywhere. –My sister

Entering a doorway and then stopping to figure out which way to go. Take a few steps in and then figure it out. ffs.

Driving 15 mph in a school zone. Speed up a little, people.

Driving 35 mph in parking lots. Slow down, people. –My wife

“Thank you for your service.” I’m not the only one who thinks this always sounds fake, am I?

The wall.

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

The Bernie finger wag. We aren’t a bunch of naughty children, dude. –My wife.

Star Wars. I’m pretty sad that I have to say this.

New sports in the Olympics. We need to get rid of some sports in the Olympics. Do we really have to endure “sport climbing” and 3×3 basketball next year?

Our mysterious “Phase One” trade deal with China is set to be signed:

President Trump said Tuesday he will sign the first phase of a trade deal with China on Jan. 15, as the two nations move to cement a partial truce to the trade war….But even though the White House said a deal was reached more than two weeks ago, neither side has released the exact wording of their agreement. Still, the announced deal has been enough to lift financial markets because many investors feel encouraged about the direction of the talks.

President Trump keeps boasting about how this trade deal is worth $30 billion to America’s farmers. Or maybe $40 billion. Or $50 billion. It’s the greatest trade deal in history!

And yet, for some reason nobody has seen the actual text of the deal. It’s tied up in “translation.” Or “legal review.” Or something. My own guess is that it’s tied up in “this deal doesn’t really do much of anything at all.” But I’m a cynic.

Naturally enough, everyone is writing this week about the decade just past. I’ve been reading a lot of these essays and pondering the same question myself. What did it all mean?

I don’t know. It’s the decade when social media flew out of control. It’s the decade when AI got a lot of hype but was still too underpowered to take seriously. It was the decade when the Republican Party—and quite a few Americans—simply decided they didn’t care about much of anything anymore except keeping liberals out of power. It was the decade when gene editing finally became real with the development of an effective and cheap version of CRISPR. It was the decade when electric cars still didn’t have much of an impact. It was the decade when, yet again, the world did nothing about climate change. It was the decade when the South finally took over college football completely. It was the decade when Islamic terrorism died out. It was the decade when democracy allegedly began a slow decline in favor of autocracy and populism. It was the decade of the superhero movie. It was the decade of facial recognition. It was the decade of a long, slow economic recovery that, somehow, no one seemed to enjoy.

It’s a lot easier to judge decades when they’re far enough away that you know them only from history books. It’s easy for me, for example, to think of the ’30s as the decade of the Great Depression; the ’40s as the decade of World War II; the ’50s as the decade of Ike; and the ’60s as the decade of the counterculture. But then we start to get to the decades I actually lived through, and the complexity of each one is harder to ignore. Do Millennials have a short, snappy take on the ’70s? Or the ’80s? I don’t, really.¹

So what about the teens? I’m on record as believing that the two most important topics of the current moment are AI and climate change, but neither one had any special impact on the teens as opposed to other decades. And in the political realm, I don’t believe that Donald Trump and right-wing populism represent a long-term sea change in either American or world politics, though I might be wrong about that.

In the end, I suppose the thing to do is compare 2010 to 2019. How did life change most drastically? Smartphones and social media are candidates, especially if you take a global view. Travel didn’t change much. Despite lots of hype, entertainment didn’t change much. War became noticeably less effective except against neighboring countries. CRISPR was probably the most important genuinely new invention.² Racial justice gained a higher profile, but nobody did much about it. Religion continued to slowly decline, but that was just the latest of a longtime trend. Wall Street mostly regrouped after the Great Recession instead of creating new weapons of mass financial destruction.

So . . . I dunno. The decade of CRISPR? The decade of the smartphone? Since CRISPR’s biggest impact will probably come in the next decade, I guess I’d have to go with the smartphone. I have some qualms about this choice that I’ll leave for another post, but unless someone comes up with anything better, that’s my official guess.

¹If you put a gun to my head, I guess I’d personally say the ’70s were the decade of oil crises and the collapse of Bretton Woods; and the ’80s were the decade of Reagan, Thatcher, Deng Xiaoping, and John Paul II. I suppose these seem kind of lame, especially regarding the ’70s, but I really do think the biggest event of the ’70s was the slow collapse of the postwar economic consensus. I mean, what’s the alternative? The decade of disco? The decade of OPEC? The decade of the counter-counterculture?

²New in the sense of crossing a meaningful boundary of cost and usefulness, anyway.

I narrowed this down to 16 and then got lazy. I suppose I could get it further down to a top ten, but why bother? It’s not like I pay by the pixel, after all. Besides, I figure each of you can pretty easily narrow it down yourself. In no particular order, here they are:

Barbed-wire fence

Bogotá at night

Clouded sulpher butterfly in flight

Sea lion and kids at the Long Beach Aquarium

Chimney Rock overview on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Pink trumpet tree

Mother and daughter at the Plaza Bolívar

Saddleback Mountain behind the clouds

Two horses near Blowing Rock

The Second Home exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Sunset at Carroll Gap

School bells in Laurel Canyon

Silverado Creek

Haircut in La Candelaria

Water off a duck

Waterfall at Yankee Horse Ridge

This is not a very exclusive list. If you are (a) a cat, and (b) I happened to take a picture of you in 2019, then you make the list!

Hopper

Hilbert

Moloko

Timmy

Mocha

Meowser

Luna

Tony

Tillamook

Girlfriend

Donald Trump has done everything he possibly can to piss off Iran, most recently authorizing a military strike in northern Iraq that killed dozens of members of an Iran-backed militia. Today, supporters of that militia decided to storm the American embassy in Baghdad:

Hundreds of angry supporters of an Iranian-backed militia shouting “Death to America” attempted to storm the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, trapping diplomats inside in response to U.S. airstrikes that killed or wounded scores of militia fighters.

….The angry demonstrators defied appeals delivered over loudspeakers by the group’s leaders not to enter the embassy compound and smashed their way into one of the facility’s reception areas, breaking down fortified doors and bulletproof glass and setting fire to the room….The protesters also smashed security cameras, set two guardrooms ablaze and burned tires. They made a bonfire out of a pile of papers and military MREs (meals ready to eat) found in the reception area, where guards normally search visitors. Kataib Hezbollah flags were draped over the barbed wire protecting the embassy’s high walls.

….By early afternoon, tensions had eased somewhat after an Iraqi army commander showed up and ordered Iraqi security forces, who had initially made no attempt to intervene, to prevent the demonstrators going farther inside the facility. The security forces formed an impromptu buffer between the demonstrators and the American guards inside.

In the end, this particular assault may come to nothing. In fact, that would be my guess. But Israel and Saudi Arabia are both itching for a war against Iran, and Trump seems pretty happy to keep poking the beast until his friends get the war they want—that is, a war that the United States fights for them. Trump probably doesn’t want a serious fight until after the election, so that might slow him down. But things don’t always go the way you hope they do.

I am ending the year much as I began it: worn out and mad at the world. But! At least I have Mother Jones. I may not be able to do anything concrete about Donald Trump until 2020, but in the meantime MoJo allows me to vent my spleen while reminding me every day that not everyone has gone nuts. Some of us are still fighting for a world that’s not delusional—and, better still, a world where we believe in treating people decently.

And that’s it. Am I setting my bar too low these days? Maybe. But I don’t insist on brotherly love or universal kindness or generosity of spirit. Those would be nice, but I’ll settle for treating people decently. Anybody who’s committed to doing at least that much—along with a government that reflects it—is OK in my book. Sadly, it seems like we have a longer way to go on that front than we did a decade ago.

Now, it occurs to me that this is not a very uplifting start to a fundraising pitch. But common decency is undervalued, and it’s something that Mother Jones has always been dedicated to. It doesn’t matter if we’re running an article about undocumented immigrants or schools that work or Donald Trump’s latest bit of hatefulness. Read an inch below the surface and the message is that everyone deserves to be treated decently. We’ve been doing this for nearly 50 years, and one of the things that keeps us going is donations from the people who agree with us. Tomorrow is the last day of our year-end fundraiser, so if you’re a fan of common decency then this is a great time to donate some money to the cause. It will help make 2020 a better year for everyone.

To donate via credit card or PayPal, click here.

I’ve been wanting to do some snow photography for a while, but somehow events always intervene. However, I think I might finally do it this year, so on Saturday I headed out to Mt. Baldy for a bit of practice. I didn’t capture anything great, but I did get a few pretty pictures here and there. Here’s one of them.

Since Friday was a dex night, I was up all night and drove out to Mt. Baldy around 6 am. There was no traffic. By the time I left at 10 am, however, the line of cars snaking up the road was seven miles long. I was astonished. Is this normal? Is the skiing at Mt. Baldy really good enough to be worth that? Can any locals enlighten me?

Unlike past years, only a few of this year’s top charts show something interesting and new. Instead, they’re mostly things we all know already that we could stand to be reminded of. Here they are:

1. CO₂ Emissions

What’s important about this chart is not that CO2 emissions are rising. What’s important is they’re rising at the same rate as they have for the past 50 years. Despite decades of warnings from scientists and calls to action from activists, the world has collectively done nothing. This is a word I use advisedly. It’s obviously not literally true that we’ve done “nothing,” but given the scale of the problem and the meagerness of our response, we’re so close to nothing as hardly to make a difference. Among other things, this is why I think it’s time to stop kidding ourselves that just a few more warnings will do the trick. They won’t.

Here’s a bonus climate change chart. Back in 2006 Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth and everyone said we were finally having a climate moment. More than a decade later, public urgency about climate change has barely budged. Keep this in mind when someone tries to tell you that Greta Thunberg will finally get us all to pay attention.

2. Obamacare Finally Becomes Popular

Obamacare is not yet as beloved as Social Security, but 2019 was the year it finally broke out of 50-50 territory for good. It now has a solid 10-point gap in favorability, and that’s likely to grow steadily as even many Republicans finally start to come around.

3. The Poor Are Doing OK. It’s the Middle Class That’s In the Doldrums.

The poor are, by definition, the worst-off segment of society. However, over the past few decades we’ve spent a lot of money on social programs for the poor, and the result is that their effective incomes have grown nearly as much as incomes of the rich. It’s the middle class that’s seen the most sluggish growth. They’re caught in a trap: they make too much money to qualify for assistance but not enough money to participate in the go-go employment and investment economy of the affluent.

4. OTOH, Median Weekly Earnings Are Finally Rising

Although the working and middle classes have seen pretty sluggish income growth over the past few decades, it’s worth noting that they’ve been doing pretty well since 2015. For the first time since the dotcom boom, their weekly earnings are finally rising about 1 percent per year. But how long will this last?

5. The Black-White Test Score Gap Remains Intractable

The gap in achievement test scores between blacks and whites starts in kindergarten and rises steadily with age. The chart below shows the gap measured in standard deviations, which normalizes the size of the gap between different tests with different scales. It starts at about 0.5 standard deviations in kindergarten and rises to just over 1.0 standard deviations by college.

The worst part of this is that we’ve made no recent progress on it. The gap closed some during the ’70s and ’80s, but since then nothing has changed. This is one of our greatest failures as a society, and it represents something real, not just an artifact of the way we do testing. Until we address it, we will never even begin to make progress on racial justice in America.

6. The Kids Are Alright

This is just a reminder that teenagers today are generally in much better shape than we were back when we were teenagers. The chart below is for drug use, but the same trend is visible in rates of teen pregnancy; violence; arrest rates; achievement scores; and so forth. Is it because of lead? Maybe! But whatever it is, it’s real.

7. Top Tax Rates Don’t Affect Economic Growth

Tax rates on the rich simply don’t affect economic growth more than marginally. There are deadweight losses, as with any tax, but even those are minimal. The only reason to cut taxes on the rich is because the rich like it and will shower you with donations if you do it.

8. Deaths of Despair and the Year 2000

We all know about the recent rise in “deaths of despair.” This chart shows that the rise wasn’t gradual, but suddenly inflected upward in 2000. It’s yet another data point in my hobbyhorse observation that a whole bunch of things all inflected upward right around 2000. But why? I still don’t have a good explanation.

9. Men Settle Down When They Become Fathers

Actually, a recent study showed that they settle down when they learn they’re about to become fathers. And by “settle down,” we mean they don’t get arrested as much. But the effect is permanent and gets even better over time.

10. Inflation Is Low

Inflation is low right now, and we often wonder if it will stay low. But maybe that’s the wrong question. As this chart shows, US inflation has been generally low ever since World War II with one exception: the oil crisis years of the ’70s and ’80s. But the boomers who currently run the world are obsessed with that era the same way our parents were obsessed with the lessons of the war era and their parents were obsessed with the lessons of the Great Depression. But there’s no reason to be. Maybe the real question is: why do we think inflation should be anything other than low?

By the way: This is yet another chart showing just how much the ’70s and ’80s sucked. They really did, and we’ve learned too many bad lessons from them. If there’s any good reason for pushing the boomer generation out of power, its preoccupation with the suckiness of its formative years is it.

11. Mindset Training Doesn’t Work

Mindset training is a trendy practice that suggests students’ performance can be improved simply by telling them that their brainpower is not fixed forever, but can grow and change with effort. But as the chart below shows, it turns out it doesn’t really work.

This chart, however, is not really about mindset training per se. Who knows? Maybe someone will figure out a way to make it work better someday. It’s really about two things: (1) the great replication crisis and (2) being too credulous about unbelievable claims. In the first case, it turned out that when the initial mindset studies were replicated, they showed no results. This has happened a lot over the past few years and suggests that social science research is seriously flawed. In the second case, it’s a warning that, really, we should all be a little more skeptical of bold claims about small things. Merely talking about mindset can seriously improve student performance? It’s not impossible, but it hardly seems all that likely, does it? We should treat a lot more claims like that.