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From barks to gobbles, the sounds that most animals use to communicate are innate, not learned. However, a few species, including humans, can imitate new sounds and use them in appropriate social contexts. This ability, known as vocal learning, is one of the underpinnings of language.

Vocal learning has also been observed in bats, some birds, and cetaceans, a group that includes whales and dolphins. But while avian researchers have characterized vocal learning in songbirds down to specific neural pathways, studying the trait in large marine animals has presented more of a challenge.

Now, University of San Diego graduate student Whitney Musser and Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute senior research scientist Dr. Ann Bowles have found that killer whales (Orcinus orca) can engage in cross-species vocal learning: when socialized with bottlenose dolphins, they shifted the types of sounds they made to more closely match their social partners. The results, published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, suggest that vocal imitation may facilitate social interactions in cetaceans.

Killer whales have complex vocal repertoires made up of clicks, whistles and pulsed calls -- repeated brief bursts of sound punctuated with silence. The acoustic features of these vocalizations, such as their duration, pitch and pulse pattern, vary across social groups. Whales that are closely related or live together produce similar pulsed calls that carry vocal characteristics distinct to the group, known as a dialect.

"There's been an idea for a long time that killer whales learn their dialect, but it isn't enough to say they all have different dialects so therefore they learn. There needs to be some experimental proof so you can say how well they learn and what context promotes learning," said Bowles.

Testing vocal learning ability in social mammals usually requires observing the animal in a novel social situation, one that might stimulate them to communicate in new ways. Bottlenose dolphins provide a useful comparison species in this respect: they make generally similar sounds but produce them in different proportions, relying more on clicks and whistles than the pulsed calls that dominate killer whale communication.

"We had a perfect opportunity because historically, some killer whales have been held with bottlenose dolphins," said Bowles. By comparing old recordings of vocalization patterns from the cross-socialized subjects with recordings of killer whales and bottlenose dolphins housed in same-species groups, Bowles and her team were able to evaluate the degree to which killer whales learned vocalization patterns from their cross-species social partners.

All three killer whales that had been housed with dolphins for several years shifted the proportions of different call types in their repertoire to more closely match the distribution found in dolphins -- they produced more clicks and whistles and fewer pulsed calls. The researchers also found evidence that killer whales can learn completely new sounds: one killer whale that was living with dolphins at the time of the experiment learned to produce a chirp sequence that human caretakers had taught to her dolphin pool-mates before she was introduced to them.

Vocal learning skills alone don't necessarily mean that killer whales have language in the same way that humans do. However, they do indicate a high level of neural plasticity, the ability to change circuits in the brain to incorporate new information. "Killer whales seem to be really motivated to match the features of their social partners," said Bowles, though the adaptive significance of the behavior is not yet known.

There are immediate reasons to study the vocal patterns of cetaceans: these marine mammals are threatened by human activities through competition for fishery resources, entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with vessels, exposure to pollutants and oil spills and, ultimately, shrinking habitats due to anthropogenic climate change. If their social bonds are closely linked to their vocalizations, killer whales' ability to survive amidst shifting territories and social groups may be tied to their ability to adapt their communication strategies.

"It's important to understand how they acquire [their vocalization patterns], and lifelong, to what degree they can change it, because there are a number of different [cetacean] populations on the decline right now," said Bowles. "And where killer whales go, we can expect other small whale species to go -- it's a broader question."

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dolphins and whales; sea life; marine biology; animals; environmental awareness; exotic species; ecology; environmental policy

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Killer whales learn to communicate like dolphins

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The sounds that most animals use to communicate are innate, not learned. However, a few species, including humans, can imitate new sounds and use them in appropriate social contexts. This ability, known as vocal learning, is one of the underpinnings of language.

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Seeing a whale stranded on a beach often provokes a strong reaction. It can make people curious - beached whales can do strange things, like explode. It can also be upsetting to witness a creature so magnificent in water reduced to lifeless blubber on land. What rarely registers, however, is the lost opportunity for carbon sequestration.

Whales, particularly baleen and sperm whales, are among the largest creatures on Earth. Their bodies are enormous stores of carbon, and their presence in the ocean shapes the ecosystems around them.

From the depths of the ocean, these creatures are also helping to determine the temperature of the planet - and it's something that we've only recently started to appreciate.

"On land, humans directly influence the carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems through logging and the burning of forests and grasslands," according to a 2010 scientific paper. "In the open ocean, the carbon cycle is assumed to be free of direct human influences."

But that assumption neglects the surprising impact of whaling.

Humans have killed whales for centuries, their bodies providing us with everything from meat to oil to whalebone. The earliest record of commercial whaling was in 1000 CE. Since then, tens of millions of whales have been killed, and experts believe that populations may have declined from anywhere between 66% and 90%.

The bodies of whales, among the largest creatures on Earth, are huge stores of carbon (Credit: Alamy)

When whales die, they sink to the ocean floor - and all the carbon that is stored in their enormous bodies is transferred from surface waters to the deep sea, where it remains for centuries or more.

In the 2010 study, scientists found that before industrial whaling, populations of whales (excluding sperm whales) would have sunk between 190,000 to 1.9 million tonnes of carbon per year to the bottom of the ocean - that's the equivalent of taking between 40,000 and 410,000 cars off the road each year. But when the carcass is prevented from sinking to the seabed - instead, the whale is killed and processed - that carbon is released into the atmosphere.

Andrew Pershing, a marine scientist at the University of Maine and an author of that study, estimates that over the course of the 20th Century whaling added about 70 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. "This is a lot, but 15 million cars do this in a single year. The US currently has 236 million cars," he says.

But whales are not only valuable in death. The tides of excrement that these mammals produce are also surprisingly relevant to the climate.

Whales feed in the deep ocean, then return to the surface to breathe and poo. Their iron-rich faeces creates the perfect growing conditions for phytoplankton. These creatures may be microscopic, but, taken together, phytoplankton have an enormous influence on the planet's atmosphere, capturing an estimated 40% of all CO2 produced - four times the amount captured by the Amazon rainforest.

"We need to think of whaling as being a tragedy that has removed a huge organic carbon pump from the ocean that would have been having a much larger multiplying effect on phytoplankton productivity and the ocean's ability to absorb carbon," says Vicki James, policy manager at Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC).

Whale poo is a powerful fertiliser for the ocean's phytoplankton, which have a large potential to capture carbon (Credit: Alamy)

The ocean's missing whales have had some unexpected impacts, too.

For instance, as whale populations declined, the orcas that predated them turned to smaller marine mammals like sea otters. The otters subsequently declined, leading to the spread of sea urchins, which munched away the kelp forests around the North Atlantic - with a knock-on effect on marine carbon sequestration.

What this means is that restoring whale populations to their pre-whaling numbers could be an important tool in tackling climate change, sequestering carbon both directly and indirectly, and thus helping to make a small dent in the enormous volume of CO2 emitted by fossil fuels every year.

There have been various other proposals for how to achieve this reduction, including tree-planting and stimulating phytoplankton blooms by adding iron to the ocean, a form of geoengineering known as iron fertilisation. But tree-planting requires a scarce resource: terrestrial land, which may already be in use as another valuable habitat or farmland. The beauty of restoring whale populations is that there is plenty of space in the ocean - space once filled with whales.

The resulting plumes of whale poo would also vastly outstrip the potential of ocean iron fertilisation. It would take 200 successful blooms per year to match the potential of a fully restored whale population, according to Pershing's study.

Marine phytoplankton capture carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, acting as a carbon sink (Credit: Alamy)

And, unlike with risky geoengineering techniques, the benefits would not just accrue to the climate, but to the whole ecosystem.

"Whale carcasses provide a unique habitat for deep sea species, many of which are only found on these 'whale falls'. Research has shown that a single skeleton can provide food and habitat for up to 200 species during the final stages of decay," says WDC's James.

In 2019, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a report looking at the benefits of putting whales back in the ocean. And they did it in a way that politicians would understand: by putting a dollar value on it.

This study found that, when you add up the value of the carbon sequestered by a whale during its lifetime, alongside other benefits like better fisheries and ecotourism, the average great whale is worth more than $2m (£1.48m), with the entire global stock amounting to over $1tn (£740bn).

The economists behind this study are now working on a project to transform this price tag from theory into reality, through a mechanism known as carbon offsetting. The idea is to persuade carbon emitters to pay a certain amount of money to protect whale populations, rather than invest in reducing their own emissions, helping them to achieve a neutral carbon footprint.

"What you're doing is valuing the service from the whales, because they're sequestering carbon dioxide," says Thomas Cosimano, one of the economists who co-authored the IMF paper. "It doesn't mean that whales aren't doing other things. This is just a benchmark we can use to establish a lower bound on what the value of the whale would be."

With the carbon-capturing potential of whales quantified, economists are devising an offsetting scheme centred on whales (Credit: Alamy)

It's a complicated scheme, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility: the team has been working on a similar carbon-market-based approach for protecting elephants from poachers in the central tropical forests of Africa, which is expected to be in place by the end of the year.

Already, a Chilean charity called the Fundación MERI is figuring out the foundations for a whale-based carbon market, installing early-warning acoustic buoys that will monitor the locations of whales and generate alternative routes for ships. It is believed to be the world's first project to protect whales because of the carbon storage that they provide.

The IMF study concludes that whale protection must now become a top priority in the global effort to tackle climate change.

"Since the role of whales is irreplaceable in mitigating and building resilience to climate change, their survival should be integrated into the objectives of the 190 countries that in 2015 signed the Paris Agreement for combating climate risk," the authors write.

Later this year, the UN climate conference will take place in Scotland, a country whose coasts regularly host species like minke and humpback whales. With a carbon market for whales now a real possibility, perhaps it's time to put these creatures on the agenda.

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Sophie Yeo edits the UK nature, ecology and conservation newsletter Inkcap The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg CO2. The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Find out more about how we calculated this figure here Join one million Future fans by liking us on If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "The Essential List". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. Facebook, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram. . .
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Seeing a whale stranded on a beach often provokes a strong reaction. It can make people curious - beached whales can do strange things, like explode. It can also be upsetting to witness a creature so magnificent in water reduced to lifeless blubber on land.

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10 Things You Didn't Know About SeaWorld - SeaWorld of Hurt

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Discover ten shocking truths about what really happens behind SeaWorld's closed doors.

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The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program

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When scientists discover a new fossil skull, they compare it to skulls that have already been identified as particular early human species. In this activity, you get the chance to be the scientist! Choose a mystery skull to identify by clicking on it.

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Whales have existed for millions of years. Watch this animation, from the Sant Ocean Hall, to see how they evolved from land-dwellers to the animals we know today. Discover more about whale evolution in our Ocean Over Time interactive.

Note: this video contains no audio.

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Whales have existed for millions of years. Watch this animation, from the Sant Ocean Hall , to see how they evolved from land-dwellers to the animals we know today. Discover more about whale evolution in our Ocean Over Time interactive. Note: this video contains no audio.

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We are living through a time when the simple act of caring seems to be at a premium, at least in certain parts of our body politic. And that makes the following post by Mike Rose, a highly respected education scholar at the University of California at Los Angeles, especially topical and poignant. Rose, who has researched and written about literacy, cognition, language and the struggles of America's working class, examines what it means to care in a classroom in a way you may have never considered before.

Rose has taught over several decades - from kindergarten and elementary writing to adult literacy - and has made some important contributions to the education field. He has written nearly a dozen books, including " The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker, " which demonstrated the heavy cognitive demands of blue-collar and service work and what it takes to do such work well, despite the tendency of many to underestimate and undervalue the intelligence involved in such work.

The best-selling " Lives on the Boundary" tells the story of the struggles and achievements of unprepared students and how their lack of literacy skills is a result of poor education - not a shortage of intelligence. Other books he has written include " Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education," " Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America" and " Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us." Part of this post is drawn from "Possible Lives."

Care is a central tenet in the helping professions, most fully developed in education by the philosopher Nel Noddings. The way I see it, care in teaching is a special kind of care. To be sure, there is a positive regard for one's students, a commitment to their social and emotional well-being. But there is another element to care, one less frequently discussed, and that is a commitment to students' cognitive development. You are using your mind to foster the intellectual growth of others, to help them become better readers and writers and thinkers.

I've been thinking again about care in relation to today's calls for racial justice, particularly the way justice is embodied and enacted in real time, in the moment. Consider, for example, how everyday, small interactions in teaching, many of them unplanned, some lasting less than a minute, can reveal a deep level of care and also serve larger egalitarian and emancipatory goals.

I want to use as an example a passage adapted from " Possible Lives" that takes place in Calexico, a city of 40,100 people on the California-Mexico border - the name fuses the Cal of California with the - exico of Mexico.

The central figure is Elena Castro, an extraordinary third-grade bilingual education teacher who also is a mentor to first-year teachers at her school. What I describe took place before 1998 when California passed Proposition 227, the "English for the Children" initiative that in effect eliminated bilingual education in the state. In 2016, voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 58, which restored bilingual education in California.

Before covid-19 pushed the realities of schooling into our kitchens and living rooms, we were surrounded by enchanted talk about a digital deliverance from the stodgy, old brick-and-mortar classroom. Covid-19 is making glaringly obvious the limitations of digital learning, particularly as the primary means of instruction.

While some of what we see Elena Castro do could occur online with a tech-savvy teacher and adequate technology equally distributed among students - these are two big conditions - there are other elements of Castro's caring brilliance that could not be replicated on a screen.

It is often in commonplace encounters - a quick suggestion, an aside, a follow-up question - that a teacher's most basic attitudes toward students are revealed. Big values are manifest in small actions, and Elena Castro was masterful at these spontaneous micro-lessons.

I watched her work with a boy who had written a shaggy dog story. Castro was slowly scrolling down the computer screen, praising the story as she read. Once done, about to move on to the next child, she tapped a key, taking the story back to a line at the beginning in which he described the dog as a "troublemaker."

"You know," she reflected, "I found myself wondering what your dog did that caused so much trouble?" "She tips over garbage cans," the boy said. "Good. Anything else?" He giggled. "What?" she asked. "What is it?" "She makes messes!" Castro laughed. "Put that in, too! That way your reader will really know what you mean by trouble."

Another time Castro was reading to the class in Spanish the story of a marvelous garden, and she came across a description of a beet that was six inches wide. She paused for a moment and reached across the table for a ruler. " Mija," she said, addressing a girl with a term of endearment that means "my daughter." "Show us how big that beet was." The girl counted four, five, six on the ruler. "Whoa!" said a student sitting next to Castro. "Big, huh?"

And yet another time, Castro was working with a group of students on their marine research when a boy walked over from the Writer's Table to get her attention: He needed a definition of admire. She looked up, defined it, and, as he was walking away, called to him and asked if he admired the farmer in a story they had read that morning. He turned back and thought for a moment: "No." No he didn't, thereby applying the new definition to a familiar character.

Castro assumed ability and curiosity in her students; learning, in her belief system, was an entitlement. As she put it, "You can't deny anybody the opportunity to learn. That's their right." Bilingual education gained special meaning in this context. There is a long history in California schools, and Southwestern schools in general, of Mexican culture, language, and intelligence being deprecated. (Mexican children, one representative educator wrote in 1920, "are primarily interested in action and emotion, but grow listless under purely mental effort.")

The profound limits on the quality of education that stemmed from such practice and perception made all the more understandable Castro's commitment to bilingual education. Bilingual education was not just a method; it was an affirmation of cultural and linguistic worth, an affirmation of the mind of a people that had significant pedagogical consequences.

The majority of the children I saw in Castro's classroom had entered in September with the designation "low achiever" or, in some cases, "slow learner." Castro's response was to assume that they had developed some unproductive habits and were sabotaging their own intelligence.

"The first two weeks, it was difficult," she explained one noontime when we were sitting at the Writer's Table in her classroom. "I'd put them here to write - and they'd fool around. It took them a while to figure it out, it took time, with me talking to them. 'This is your education,' I'd say. 'It's your responsibility. I'm here to support you, but you have to do the work.'"

It was warm that day, Castro's sleeves rolled up. She spoke emphatically, with a nod or an exclamation or a quick laugh, her finger tapping the table, her hand slicing the air. "I had to keep some in at recess to finish the work. I had to talk to them. But then ... look at them now. They're bright kids. They're not underachievers; they're not slow. They were just used to doing what they could get by with." Her room was constructed on work and opportunity. "You can't say 'I can't' in this classroom. You have to try." And that cut both ways.

If you believe so firmly in the potential of all your students, you have few ready explanations for their failure. The first line of scrutiny is one's self. "What you do is not necessarily good for everyone," Castro would say. "You have to try different things. You have to ask yourself, 'What can I change that will work for a child who's not learning?'" When a student was not doing well, Castro would assume she was failing and put herself through a rigorous self-assessment. "Why am I not teaching him?" she would ask, her record book open, the child's work spread out in front of her.

And sometimes the answer to Castro's question revealed much that was out of her control, a fact illustrated through a story she told me about one of her students the year before, a sweet, quiet boy who seemed to understand his classwork, would do it when Castro was assisting him, but would just not complete it on his own.

"I didn't know what to do to get him motivated," she explained. "I tried structuring things more, and I tried letting him pursue whatever he wanted. He was a smart boy - I figured I must be doing something wrong. What was I missing?"

Then one day when Castro was sitting with him, encouraging him to write a little more on a story, he suddenly started crying. His mother had left home, and he was sent to stay with his grandmother. He missed his mother terribly and was afraid that his grandmother, who was ailing, would die and leave him alone. How could he concentrate, Castro thought, when his very security was threatened? This was beyond anything she could influence. It was telling, though, that Castro didn't entirely let up.

She told him he could talk to her anytime he felt sad, and that she would ease off a little - on him, I suspect, more than herself - but that "they both had a responsibility to teach and learn," and that the best thing he could do was to learn what he could so he would someday be able to take care of himself. "We both have to try," she said, holding him, wanting to make for him, as best she could, her classroom a place of love and learning.

In Castro's mind, the consequences for this child's future of not learning to read and write and compute were too great to ignore, even in sorrow.

All this was what it meant to care.

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Perspective | What it means to care in a classroom

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We are living through a time when the simple act of caring seems to be at a premium, at least in certain parts of our body politic. And that makes the following post by Mike Rose, a highly respected education scholar at the University of California at Los Angeles, especially topical and poignant.

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Systemic Oppression and Trauma: Why Healing-centered, Two-generation Approaches are Crucial to Poverty Alleviation - Center for Hunger Free Communities

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Why Are Killer Whales Ramming Boats In Spain And Portugal?

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Killer whales, or orcas, are the largest members of the oceanic dolphin family. While the intelligent mammals, which hunt in large pods, are known for their orchestrated attacks on unsuspecting marine animals, they have never posed a threat to humans. However, since late July, the normally social an…

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Shawn Johnson knew it was coming.

"Last fall, we saw a few cases," he said. "And that was a warning signal, so we were prepared-well, we weren't prepared for this level of an outbreak."

Over the past month, Johnson, director of veterinary science at the Marine Mammal Center, just north of San Francisco, and his team have been getting an average of five sick California sea lions a day. The animals have leptospirosis, a bacterial infection that affects their kidneys, causing fatigue, abdominal pain and, more often than not, death.

As of October 16, Johnson's team had seen 220 sea lions with the disease, which made it the center's second largest outbreak. Since then, the center reported 29 more sea lions have been rescued and 10 of those died due to leptospirosis. More than a dozen animals are still awaiting diagnosis. The number of cases has started to slow, but if historical trends hold up, Johnson expects this outbreak to eventually surpass 2004's record of 304 cases of sea lion leptospirosis.

All told, about 70 percent of the sea lions the team tried to save have died.

Leptospirosis outbreaks among sea lions occur at fairly regular intervals, but changing ocean conditions-warmer waters and relocating fish-are affecting how the disease strikes populations along the Pacific Coast. The threats aren't new, but they're threatening in slightly new ways. Changes in marine conditions appear to be affecting the population's resiliency to this disease and others. While researchers scramble to save sick sea lions today, they are also studying what this year's outbreak can tell us about how sea lions will fare down the line.

The good news is that sea lions are fairly mobile and resilient animals. And until recently, their populations were booming. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in January that California sea lions had reached carrying capacity-the number of individuals their environment can sustainably support-in 2008.

Since then, though, their numbers have fluctuated. A "blob" of unusually warm and long-lasting water moved in along the West Coast from 2013 to 2015, causing widespread algal blooms that spread a neurotoxin called domoic acid throughout the marine food chain. Sea lions with elevated levels of the toxin suffered brain damage, resulting in strokes and an impaired ability to navigate, ultimately killing most of the afflicted individuals.

The warm water also sent fish and smaller marine life out to search for cooler environments, meaning the sea lions had to travel farther to find food. The combination of more distant hunting and impaired navigation led to record numbers of stranded pups-many taken in by the Marine Mammal Center-as well as a dip in the sea lion population during those years.

But the warm water conditions also led, ironically, to a decline in cases of leptospirosis during that time. Over the past decade, scientists have determined that the disease, which spreads via a parasite, is endemic to the population. Some animals carry the disease and don't get sick, but they do excrete the parasites in their urine, which is how it spreads to other individuals. When sea lions haul out on a pier or beach, they freely roll around in each other's pee.

When the blob of warm water appeared, sea lions had to swim farther to find food and had less time to haul out and be social, Johnson says, meaning less time sitting around in each other's pee and parasites-and fewer cases of leptospirosis. But the lack of the disease a few years ago led to consequences today. Sea lions that get leptospirosis and survive develop antibodies that fend off the parasite in the future, says Katie Prager, a veterinarian researcher at UCLA's Lloyd-Smith Laboratory who collaborates with the Marine Mammal Center. These antibodies, however, cannot be inherited by offspring.

"It's not something that can be passed on," Prager says. "Antibodies are something that the pup has to develop on its own."

The warm waters meant fewer sick sea lions, but it left the population very vulnerable. Now the disease is back with a vengeance.

"A lot of the animals are now naive to that bacteria and their immune systems haven't been exposed to that," says Alissa Deming, a veterinarian researcher at Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama who previously studied sea lion diseases at the Marine Mammal Research Center. "There is a group of animals that haven't seen this before."

The risk, according to the researchers, is that continued domoic acid outbreaks could result in a vicious cycle-fewer cases of leptospirosis produce unexposed populations, and then major outbreaks flare up like we are seeing this year.

"This is a great example of how environmental change has so much impact on a wild species-all the way from where they eat, where they migrate and how their diseases change over time, just based on a few degrees' increase," Johnson says.

The first documented case of a marine mammal suffering from the domoic acid toxin was in 1998, and the events are now increasing in frequency-so much so that the spread of domoic acid has become a yearly sign of the changing seasons around San Francisco Bay. "The days are getting shorter, pumpkin spice lattes are here and once again, it's time for that other Bay Area rite of fall: worrying about the levels of toxins in local Dungeness crabs," begins a recent San Francisco Chronicle article on the influence of the toxin on the start of crabbing season.

Sea lions don't wait for permission from the Department of Public Health before they start eating crabs, though.

To exacerbate the issue even more, an El Nino event is predicted over the coming months, meaning warmer ocean waters off the West Coast and possibly more algal blooms and toxins. Already, Southern California waters-where researchers have found some of the highest concentrations of diatoms that produce domoic acid-have had record high temperatures this year.

NOAA has even deemed the recent warm-water years a "climate change stress test" for West Coast oceans. The agency said the conditions "may offer previews of anthropogenic climate change impacts projected for the latter part of the 21st century."

If this has been a test, sea lions might not have passed, says Robert DeLong, a scientist with NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center. DeLong has been studying California sea lions for decades at their breeding grounds, Channel Islands off Santa Barbara. He says the species should be pretty resilient in the face of climate change, but the rate of warming waters is proving a major challenge.

The center of the West Coast sea lion population is around Baja California, so the species has adapted to warmer water than is currently being seen farther north up the coast. "They have that capability to live in warmer water," DeLong says. And unlike, say, coral reefs, sea lions are very mobile, able to swim long distances to find suitable habitats.

But while males can chase food far up north, during the breeding season females are tied to a small radius around the rookery. If there is less food available there because fish have moved to cooler waters, it could present a major problem for sea lion mothers and their pups.

"So if this is what climate change looks like, and this period is an adequate proxy, if that's really the case, then sea lions may not do as well as we would think," DeLong says.

There are still signs of hope. Sea lions are increasingly moving north to new breeding grounds off the San Francisco Bay, for instance. The limiting factor is time.

"If the environmental changes are slow enough to adapt, they'll be able to move and will probably move farther up the coast," Johnson said. "If changes are slow enough, I could see them being able to adapt."

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Major Disease Outbreak Strikes California Sea Lions

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Shawn Johnson knew it was coming. "Last fall, we saw a few cases," he said. "And that was a warning signal, so we were prepared-well, we weren't prepared for this level of an outbreak."

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We hear it all the time, in the business world, in the political arena, in marriages, anytime there is a disagreement or conflict: "Perception is reality." This aphorism is often used to justify a perception that may be objectively unjustifiable or just plain out of touch with reality. It's employed as a cudgel to beat others into accepting someone's preferred so-called reality. At a more philosophical level, this adage creates a sense of relativism (think squishiness) in circumstances that are more likely absolute (think "the world is flat").

Let me state with an absolute sense of reality and without any perceptual flexibility at the outset that perception is NOT reality. As I am a word guy, meaning I believe that words powerfully shape our attitudes, beliefs, and, well, perceptions, let me start off by showing why perceptions and reality are different. Here is a dictionary definition of perception:

"The way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something; a mental impression."

And here is the dictionary definition of reality:

"The world or the state of things as they actually exist... existence that is absolute, self-sufficient, or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions."

Clearly, perception and reality have very different meanings. The former occurs entirely in the mind in which mental gymnastics can turn any belief into reality. The other exists completely outside of the mind and can't be easily manipulated. To conflate perception with reality is to reject the Enlightenment and harken back to the Middle Ages.

Perception is not reality, but, admittedly, perception can become a person's reality (there is a difference) because perception has a potent influence on how we look at reality.

Think of it this way. Perception acts as a lens through which we view reality. Our perceptions influence how we focus on, process, remember, interpret, understand, synthesize, decide about, and act on reality. In doing so, our tendency is to assume that how we perceive reality is an accurate representation of what reality truly is. But it's not. The problem is that the lens through which we perceive is often warped in the first place by our genetic predispositions, past experiences, prior knowledge, emotions, preconceived notions, self-interest, and cognitive distortions.

Daniel Kahneman, the noted psychologist who received the 2002 Nobel Prize winner in economics, created a veritable cottage industry by identifying what he termed cognitive biases (there are 100s) that are systematic ways in which humans create subjective social reality that deviates from objective reality.

I appreciate that some philosophers argue that reality doesn't actually exist, but, instead, is a subjective construction because we don't experience reality directly. Rather, we experience reality through senses that limit how we process reality. For example, humans only see a circumscribed spectrum of colors or hear a defined range of sounds. But, just because we can't perceive a dog whistle doesn't mean it doesn't exist in reality. Thankfully, we have the technology in most situations that can objectively measure reality (of course, disbelievers could argue that reading the instruments requires perception, thus "proving" their point that perception is reality, but let's not go there).

A key question to ask is: "What's wrong with perception diverging from reality?" What if I perceive the world in a way that is out of touch with reality? As with most things in life, this question demands a nuanced answer that involves degree rather than kind. For example, there is a psychological theory that posits what are called positive illusions, which involve holding a slightly inflated view of one's capabilities, which can have psychological and practical benefits (e.g., gives hope, enhances persistence).

However, if the perception deviates too far from reality when it shifts from mild illusion to delusion, it can be a liability (e.g., set unattainable goals, lack of preparation for a difficult task). In fact, a substantial disconnect between perception and reality can lead people to a complete inability to function (severe mental illness is an example).

At a societal level, when different individuals or constituencies develop perceptions that are so far apart, one immense problem is that no common ground can be found. This disconnect is exemplified in our current political climate where people of different political stripes have such diametrically opposed perceptions that it becomes impossible to orchestrate consensus or govern. The result is paralysis (Congress) or hostility (hate crimes). Going to extremes, a massive divide between perceptions in a country would likely lead to a slow, but steady, disintegration of the institutions that hold a society together (dystopian themes in literature and film or, well, our world today).

The challenge we face with our own thinking, as well as the thinking of others, is how to ensure that perceptions remain close to reality. This alignment is essential for us to live in the real world, find consensus with others, and maintain the individual, governmental, and societal structures that are necessary for life as we know it to exist. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Don't assume that your perceptions are reality (just your reality)

Be respectful of others' perceptions (they may be right)

Don't hold your perceptions too tightly; they may be wrong (admitting it takes courage)

Recognize the distortions within you that may warp your perceptions (seeing them will better ground your perceptions in reality rather than the other way around)

Challenge your perceptions (do they hold up under the microscope of reality?)

Seek out validation from experts and credible others (don't just ask your friends because they likely have the same perceptions as you)

Be open to modifying your perceptions if the preponderance of evidence demands it (rigidity of mind is far worse than being wrong)

The next time someone tosses that tired trope-"but perception is reality"-in defense of the indefensible, you stand up and tell them that it might be their perception, but it is not reality.

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"Perception is reality" is often used to justify a perception that may be objectively unjustifiable or just plain out of touch with reality.

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Global Warming which is caused by human activity is rooted in a social and economic system that has a parasitoid relationship to the Earth upon which we live.

Capitalism as a system is highly exploitative of both people and planet. It is driven by a desperate need for profit and accumulation. That is the overriding priority. Companies might 'green-wash' (BP changing its logo to the green flower is the most infamous example) but we live in a world where the polar ice caps melt and then oil companies go in to tap the ground for previously unobtainable deposits of oil.

Whilst some reforms will no doubt happen as we approach the 2030 deadline, it is apparent that left on its own, our economic system will continue to destroy the basis for life on this planet until it is too late. No wonder Elon Musk is planning on establishing a colony on Mars, the 1% are already end gaming a strategy to get the hell out of here.

But there is no escape for the rest of us.

The urgency of the time we are living in has seen movements like Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strikers led by Greta Thunberg hit the streets. They are taking matters into their own hands through direct action protests to try and force policy changes in government.

Even in Labour there is a burgeoning movement for change. The Labour for a Green New Deal (LGND) initiative is going to be a major point of this year's Labour Party conference. But will it be enough?

Green new capitalism

The overarching strategy of the LGND motion is summed up as the call to include in the next manifesto the following:

"A state-led programme of investment and regulation for the decarbonisation and transformation of our economy that reduces inequality and pursues efforts to keep global average temperature rises below 1.5°C."

The inclusion of such a paragraph in the next manifesto would leave a lot of wriggle room for softening some of the more urgent political actions that will be required to save the planet from runaway global warming.

With my anti-capitalist hat on, "state led investment" and "regulation" sound thoroughly Keynesian, even moderate. Merely regulating the private sector rather than making deep inroads into socialising capital and businesses' private property doesn't remove the profit motive from the economy, it only seeks to constrain it in various ways. As long as our economy chases after profit it will seek ways to circumvent any regulation.

State-led investment is fine, but on its own it does not particularly challenge capitalism as a socio-economic system. Indeed at its worst it props it up and helps overcome aspects of capitalism's inherent instability - as Paul Krugman wrote about Keynes "he was no socialist - he came to save capitalism, not to bury it."

As we approach climate catastrophe, what will be urgently needed is a global democratic plan for the economy to ensure that what resources are left are distributed properly and we can organise our society effectively and fairly when we might be dealing with the effects of climate change for generations to come. Capitalism is simply incompatible with social justice and living in harmony with the Earth so it has to be changed, and changed quickly. The clock is ticking.

Moving on the specific demands of the motion, the first four (zero carbon emissions by 2030; Rapidly phasing out all fossil fuels; Large-scale investment in renewables; and a just transition to well-paid, unionised, green jobs available for all) are all good demands, though the debate over whether it is at all possible to have a totally zero carbon economy in the next decade is an important one. Will we have no plane flights at all in 2030? No methane producing farm animals? We will surely need some degree of offsetting even within our own national economy. Certainly Unite's climate change ignoring leadership could do with reading on this and thinking about it as they continue to lobby for the disastrous third runway at Heathrow.

The next demand is the one that no doubt will lead to huge debates and disagreements over interpretation:
"A green industrial revolution expanding public, democratic ownership as far as necessary for the transformation"
"As far as necessary". What is meant by that, only time will tell. It is in the ambiguity of such phrases that you can read anything you like. It could be read to mean a radical nationalisation plan which takes energy, transport, logistics, retail and all the other sectors that are heavy carbon emitters into public ownership to introduce plans to reduce their carbon footprint. Or it could mean a far more modest limited plan of taking bankrupt industries into temporary public ownership in order to 'green' them.

Private property and climate change

Certainly if you wanted to do more than "regulate" the petrochemical industry and actually dramatically reduce the extractive nature of those industries through socialisation and effectively shutting them down (and redeploying the workers to sustainable jobs) then taking them out of private ownership would be the most direct and effective way but that raises the question of compensation for shareholders.

Now they could also mean seizing the companies without paying compensation. There is a moral and practical case to do this in the state of a climate emergency which poses a threat to all life on the planet. If you went down the route of paying, trying to pay off shareholders and buying the company outright, then it would be prohibitively expensive. BP alone is worth billions. How to square the circle of the increasing need for socialised and democratic global solutions in a world of nation states and jealously guarded private property?

This is where a serious fight against climate change that tries to get to the root of the problem of capitalism is going to clash head-on with our political and legal system. Property is 9/10th of the law, as the saying goes, and anything which moves beyond state-led investment to actually grappling with social ownership of the means of production and distribution is going to come across either huge financial problems or legal challenges.

Of course if you see climate change from a revolutionary perspective then you rip up those capitalist laws that are protecting the ill-gotten gains of the rich who are plundering our natural environment until we are on the brink of social collapse. The question is going to be both the interpretation of "as far as necessary" and also the political will to drive through the changes that will be necessary to start to plan our economy.

Likewise with the housing crisis, we need to just seize the second homes of the rich or 'investors' and turn them into social housing to end homelessness and no doubt deal with the massive climate refugee crisis coming our way. Obeying the legal framework of capitalism where the 1% are effectively hoarding essential resources while the rest of us suffer is not going to cut it anymore.

Mass movements

Angus Satow from LGND has written a useful article in Open Democracy recently on the need for a mass movement to deliver a green new deal. This is an important point, we cannot leave it up to the politicians, they need to feel the heat (excuse the pun) from below - a mass social movement clamouring for urgent action. The current 2050 target is far too late, the 2030 deadline is what we are working towards.

There is also the question of what happens if Labour loses the next election or only secures a hung parliament. If the parliamentary route to green policies becomes blocked for the next few years then we need to take matters into our own hands. We have to stop the third runway at Heathrow, through non-violent direct action if necessary. We have to identify the most polluting companies and occupy their offices, disrupt their business and hit them in the profit margins to force them to take action. Workers need to walk out of work and force the 4 day week on their employers as a way of reducing carbon (and the climate strike on the 20th September is a great place to start!) This will no doubt mean a challenge to the anti-union laws that prevent political strike action. At this stage it is go hard or go home and wait for the planet to burn.

The debate is moving forward which is important. The question now is the relationship between policy, mass movement and how radical we need to go to save the planet. With news coming in that the irreversible feedback loops have already started which will lead directly to runaway climate change, we are not in 'business as usual' territory any more.

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The fight against climate change is a fight against capitalism

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Global Warming which is caused by human activity is rooted in a social and economic system that has a parasitoid relationship to the Earth upon which we live. Capitalism as a system is highly exploitative of both people and planet. It is driven by a desperate need for profit and accumulation.

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Every summer and fall, endangered North Atlantic right whales congregate in the Bay of Fundy between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to gorge on zooplankton. Researchers have documented the annual feast since 1980, and well over 100 whales typically attend, a significant portion of the entire species. Only this year, they didn't. Just a dozen right whales trickled in - a record low in the New England Aquarium's 34-year-old monitoring program. And that comes on the heels of two other low-turnout years, 2010 and 2012.

Numbers of the critically endangered marine mammal have been ticking up in recent years just past 500 individuals, so no one thinks the low turnout in the Bay of Fundy augurs a decline in the species as a whole. The right whales must have gone elsewhere. But where? And more importantly, why?

"Our whales have been missing in their normal habitat areas, where we've learned to expect them over three and a half decades," says Moira Brown, a senior scientist at the aquarium who runs the monitoring program. "It's quite shocking when you go out there day after day after day and you don't see any right whales."

It's clear to scientists that the whales' new itinerary must signal a shifting food supply.

This change in North Atlantic right whale behavior is occurring against a backdrop of major climate-related ecosystem shifts taking place throughout the northwest Atlantic Ocean. While Brown and other right whale researchers are not ready to attribute changes in the species' feeding or migratory patterns to any one factor, including global warming, what is clear to them is that the right whales' new itinerary must signal a shifting food supply. A zooplankton species called Calanus finmarchicus is the whales' mainstay. Researchers reported an unusual scarcity of the zooplankton in the Bay of Fundy this summer. By the same token, in Cape Cod Bay, where right whales have been unusually plentiful, other scientists have been documenting increasing concentrations - so much so that the normally invisible creatures noticeably color the water.

Other ecosystem shifts are afoot in the northwest Atlantic off the eastern coasts of the United States and Canada. Sea surface temperatures in waters such as the Gulf of Maine are rising and various marine species, including cod and red hake, are shifting their ranges northward, according to recent studies. Increasing precipitation, the rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice, and the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Canada are all expected to pour more freshwater into the northwest Atlantic, causing increased stratification of ocean waters and changes in the abundance and distribution of phytoplankton and zooplankton at the bottom of the food chain, studies show.

The missing right whales are a nagging mystery to marine biologists and were the hot topic at an annual meeting of right-whale cognoscenti this month in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Once numbering in the many thousands, North Atlantic right whales are among the rarest animals on earth, haunted by the specter of extinction after centuries of whaling. Right whales were protected under whaling conventions enacted in 1935 and 1949, but today accidental collisions with ships and entanglement in fishing gear pose grave threats.

As curious as where the right whales aren't is where they are.

As curious as where the right whales aren't is where they are. Brown's team spotted a reasonable number on their other late-summer feeding ground, which lies southeast of Nova Scotia - but not the ones they expected. Instead of what Brown calls "wise old whales" typical of the area, they found juveniles and a mother-calf pair more characteristic of the Bay of Fundy. She also received credible reports of right whales far north of their usual summer feeding grounds, where they'd never been reported: two animals this summer near Cape Breton on Nova Scotia, and two last summer off northern Newfoundland.

But the real trove of right whales has been in Cape Cod Bay in winter. Whales have always stopped there to feed en masse, but the last four winters the numbers have skyrocketed, according to Charles "Stormy" Mayo, director of a program at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies that has been monitoring right whales in the bay since 1984. "Shockingly, we've had on average approximately half of the population of the North Atlantic Ocean in our bay," and possibly as much as three-quarters, Mayo says. "This is really kind of Right Whale Kingdom."

Not only are more right whales stopping in than ever, but they are gathering up to three months earlier - late November or early December as opposed to February. They're also coming for more than just the buffet now, as they've been spotted mating between meals. Another first, according to Mayo: Last January a calf was born in Cape Cod Bay. Previously all known births occurred off the coast of Georgia or Florida, 1,200 miles south.

Dramatic though all the changes are among right whales, Brown and Mayo say it's hard to know what to make of them. Both are quick to point out that even their teams' painstaking, long-term efforts to document the right whales' comings and goings only give them a small window on the animals' lives. Brown says her lost whales could well have been feeding contentedly at some remote zooplankton hotspot they've always visited, unbeknownst to people.

The cause of the shift of the right whales' favorite prey, C. finmarchicus, is uncertain. Topping the list of suspects is climate change-driven warming in the Gulf of Maine. In 2012, the gulf was at the epicenter of an immense oceanic heat wave stretching from Cape Hatteras to Iceland, which resulted from a confluence of climate change and an unusually warm year, according to Andrew Pershing, a biological oceanographer with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and the University of Maine. Gulf water temperatures reached 5 Fahrenheit degrees warmer than average, approaching conditions not expected until the century's end.

Right whales and their prey aren't the only species on the move in the region.

The warm waters could be producing fewer or less-nutritious C. finmarchicus, or shifting the currents that carry them, according to Mark Baumgartner, a marine ecologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. With the heat wave dissipating, Baumgartner says he's hopeful right whales will soon return to the Bay of Fundy. In the long run, however, he says their disappearance could be a harbinger of things to come. In the Gulf of Maine, C. finmarchicus is at the southern edge of its range, and Baumgartner and Pershing note that global warming may drive the zooplankton northward for good. If so, right whales and numerous other marine animals that depend on C. finmarchicus will likely follow, revolutionizing the gulf's ecosystem.

Right whales and their prey aren't the only species on the move in the region. "Really what we're seeing is a food-chain shift right up from plankton through fish into marine mammals and birds," Brown says. For the past few years her team has been spotting sperm whales in the Bay of Fundy, where they'd only seen a single one since 1980. In the next water body north, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, researchers rarely spotted more than a handful of endangered fin and humpback whales a day this summer, down from several dozen in years past, according to Richard Sears, founder of the Mingan Island Cetacean Study, which has been surveying whales there since 1979. The few that came arrived a month or so later than usual and gathered in uncustomary areas, while throngs of whales seemed to linger outside the bay. Sears has heard reliable reports of humpbacks visiting Baffin Island recently, far to the north of their usual stomping grounds. He says the reasons behind his team's unusual observations are unclear, though they undoubtedly relate to the whales' krill and fish diet.

Other examples include puffins nesting weeks later than usual and having trouble fledging their young, possibly due to changing fish supplies. Leatherback sea turtles are heading south through Cape Cod waters two months later than in autumns past, and in greater numbers. More than 50 have been snarled in fishing gear so far this fall, up from an average of five or six, says Scott Landry, director of the whale rescue program at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. Cod, lobsters, and northern shrimp - current or recent pillars of the Gulf of Maine's fishing industry - seem to be decamping into cooler northern waters, even as southern species like black sea bass and longfin squid move in.

Scientists note that as warming continues, marine ecosystems may be thrown badly out of whack.

Many of the shifts are consistent with climate change-induced warming, Pershing says. Other scientists note that as warming continues, marine ecosystems such as the Northwest Atlantic may be thrown badly out of whack. With the temperature and salinity of the ocean changing, and with spring arriving earlier and fall later, the timing and location of phytoplankton blooms and zooplankton abundance will also likely shift, throwing off the timing of feeding, migration, and reproduction of many species.

The right whales' calving season starts soon off the coasts of Florida and Georgia. If the calves are plentiful and the adults look healthy, experts will feel better about their summertime meanderings, Brown says. Meanwhile, she and her team are planning what to do if the right whales are missing again next summer in the Bay of Fundy.

They have already started reaching out to fishermen and other mariners for help spotting whales further afield. A new version of an app put out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help mariners steer clear of right whales will let them easily report sightings. And Baumgartner recently led development of autonomous underwater gliders that record, identify, and report back calls of right, fin, humpback, and sei whales, all endangered species. Brown would love to turn these gliders loose in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which she suspects may hold unidentified right whale habitat and could become a refuge if Fundy overheats. Scientists are even bandying about the idea of outfitting C. finmarchicus-eating seabirds with transmitters to see if the birds might lead them to the right whales.

"Something has changed," Brown says. "The animals are responding to it. We're trailing along behind trying to find where they went."

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A North Atlantic Mystery: Case of the Missing Whales

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Every summer and fall, endangered North Atlantic right whales congregate in the Bay of Fundy between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to gorge on zooplankton. Researchers have documented the annual feast since 1980, and well over 100 whales typically attend, a significant portion of the entire species. Only this year, they didn't.

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Data Deficient Species Data Deficient Species List

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The Ocean Twilight Zone’s Mysterious ‘False Bottom’

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When sonar detected a massive object hundreds of meters below the water, operators suspected sunken islands. It was actually the deep scattering layer.

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Since the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the start of the Colonial period, the U.S. has been predominantly white.

But the white share of the U.S. population has been dropping, from a little under 90% in 1950 to 60% in 2018. It will likely drop below 50% in another 25 years.

White nationalists want America to be white again. But this will never happen. America is on its way to becoming predominantly nonwhite.
Who is white?
The U.S. federal government uses two questions to measure a person's race and ethnicity. One asks if the person is of Hispanic origin, and the other asks about the person's race.

A person is defined as white if he or she identifies as being only white and non-Hispanic. A minority, or nonwhite, person is anyone who is not solely non-Hispanic white.

Whites were not the first people to settle in what is now the U.S. The first immigrants were a people known today as American Indians and Alaskan natives, also commonly referred to as Native Americans. They arrived in North America around 14,000 years ago.

When Christopher Columbus arrived in America in 1492, there were around 10 million American Indians living in the lands north of Mexico. But by the 1800s their numbers had dwindled to about 1 million. They are now the smallest race group in the U.S.

The first sizable stream of immigrants to what is now the U.S. were whites from England. Their arrival at Plymouth in 1620 in search of religious freedom marked the start of large waves of whites coming to this land.

When the U.S. was established as a country in 1776, whites comprised roughly 80% of the population. The white share rose to 90% in 1920, where it stayed until 1950.
Declining numbers
The proportion of whites in the U.S. population started to decline in 1950. It fell to gradually over the years, eventually reaching just over 60% in 2018 - the lowest percentage ever recorded.

Although the majority of the U.S. population today is still white, nonwhites account for more than half of the populations of Hawaii, the District of Columbia, California, New Mexico, Texas and Nevada. And, in the next 10 to 15 years, these half dozen "majority-minority" states will likely be joined by as many as eight other states where whites now make up less than 60% of the population.

Census Bureau projections show that the U.S. population will be "majority-minority" sometime between 2040 and 2050. Our research suggests that this will happen around 2044. Indeed, in 2020, there are projected to be more nonwhite children than white children in the U.S.

The nonwhite population is growing more rapidly than the white population. Minorities accounted for 92% of the U.S. population growth between 2010 and 2018, with Latinos comprising just under half of the nation's overall growth.
Behind the trends
Why are the numbers of white people declining, and why are nonwhite numbers increasing? The answer is basic demography: births, deaths and immigration.

White women have an average of 1.7 children over their lifetimes, while Latina women average 2.2. The total fertility rates of blacks, Asians and American Indians are in between. So whites have fewer births than all nonwhite groups.

There are also big differences in age structure. Sixty-two percent of Latinas 15 years of age or older are of childbearing age. Only 42% of white women fall into this group. Latinos also have lower mortality rates than whites. Demographers call this the "epidemiological paradox."

In 2015, for the first time, there were more white deaths in the U.S. than white births. Indeed, as of 2016, in 26 states, whites were dying faster than they were being born. The states with more white deaths than white births include California, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

How about immigration to the U.S.? Of the more than 43 million foreign-born people living in the U.S. in 2015, 82% originated in Latin America and Asia. Only 11% were born in Europe. So whites don't increase their representation in the U.S. via immigration.
The future of whiteness
The aging white population, alongside a more youthful minority population, especially in the case of Latinos, will result in the U.S. becoming a majority-minority country in around 2044.

The demographic shift in the U.S. has resulted in many whites proclaiming that they are losing their country, and that they already are or will soon become a minority group.

In her research on working-class whites in rural Louisiana, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild observes that many whites feel frustrated and betrayed, like they are now strangers in their own land. In Trump, they saw a white man who brought them together to take their country back. Hochschild points out that at a Trump campaign rally, whites held signs with slogans such as "TRUMP: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" and "SILENT MAJORITY STANDS WITH TRUMP."

The decline of the white share of the U.S. population could result in the shifting of racial boundaries to assign whiteness to some people of color so as to bolster the white numbers.

This has happened before. Groups that were initially seen as very different from whites, such as the Irish and Italians, once sought to distance themselves from blacks, and eventually were accepted as white.

In addition, although persons of Mexican origin largely identified racially as white, in the 1930 census "Mexican" was used as a racial category, at a time when there was heightened hostility against Mexicans due to their growing population size and the Great Depression.

But any future changes cannot override demography. The U.S. will never be a white country again.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Dudley Poston is an emeritus professor of sociology at Texas A&M University and a demographer who conducts research in several areas, including the demography of race and ethnicity, international migration,... More by Dudley Poston

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The US white majority will soon disappear forever - The Chicago Reporter

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Since the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the start of the Colonial period, the U.S. has been predominantly white. But the white share of the U.S. population has been dropping, from a little under 90% in 1950 to 60% in 2018. It will likely drop below 50% in another 25 years.

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'Slow down, you move too fast ...'
- 'The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)' (1966) by Paul Simon

We worship efficiency. Use less to get more. Same-day delivery. Multitask; text on one device while emailing on a second, and perhaps conversing on a third. Efficiency is seen as good. Inefficiency as wasteful.

There's a sound rationale for thinking this way. Economists teach us that increased efficiency is the major way to improve our standard of living. If your company gives you a pay rise without becoming more efficient, it will also have to raise its prices to make up the shortfall. If all companies do the same, everyone ends up running in place - you'll need your higher wages to match the higher prices of the things you buy. So, if we want to make material progress, we must become more efficient. Streamlined supply chains, just-in-time deliveries and no slack in the workforce all serve to raise efficiency. Achieve this, and all our lives will get better and better, or so we're promised.

For automobile manufacturers, who wish to squeeze as many miles per gallon as possible out of their car designs, air resistance and the grab of the road are the enemies of efficiency. In the world of finance, it is at the point of exchange that most friction arises. Before money, the potato farmer had to use sacks of potatoes to trade for eggs and milk. As the British historian Niall Ferguson reminds us in his book The Ascent of Money (2008), the invention of money went a long way toward reducing this inefficiency, and much that has happened in the financial world over the past 200 years can be seen as a continuation of that revolution.

Credit, for example, meant that you could go shopping for eggs and milk even without having the money right now. Financial markets have since taken this efficiency to another level. The creation of 'option markets' means that you don't have to go to the trouble of buying a stock that you're going to be selling soon anyway. You can just promise to buy it, and then sell it at a price and date specified by the option contract. And then you can trade the option rather than the underlying stock.

Each of these developments and many others have made it easier to do one's business without wasted time and energy - without friction. Each has made economic transactions quicker and more efficient. That's obviously good in some ways. But the financial crisis of 2008 suggested that maybe there could be too much of a good thing. If mortgages and other loans hadn't been transformed into tradable assets ('securities'), then bankers might have taken the time to assess the credit-worthiness of each applicant. If people had to visit a bank to withdraw cash, they might spend less and save more. This is not mere speculation - for instance, research reviewed by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler shows that people will pay more for an item with a credit card than with cash. Arguably, a little friction to slow us down would have enabled both institutions and individuals to make better financial decisions.

A decade ago, the American psychologist Adam Grant and I argued in a journal paper that this 'too much of a good thing' phenomenon might be a general rule. Some motivation produces excellent performance; too much motivation produces choking. Some group collaboration produces cohesion and enhances productivity; too much of it leads to staleness. Some empathy enables you to understand what another person is going through; too much could prevent you from saying and doing hard things. Similarly, in my book The Paradox of Choice (2004), I argued that, whereas a life with no freedom to choose is not worth living, a life with too much choice leads to paralysis, bad decisions and dissatisfaction. Finding the right amount - what Aristotle called the 'mean' - of motivation, collaboration, empathy, choice and many other aspects of life, including efficiency, is a key challenge we face, both as individuals and as a society.

To be better prepared next time, we need to learn to live less efficiently in the here and now

But finding the mean isn't easy. As the English poet William Blake observed in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93): 'You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.'

If the financial crisis taught us that we had become too efficient with our transactions, what of the COVID-19 pandemic? Why hadn't we stockpiled key supplies and machines, built up hospital capacity, or ensured the robustness of our supply chains? The reason, of course, is that it would have been seen as inefficient and profit-robbing. Money spent on masks and gowns gathering dust in a warehouse could always be put to more 'productive' use in the marketplace. Likewise, employing more people than needed under 'ordinary' circumstances, or making products yourself rather than relying on international supply chains, would have been seen as inefficient. One lesson, then, is that to be better prepared next time, we need to learn to live less 'efficiently' in the here and now.

Seen in this light, at least some inefficiency is like an insurance policy. Think about your own situation. Every year that you don't get into a car accident and your house doesn't burn down and you stay healthy, you could think to yourself that you have 'wasted' your money on various pointless insurance products, and that you'd be financially better off without all those insurance premiums to pay.

Most of us don't like the sense that we're wasting money on insurance. We would rather be wearing that money, or eating it, or driving it. Some years ago, with a struggle, I convinced my ageing mother to supplement her basic health insurance policy with a more comprehensive insurance product. Her resources were modest and the policy wasn't cheap. The year went by and, happily, she had no serious medical conditions that required the use of the extra cover. When the time came to renew, my mother resisted, because, indeed, the money she spent the year before had been 'wasted'. My reply, perhaps unduly snarky, was to suggest to her that maybe the next year she would get lucky, have a really serious illness, and get her money's worth out of her insurance.

Thankfully, in many domains, government regulations protect us from our desire for ever-greater personal financial efficiency by forcing us to have insurance. Laws require that our cars be insured, and mortgagers require the same for our homes. In the United States, 'Obamacare' (the Affordable Care Act enacted in 2010, designed to increase the number of US citizens covered by health insurance) essentially compelled people to have health insurance, until tax laws passed in 2017 rendered this unenforceable by repealing the penalties for not having cover. I suspect that many of us are underinsured in general, but the problem would be much worse without these various, state-imposed insurance requirements.

One way to think about insurance, however inefficient it might feel, is that it enables us to be resilient against shocks that could befall us from a world that is radically uncertain. And the world is radically uncertain. As the British economists John Kay and Mervyn King point out in their book Radical Uncertainty (2020), efforts to quantify risk by attaching probabilities to various unlikely future states of the world are mostly science fiction. The world is much messier than a roulette wheel or a pair of dice.

A little bit of friction can forestall disaster when you encounter an icy road

What should we do in the face of this radical uncertainty? When making decisions, instead of asking ourselves which option will give us the best results, we should be asking which option will give us good-enough results under the widest range of future states of the world. Instead of trying to maximise return on investment in our retirement account, we should be setting a financial goal and then choosing investments that will allow us to achieve that goal under the widest set of future financial circumstances. Instead of looking for the 'best' job, we should be looking for a job that will be good enough - satisfying enough - as co-workers and managers come and go, and the future economy gyrates. Instead of choosing the best college to go to, we should be choosing a college that will be good enough, even with an obnoxious roommate and a boring Bio 1 teacher.

The term used to describe this approach to decision-making is satisficing. And satisficing with an eye toward a radically uncertain future might be called robust satisficing. Satisficing is a form of insurance - insurance against financial meltdowns, global pandemics, nasty bosses, boring teachers and crappy roommates. Insurance can seem stodgy - like the guy who wears a belt and suspenders. Perhaps we don't need both, but what happens if we have neither?

I think the real flaw in capitalism revealed by the 2008 financial crisis was its unbridled, single-minded pursuit of profit and efficiency. And perhaps the real flaw revealed in our lack of readiness for the 2019-20 pandemic was a manifestation of the same thing. Capitalism needn't be either unbridled or single-minded. It isn't in other societies with high standards of living, and it hasn't been at all points in history in the US. So perhaps it's time to rekindle certain social norms that serve to slow us down. For example, if people thought about their homes less as financial investments and more as places to live, full of the friction of kids, dogs, friends, neighbours and community, there might be less property speculation with an eye toward buying and selling houses merely for profit. If companies felt the friction of being caretakers of their communities, they might look differently at streamlining their operations by eliminating jobs.

We'd all like a car that gets 100 miles to a gallon. The forces of friction that slow us down are an expensive annoyance. When we're driving, we know where we're going and we're in control, so fast feels good, though even here, a little bit of friction can forestall disaster when you encounter an icy road.

Driving is perilous enough, and life is not as predictable as driving. We don't always know where we're going. We're not always in control. Black ice is everywhere. A little something to slow us down in the uncertain world we inhabit could be a life-saver. Building friction into our lives, as individuals and as a society, is building resilience into the system. It could be our insurance policy against catastrophe.

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Why efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better | Psyche Ideas

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'Slow down, you move too fast ...' - 'The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)' (1966) by Paul Simon We worship efficiency. Use less to get more. Same-day delivery. Multitask; text on one device while emailing on a second, and perhaps conversing on a third. Efficiency is seen as good.

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Like eating and exercising, sleep is crucial for your health. There are four sleep stages, and each stage has a specific purpose. Deep sleep is the repairing and restorative sleep that is necessary to feel your best each day.

Because of the potential impacts of obtaining insufficient deep sleep, it is important to understand what deep sleep is, the benefits of deep sleep, and the signs of insufficient deep sleep.

What Are the Stages of Sleep?

Once you fall asleep, your body cycles through three non rapid eye movement (NREM) phases of sleep followed by one rapid eye movement (REM) sleep stage. It usually takes between 90 and 120 minutes to cycle through all four stages, after which the cycle starts again. Adults typically have 4-6 such cycles per night. In the first half of the night you spend more time in NREM sleep. However, as the night goes on, you spend more and more time in REM sleep.

Stage 1: This brief, drowsy stage marks the transition to sleep, when your breathing and heartbeat slow down.

Stage 2: In this stage of light sleep your breathing and heart rate slow even more. Your temperature drops and your muscles relax. Stage 2 sleep lasts longer in each cycle throughout the night. About half of your total sleep every night is spent in this stage

Stage 3: Previously divided into stages 3 and 4, stage 3 slow-wave sleep represents the deepest sleep of the sleep cycle, when brain waves are at their slowest in frequency and highest in amplitude

REM: As the name suggests, your eyes move quickly beneath your eyelids during REM sleep. Your brain activity is similar to that of a person who is awake. However, you lack muscle tone and do not move. Experts believe most of our dreaming happens during REM sleep.

What Is Deep Sleep?

Deep sleep, also called slow-wave sleep, occurs in the third stage of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. During deep sleep, electrical activity in the brain appears in long, slow waves called delta waves. These waves have a frequency of 0.5 to 2 Hertz and they must make up at least 6 seconds of a 30-second window for that window to count as deep sleep.

Typically you descend into deep sleep within an hour of falling asleep, and experience progressively shorter periods of deep sleep as the night wears on. During this stage, automatic body functions like breathing and heart rate are also very slow and your muscles are relaxed. It can be difficult for someone to wake you up, and waking up out of deep sleep may make you feel mentally foggy for up to an hour.

Why Is Deep Sleep Important?

While all stages of sleep are necessary for good health, deep sleep offers specific physical and mental benefits. During deep sleep, your body releases growth hormone and works to build and repair muscles, bones, and tissue, and immune system functioning. Additionally, slow-wave sleep may be important for regulating glucose metabolism. Elite athletes value slow-wave sleep as it helps replenish energy stores.

Deep sleep is important for cognitive function and memory, and it is thought to play a role in language learning, motor skills, and the developing brain.

Throughout the day, you receive information inputs that strengthen the synapses, or points of communication, in the networks of your brain. However, your brain cannot take on information forever without rest.

Researchers suggest that deep sleep plays a role in preparing your synapses for the next day. Put another way, your brain evaluates new memories and then preserves and consolidates only the ones that are most relevant to avoid saturating memory pathways. Although this theory is still under investigation, evidence shows that people obtain a higher proportion of deep sleep after learning a new task, and show higher concentrations of slow waves in brain areas related to the task.

The results of this process are evident: after a night of good sleep, you are better prepared to take on new information and adapt to new environments.

How Much Deep Sleep Do You Need?

To calculate how much deep sleep you need, first determine how much sleep you need overall. Most adults should aim for seven to nine hours of sleep each night. Between 13% and 23% of that time should be spent in deep sleep. If you get seven hours of sleep each night, then you spend approximately 55 to 97 minutes each night in deep sleep.

To a certain extent, the body self-regulates amounts of deep sleep. For example, you might spend more time in deep sleep if you are recovering from sleep deprivation or if you regularly experience short sleep, such as over the course of a work week. People may also experience more deep sleep when sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea are treated. By contrast, people who nap frequently may experience less deep sleep during subsequent naps, as part of their deep sleep needs have already been fulfilled.

As people age, they tend to have less deep sleep. They usually get more stage 2 sleep instead.

Sleep Disorders Associated with Deep Sleep

Sleep disorders that are specifically linked to deep sleep are called disorders of arousal and include sleepwalking, sleep terrors, and confusional arousals. While adults can experience these disorders, they are more common in children and adolescents.

Typically episodes of these disorders are short and the sleeper does not remember them. However, the events can impact your waking hours. Some sleepers with disorders of arousal experience excessive daytime sleepiness. Others may accidentally injure themselves or others during an arousal episode.

Measurements of the brain waves of sleepwalkers have found that many individuals continue to experience a certain proportion of slow waves - which are characteristic of deep sleep - during a sleepwalking episode. Adult sleepwalkers also display variances in slow-wave activity during the rest of the night.

What Happens When You Don't Get Enough Deep Sleep?

In addition to causing feelings of fatigue, a lack of deep sleep can have a number of impacts on your body.

Because deep sleep is part of the memory formation process, you may struggle to consolidate memories after nights without enough deep sleep. Even after one night of insufficient sleep you may experience difficulty learning or remembering information.

On a physical level, insufficient deep sleep may decrease your immune response to vaccines and leave you more vulnerable to infection. During deep sleep, potentially harmful waste products are eliminated from the brain. As a result, disruptions to deep sleep may also drive advancement of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Additionally, sleep deprivation is associated with hormonal changes that drive our appetite for high-calorie food. Going short on slow-wave sleep, in particular, is believed to contribute to insulin resistance and the development of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Catching up on sleep may reverse some of these effects.

Who Doesn't Get Enough Deep Sleep?

As deep sleep occurs in multiple stints throughout the sleep period, anyone who sleeps for less than the recommended amount of hours is likely to obtain insufficient deep sleep. Fragmented sleep due to sleep disorders or sleeping at times that are not concordant with your natural sleep-wake rhythm may also diminish the percentage of slow-wave sleep.

Some people with insomnia experience changes in their sleep cycles and as a result may have more stage 1 sleep and less deep sleep. Stress and aging can also reduce levels of deep sleep. Additionally, people with conditions such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease experience less slow wave sleep.

Recently, some researchers have observed that people with a damaged hippocampus, or memory center of the brain, experience much less slow wave sleep than people with an undamaged hippocampus. Experts propose that the memory signals sent by the hippocampus are a necessary trigger for creating the slow delta waves seen in deep sleep. Accordingly, problems with memory formation may represent a cause, rather than a consequence, of less deep sleep.

Signs You May Not Be Getting Enough Deep Sleep

Some indications you are not getting enough deep sleep include:

Feeling unrefreshed and drowsy

Reduced alertness and attention

Trouble learning and forming new memories

Cravings for high-calorie food

Tips for Getting More Deep Sleep

Ensuring you get sufficient sleep overall can help you get the deep sleep you need. By establishing consistent sleep and wake times, you can develop a healthy sleep routine for your body. Practicing good sleep hygiene can also help you get more sleep in total. Healthy sleep habits include:

Exercising regularly

Reducing caffeine intake in the afternoon and evening

Ensuring you have a quiet, cool, and dark sleep environment

Creating a relaxing routine to wind down in the evening

There are some additional steps you can try to encourage more deep sleep:

Take a Warm Bath: Heating your body at least an hour before bedtime may help induce slow-wave sleep. The warmth from the bath draws heat to your hands and feet which then dissipates. The process allows you to cool down to a comfortable temperature for sleeping.

Improve Your Diet: What you eat and drink before bedtime impacts your sleep. One small study found that people eating a diet high in saturated fats obtained less slow-wave sleep. People who ate more fiber were more likely to have more deep sleep.

Listen to Binaural Beats: Binaural beats are created by listening to two slightly different tones, one in each ear. The difference between the frequencies of those tones creates a perceived third tone, or binaural beat. If certain frequencies are used, your brain waves can then be induced to match the frequency of that beat. Limited research suggests that listening to delta wave binaural beats may help induce delta waves in the brain and therefore stage 3 sleep.

When to Talk to Your Doctor

In addition to sleeping enough hours, restful sleep requires obtaining a proper balance of all the sleep stages. If you are experiencing sleep-related problems with your day-to-day mood, cognitive ability, performance, or physical health, talk to your healthcare provider. If possible, keep a sleep diary where you record your sleep habits and daytime experiences and share this information with your doctor.

Your doctor may have you take a sleep study or polysomnography. During a sleep study, a machine can record the electrical activity happening in your brain. These recordings show what stages of sleep you are in and for how long. The results of your study may provide a clearer picture of your sleeping patterns, which can help guide a treatment plan.

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Deep Sleep: What it is and How Much You Need | Sleep Foundation

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Like eating and exercising, sleep is crucial for your health. There are four sleep stages, and each stage has a specific purpose. Deep sleep is the repairing and restorative sleep that is necessary to feel your best each day.