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Illegal Fishing Treaty, Now in Force, Boosts Global Effort to Cut Crime  
The Port State Measures Agreement adds a vital new tool in a global strategy to deter lawbreaking fishermen

For some of the world's most audacious thieves, life just got trickier. For decades they have roamed the ocean, fishing without licenses, without regard for the marine environment, and, in most cases, without much fear of being caught. With about 140 million square miles of surface water and no central authority, the ocean has proved to be an easy place for these illegal fishermen to get away with a crime.

And their haul has been huge. Experts estimate that illegal fishing accounts for up to 26 million metric tons of seafood annually, worth up to $23.5 billion. This theft undercuts law-abiding fishermen, threatens the health of our oceans and fish populations, and destabilizes coastal communities that rely on consistent fish stocks for food and jobs.

But on June 5, a global treaty to end illegal fishing, called the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), entered into force; the pact is now international law in 35 governments and overseas territories, including the European Union. The agreement was designed to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing by making it significantly harder to move illegally caught fish to market.

The PSMA, the first legally binding international measure targeting illegal fishing, requires captains to give notice when approaching a port--whether to unload their catch or for such services as refueling--and provide details on their licensing and fishing activities. Based on that information, and coupled with a vessel's history, port officials decide whether to allow the vessel to offload, inspect it, or turn it away.

The treaty also requires that port officials inform neighboring countries of known or suspected illegal catches--a key provision to help apprehend criminals who shop around for a port willing to accept their fish.

But the PSMA is only one component of an effective global strategy to end illegal fishing. Authorities and fishery managers need numerous mechanisms and consistent enforcement around the world. Here is a summary of how we could fully cinch the net on illegal fishing.

Expand PSMA membership: Coastal countries that have not signed on to the PSMA should do so quickly; those that have should move swiftly to implement and enforce the treaty. As long as illegal operators can find a port where they can unload and sell their catch, they will continue to profit from their crimes.

Mandate permanent, unique identifying numbers: To fish in most parts of the world, vessels need only a name, the flag of a country, and a radio call sign. None of those identifiers is permanent, and all can easily and quickly be changed, at little cost. That has made it difficult for governments to prosecute illegal fishermen and has allowed many repeat offenders to return known illegal vessels to the water under new identities.

Flag states and coastal states should require that all large fishing vessels have permanent, unique identifiers--specifically, one administered by the International Maritime Organization. An IMO number is essentially a serial number, like a vessel fingerprint that is assigned to a boat until it is scrapped, and can reveal a ship's real identity--including its owner and where it is licensed to fish.

Coordinate transnational efforts: Until recently, governments faced logistical and legal nightmares in pursuing illegal fishing operators into a neighboring country's waters. Even when officials wanted to reach out for help, they often didn't know whom to call.

To help address that, Interpol in 2013 launched Project Scale, an initiative designed to improve cooperation among the agency's 190 member countries to stop fisheries crimes.

Since the project's launch, Interpol has issued 17 Purple Notices, or alerts, on vessels engaged in illegal fishing and related crimes. Coordinated efforts by the agency and its member countries helped set the stage for the sinking of the notorious illegal fishing vessel Thunder on April 6, 2015, in the waters off West Africa. All Interpol member countries with a stake in marine fishing should be encouraged to coordinate and communicate through Project Scale.

Leverage technology to monitor the ocean: Traditionally, finding and chasing illegal fishermen on the water was expensive, dangerous, and often futile. Conducting the same operations via satellite is efficient, safe, and effective. Project Eyes on the Seas, a collaboration between The Pew Charitable Trusts and the British firm Satellite Applications Catapult, uses satellites to pinpoint a ship's location and heading, and overlays the data with other information, including a vessel's history of compliance with the law. That can help fisheries analysts determine--in near real time--whether a vessel is likely to be engaged in questionable activity.

Among governments that have used this system are the United Kingdom, Palau, and countries in the Polynesian Leaders Group, including Niue, the Cook Islands, Tonga, and Samoa. More governments should consider Eyes on the Seas as a tool to reduce illegal fishing in their waters.

Other initiatives are shining a spotlight on criminal fishing operations, including the European Commission's system of first warning countries that support lawbreaking, and then banning their seafood imports. Also, countries are using regional partnerships in southeastern Africa, Central America, and the Pacific islands to share resources and information to detect illegal fishermen and keep them out of their collective waters.

Together, these mechanisms can expose unlawful operators and close off their opportunities for selling stolen fish. That could make life so difficult for the offenders that they hang up their nets and hooks, once and for all.

Tony Long leads The Pew Charitable Trusts' work to end illegal fishing worldwide.

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An Ocean Policy For The Next President (Whoever She May Be)  
As I've reported in Sierra magazine, thirty-three years ago, President Ronald Reagan established the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), stretching 200 miles out from our shores. At 3.4 million square miles, it's more extensive than our continental landmass. But unlike our lands, our public seas belong to all of us, and right now they are in trouble. The ocean is at risk from a cascading series of environmental disasters including industrial overfishing, pollution, loss of coastal and offshore habitats, and climate change. Faced with these threats, it's hard to fathom why this crisis in our seas has received no attention in the 2016 presidential campaigns. Hillary Clinton has pledged not to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean or off the Atlantic coast but has no position on the Gulf of Mexico, where 17 percent of domestic oil production takes place. By calling the science of climate change a hoax, Donald Trump has made it clear that he'd be unlikely to address climate-linked ocean threats such as sea level rise, ocean acidification, and harmful algae blooms intensified by warming ocean waters--such as we're now seeing on the coasts of Florida.

Yet there are commonsense steps the next president could and should take to help restore the blue in our red, white, and blue.

The next president should expand on the modest National Ocean Policy initiated by President Barack Obama in the wake of the BP blowout disaster. Ideally the new policy would eliminate federal agency conflicts and redundancy in ocean management. It would combine the best available science with public input to identify how to better utilize limited ocean spaces. Some examples might include relocating shipping lanes to reduce ship strikes on migrating whales, choosing offshore wind farm and aquaculture sites so they don't impact local fishing grounds, and protecting unique marine habitats and wildlife while also maintaining naval warfare training zones and fiber-optic cable laying. Former U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen describes this as "putting urban planning in the water column."

The next administration should also continue to promote best fisheries and aquaculture management practices to sustain living resources and the jobs that go with them. Since its conservation-oriented reforms in 2006, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Act has seen two-thirds of U.S. overfished stocks rebuilt or improved. As they recover, there is increased political and commercial pressure to go back to over-exploiting the resource. When the act comes up for reauthorization this year, it should be strengthened--not undermined--so that the United States can remain a leader in reducing global fishing pressure.

The United States also needs to continue to lead in the fight against illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) pirate fishing, which accounts for up to a third of fish caught and also often involves the use of slave labor. Last year, the largest citizen lobby for ocean conservation in U.S. history successfully lobbied for passage of a bipartisan IUU Fishing Enforcement Act, which, among other things, will allow better remote tracking and seizure of pirate vessels when they pull into ports. A similar citizen lobby will take place this spring as part of a biennial Blue Vision Summit.

America needs to create more fully protected marine reserves. This will build on the early work of Presidents Clinton and Bush, who protected the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off Hawaii (an area larger than all national parks combined), and Presidents Bush and Obama, who established and expanded the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. The next administration should also follow Secretary of State John Kerry's lead in supporting the global effort now underway to create additional large-scale marine reserves, including on the high seas and in the polar seas. These types of marine-protected areas can act as global reserves of the biodiversity that provide us food, storm protection, recreation, and tourism.

We can begin to fight the threat of ocean acidification with better monitoring to identify and manage hot spots, by reducing land-based pollution that can exacerbate the problem, and by finding ways to enhance marine organisms' abilities to adapt. But really the only significant solution is to commit to a rapid end to the emission of greenhouse gases. Ocean acidification is one of the greatest threats almost no one knows about. It's the result of seawater absorbing surplus carbon dioxide, which is changing the Ph balance of the ocean and threatening every shell-forming creature--from certain planktons to coral polyps to crabs to oysters. It is already affecting commercial oyster farm operations and coral reefs. A warmer, more acidic ocean also holds less dissolved oxygen that threatens to expand over 500 dead zones around the world.

With an estimated six feet or more of sea level rise expected this century, we also need to protect at-risk coastal populations through better shoreline management. Instead of building next to the water, we need to make a major investment in the restoration of natural barriers such as salt marshes and beach dunes. And we need to encourage planned retreat by not using federal subsidies to rebuild in harm's way on barrier beaches and in flood zones after major disasters.
Given all these impacts and more, the need for a rapid transition off fossil fuels is obvious. We should start by eliminating the dirtiest, most dangerous production systems. Along with stopping coal and tar sand mining, we should commit to ending all offshore oil drilling in the next eight years.

And of course there are other challenges. Where new technologies like deep-sea mining threaten to disrupt unique benthic ecosystems, we should adapt the precautionary principle and make policy based on doing the least harm, which may include refusing to license this technology.

Because plastic pollution of the ocean kills wildlife and concentrates toxins through the food web, the EPA needs to seriously consider identifying a range of plastics as toxic substances to be banned or tightly controlled so we can start to transition off of single-use plastic.

Noise pollution is another emerging issue. NOAA has just launched a plan to require noise reduction from shipping, the offshore oil industry, and other sources. We can learn a lot from the U.S. Navy's submarine force, known as "the silent service," when it comes to adopting noise control technology.

Ideally the United States ought to consider a unified Department of the Ocean similar to the Department of the Interior, which was created to manage our last great wilderness frontier. Right now ocean governance is spread across 22 federal agencies. The new Department of the Ocean could be made up of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for science and policy and the U.S. Coast Guard for operations and law enforcement.

Short of that, we need to provide these two frontline agencies with much more robust funding and legally mandated opportunities for the conservation, exploration, and protection of our ocean. When it comes to ocean challenges, we know what the solutions are. What we need is to mobilize the political will to enact them before it's too late.

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Giant ancient supervolcanoes threw rock right across Australia  
Massive eruptions when New Zealand ripped away from Australia were tens to hundreds of times stronger than anything ever recorded in human history  
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The Flood Of 2016: Southeast Louisiana And The Consequences Of Real Community  

My younger brother, who as I write this is on his way to Baton Rouge to help flood victims, and I spent the better part of this last week doing two things: monitoring Louisiana State University flood maps and exchanging irritated text messages at how little national media attention was being given to the devastation occurring in our home state. Between August 12 and 14, four trillion gallons of rain fell, 11 river gauges in southeast Louisiana set all time record highs, 20,000 people had to be rescued, 10,000 people have been put in shelters, and a number of souls lost their lives. In my hometown of Denham Springs, roughly 90 percent of the people living there have flood damage to their homes. The flood is historic, tragic, and hard to conceptualize. Quiet little suburban towns that few people outside of Baton Rouge have ever even heard of became lakes of rainwater and debris almost in an instant. Conversations went from what clothes children would wear on the first day of school, to what the basic items of survival were for a family with small children. 

Through it all, media coverage was so lacking that people living outside of the immediate area resorted to social media sites to updates themselves on what was happening in the area; using uploaded videos, pictures, and posts to piece together events and timelines, the pathways of the moving water, and how long the crisis would last. As cellular service failed, power went out across town after town, and families scrambled to find shelter, secure rescue, and just survive…news media coverage was virtually silent. A number of very good articles have been written about why, mostly speaking on the fact that the flood did not fit the narrative of entertainment the news media requires in order to garner coverage. The few articles that complain on the lack of national media coverage all have the same goal in mind… to get more media coverage on the event so that the scope of the tragedy can be known and help given to those people in need.

To accomplish this, they focus on the scope of the tragedy itself; as I resorted to earlier in this piece. In order to achieve the goal of coverage, those of us who care about the heartbreak in southeast Louisiana are forced to package it in those narrative frames of entertainment and historic loss in order to get anyone to care… and that to me is the larger tragedy. The tragedy is that strong, loving, cohesive communities, because of their strength and resilience, cannot be celebrated and assisted at the same time. That in order to be worthy of attention the very fabric of societal order has to have been sheered away; news media requires scenes that look like a zombie apocalypse, not scores of hometown heroes trying their best to rescue one another.

In these communities, families who lost everything feel guilty for letting someone give them money for a warm meal, because others have lost more. Neighbors organize care packages for people in the “devastated areas,” while floodwaters seep into their homes. Friends let friends of friends, and complete strangers off the street, sleep in their beds and on their couches because they have a place that is dry and some room to spare. People wait anxiously for the water to subside so that they can go and help their friends rebuild. Former high school classmates put up online lists of people to locate one another, connect with one another, and share supplies. The local fisherman run rescue missions through streets that have become rivers to rescue families stranded on rooftops and trapped on highways; forming a “Cajun Navy” of volunteers. And former residents travel from cities like Chicago and D.C., taking vacation days from work, to make sure longtime friends have someone there to help them remove the water-soaked sheetrock from their house.

No stories of looting, no stories of riots, no devolving of society to the lowest forms of humanity…instead a tragedy that has brought out the best in friends, family, and neighbors; people who help others before they help themselves…who see the assistance of others as an assistance of self.

Rather than reward that with aid and bringing the full force of our collective national attention to examples of what resilient and strong American communities look like when challenged…these communities are ignored and left to fend for themselves…simply because they can. The consequence of being a strong community is that your tragedy is not mentioned in national news, your strength uncelebrated, and your needs unmet unless they can be met through your own resilience. Humility and selflessly helping others does not fit the script of our news media… that is more of a tragedy than any flood.

For those looking for ways to help, please see the following:

“How To Help Victims Of Louisiana Floods”

HealingPlace Church

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Root Canal: SeaWorld Gets Drilled In New Killer Whale Teeth Report  

SeaWorld's CEO Joel Manby has been all smiles since he and Wayne Pacelle, CEO of The Humane Society of the United States announced that their organizations had reached an agreement to end the captive breeding of killer whales at SeaWorld's parks in California, Texas and Florida along with the six killer whales under SeaWorld's care at Loro Parque in Spain. But when it comes to the killer whales themselves, they're not smiling because there is something missing - their teeth.

Dentition as a Welfare Indicator

Do you  remember going to the dentist as a child for a checkup? Do you remember how happy you were if you didn't have any cavities? Do you remember the sound of the dentist's drill when you did?

A new report from the Free Morgan Foundation (FMF) examines the condition of killer whale teeth as a measure of their welfare in captivity. The report, Ongoing concerns regarding the SeaWorld orca held at Loro Parque, Tenerife, Spain provides extensive photographic documentation that chronicles the dentition of the six killer whales in SeaWorld's care at Loro Parque. Based on the report, it appears that cavities are the least of their problems.

The authors of the report, Dr. Ingrid Visser and Rosina Lisker, visited Loro Parque in April of this year where they observed and photographed the killer whales over a period of three days. During their visit, Visser & Lisker received personal assurances by Dr. Javier Almunia of the Loro Parque Fundación and two Loro Parque veterinarians, that there were no health problems with the killer whales.

When specifically asked about the wild-born female Morgan, the authors were told she had no broken teeth:

“All three employees denied that Morgan had any broken teeth. Subsequent to the authors' visit, on 28 April 2016, Loro Parque posted on their official website blog the following text; “Dr. Visser asked about Morgan's broken teeth, and the veterinarian staff confirmed that Morgan does not have broken teeth just abrasion in [sic] some of them.” [emphasis added].” (Visser & Lisker at p. 16.) 

The photographic evidence collected by Visser & Lisker, however, adds to the growing stack of documentation regarding welfare issues facing the killer whales held in that facility.

Morgan is of particular concern to Visser & Lisker because during her time in captivity beginning at Dolfinarium Harderwijk in 23 June 2010 and then at Loro Parque since 29 November 2011, she has suffered significant, progressive dental distress that would not have occurred had she been returned back to the ocean following her rehabilitation:

According to the authors, in 3 years, 10 months, 10 days, Morgan went from 0% severe damage of her right mandibular teeth to 75%. The report goes on to calculate that between 41.66% and 75% of the mandibular (lower jaw) teeth were moderately or severely damaged among the six killer whales observed at Loro Parque.

Drilling and Flushing Superior Dental Care?

Drilling and daily flushing of killer whale teeth is portrayed as ‘superior dental care' by Seaworld. But is it really? I asked former SeaWorld trainer John Jett Ph.D. to describe the daily dental care of killer whales from a trainer's perspective:

“We used a variable-speed drill, with a stainless drill bit that was disinfected with betadine prior to the drilling procedure. It was a Dremel brand drill like you can buy at a hardware store. The holes were flushed using a Waterpik filled with betadine. We would receive cases of 1,000mL bags of betadine from the animal care department, which we would cut with scissors and pour into the Waterpik basin in preparation for tooth flushes.” (John Jett Ph.D. July 2016) 

Another former SeaWorld trainer, Jeffrey Ventre MD, gives further detail about pulpotomies, tooth flushing and the health impacts of dentition of killer whales in captivity in this video:

Five Freedoms

The welfare issues at Loro Parque extend far beyond the killer whales teeth. Visser & Lisker also asses the welfare of the killer whales through an analysis and discussion of the physical conditions at Loro Parque with respect to the ‘Five Freedoms' of animal welfare:

• 
  
• FREEDOM FROM HUNGER AND THIRST.
• 
  
• FREEDOM FROM DISCOMFORT.
• 
  
• FREEDOM FROM PAIN, INJURY OR DISEASE.
• 
  
• FREEDOM TO EXPRESS NORMAL BEHAVIOR.
• 
  
• FREEDOM FROM FEAR AND DISTRESS.
• 
  

These standards are internationally recognized as providing the absolute minimal requirement for an animal's physical and mental well-being.

In the report, Visser & Lisker document violations of four of the ‘five freedoms' of the killer whale's welfare at Loro Parque. Their report also meticulously documents 23 violations of animal welfare standards affecting the killer whales at Loro Parque using the C-Well® welfare standards. (Visser & Lisker at p. 33.)

SeaWorld and the Humane Society

Wayne Pacelle is the CEO of HSUS, a position he has held since 2004.
Six years after he began working in that position, in November 2010, his organization wrote a letter to the US Government highlighting the animal welfare violations at Loro Parque. HSUS requested that the US Government act according to the letter of comity provision (the legal principle that nations will mutually recognize and respect each other's laws) of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). They requested to have the SeaWorld killer whales seized and repatriated back to the United States:

“Therefore, it is imperative that NMFS and APHIS undertake an immediate investigation and make an official finding as to Loro Parque's non-compliance so that NMFS can take action to seize the orcas or work with SeaWorld to arrange for their repatriation to the United States.” (HSUS letter 11 November 2010.) 

The revelations in the Visser & Lisker (2016) report are stark and startling and reaffirm the validity of the HSUS welfare concerns raised in November 2010 about SeaWorld's killer whales at Loro Parque.

This new report by the FMF has also been submitted to representatives of the US National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Office of Protected Resources
as a not so subtle reminder that it cannot wash its hands of responsibility for monitoring the conditions of the killer whales at Loro Parque through feigned ignorance and denial of readily verifiable facts and observable conditions.

The fact that SeaWorld keeps six of its claimed twenty-nine killer whales at an off-shore facility is a detail that is often overlooked, yet these individuals represent approximately 20 percent of SeaWorld's entire killer whale collection.

Although Loro Parque is not owned by SeaWorld, the killer whales held there are ultimately under the care and responsibility of SeaWorld. Furthermore, as a consequence of the original transfer of four SeaWorld killer whales to Loro Parque in 2006, there is also a responsibility of the US Government pursuant to the MMPA to pay attention to the welfare conditions of the killer whales held at Loro Parque today. (See the FMF white paper on whale laundering.)

On 17 March 2016, SeaWorld and HSUS made an announcement - in partnership - that shook the very foundation of the marine theme park industry, setting in motion the beginning of a gradual phasing out of the commercial display of killer whales in captivity. But is that enough?

The HSUS policy position regarding SeaWorld's killer whales at Loro Parque as expressed to the US Government in 2010 was powerful, principled and represented the humane mandate for the welfare of the killer whales, and of all animals, that the HSUS represents. It is a position that SeaWorld needs to fully embrace.

“SeaWorld has a moral and legal obligation to these animals and must act to secure their welfare. “ (HSUS letter 11 November 2010.) 

Whether the HSUS partnership with SeaWorld will result in a softening of HSUS's stance on the deplorable welfare conditions that continue to plague the killer whales at Loro Parque is uncertain. No doubt, it is an important question that will have to be answered by HSUS - preferably with actions rather than words.

To that end, the FMF sent an “open letter” to Mr. Manby and Mr. Pacelle asking them to meet with the FMF regarding the situation at Loro Parque and to discuss a long term commitment to work together to return Morgan to the ocean in a controlled, natural environment. To date, neither Mr. Manby or Mr. Pacelle have responded to the FMF invitation to talk.

Morgan as Her Own Best Advocate

Ever since being taken from the wild in 2010, Morgan has commanded the public's interest in an international spotlight. Over the course of the last several months, Morgan's plight has increased public awareness and outrage over the welfare issues facing her and other killer whales in captivity.

Two recent viral videos show Morgan ramming her head into a heavy metal segregation gate while being confined in a small medical tank and also show her “hauling-out” onto the main performance stage for an extended period after a performance. This was apparently in an attempt to escape the aggression of SeaWorld's other killer whales who are also held with Morgan at Loro Parque.

The stories of these two events spread across social media and received mainstream coverage, including National Geographic, Time, People, The Dodo, HuffPost UK, and in this exclusive television interview with former SeaWorld trainer Dr Jeffrey Ventre on Sky News with Kay Burley.

For their part, SeaWorld and Loro Parque have gone to great efforts to try to spin the story about Morgan, claiming that she is healthy and doing well in captivity and that the recent videos show normal behavior. However, in fact, they are quite alarming and such a response underscores the paradox of perception by those who want to continue to profit from the captivity of these sentient beings and those who wish to put an end to it.

The Visser & Lisker report draws attention to the clear and obvious issues of Morgan's teeth and explains why the damage is due to confinement in a concrete tank. This report and Morgan's plight continues to gain international attention with new in-depth articles about Morgan appearing in the Dutch news magazine Vrij Nederland and German newspaper Donaukurier in August.

Pain Relief? 

The images of the killer whales teeth in the report speak for themselves.
They are graphic, indisputable and universally recognizable as “painful” to any person who has had a cavity, chipped, broken or lost a tooth, or had a tooth drilled by a dentist.

These latest revelations about SeaWorld's killer whales has the potential to take yet another bite out of the bottom line of the struggling marine theme park industry as it continues to struggle with a public relations campaign, trying desperately to distance itself from the Blackfish effect.

On 4 August 2016, SeaWorld Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE: SEAS) reported its financial results for the first half and second quarter of 2016. The results were not encouraging for investors. One analyst even suggested that SeaWorld should reinvest in the business, pinning its hopes on the addition of new roller coasters - not killer whales.

The world is rapidly changing and national and international laws and regulations and the government entities that are entrusted to enforce them, need to catch up to society's expectations and demands. What happens next is anyone's guess. But one thing is for sure, the Visser & Lisker report gives both government regulators and marine theme park executives something to chew on.

(Author's note - Matthew Spiegl serves on the Board of the Free Morgan Foundation.)

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California Wildfires Drive Tens of Thousands From Their Homes (21 photos)  

After five years of drought conditions, wildfires across California remain a common occurrence. At the moment, the Clayton Fire in Lake County and the Bluecut Fire in the San Bernardino National Forest are causing tens of thousands of residents to evacuate. The Bluecut Fire alone has consumed more than 30,000 acres, and has forced the evacuation of more than 82,000 people. In Lake County, a man was arrested and charged with arson for starting the wildfire that has destroyed more than 175 buildings so far. Below are images from the past few days of the destruction, and those who are battling the blazes, rescuing people and animals, and those caught up int he chaos.

 
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Photos of the Day: Aug. 17, 2016  

Explore the news of the day with these images from around the world.  
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Amur leopard  

My Planet Experience posted a photo:

With as few as 45 adults remaining in the wild, the Amur leopard is probably the rarest and most critically endangered big cat in the world. Habitat destruction, degradation and poaching of Amur leopards and their prey are persistent threats. Hunted largely for its beautiful, spotted fur, the loss of each Amur leopard puts the species at greater risk of extinction.
The Amur leopard is classified as Critically Endangered since 1996 by IUCN. Data published by the World Wildlife Fund indicates that there are roughly 50 adult Amur leopards in the wild today.
The Amur leopard is a leopard subspecies native to the Primorye region of southeastern Russia and the Jilin Province of northeast China. They live for 10-15 years, and in captivity up to 20 years. The Amur leopard is also known as the Far East leopard, the Manchurian leopard or the Korean leopard.

© www.myplanetexperience.com

 
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The Next Great Victory For Birds  
One hundred years ago, Canada and the United States signed the historic Migratory Bird Treaty to protect birds from indiscriminate slaughter for food and fashion markets. Millions of birds were killed each year and few species were spared, including unlikely ones such as robins, bobolinks, and meadowlarks, as well as egrets, herons, shorebirds, ducks, and grouse. Bird populations dwindled, spurring one of the earliest conservation crises and a historic agreement between two countries.


Millions of birds like the Great blue heron were slaughtered annually for fashion markets. By 1910, populations had crashed and plumes were worth more than their weight in gold. Photo credit: ©Jukka Jantunen.

The Migratory Bird Treaty, signed on August 16th 1916, was implemented through Canadian and American federal legislation making it illegal to kill, import, export, sell, or purchase migratory birds, their nests, and eggs. Over the next century, it ushered in several critical reforms: abolition of hunting for food and fashion markets; bag and season limits on hunting game birds; new protections from pollution; and habitat protection through establishment of wildlife refuges, migratory bird sanctuaries, and stewardship initiatives.

Ratification of the Migratory Bird Treaty and subsequent conservation successes of the 20th century resulted from cooperation among hunters, naturalists, writers, scientists, industries, environmental organizations, governments, private citizens, and elected representatives.


The plumes, or aigrettes, of egrets and herons were especially prized for women's hats. Photo credit: ©W.M. Morrison.

William T. Hornaday was one of the most ferocious and relentless advocates for the protection of wild birds and the Migratory Bird Treaty. As founding director of the Bronx Zoo, operated by the newly-formed New York Zoological Society (the precursor to my current organization, the Wildlife Conservation Society, or WCS), Hornaday was uncompromising in his position. He published dramatic accounts of the extinction of several species such as Great Auk, and the presumed plight of other birds like the Great Egret if the commercial market for wild birds persisted.

When efforts were flagging, Hornaday rallied support, pushing for the expansion of proposed protected species to include most migratory birds. And when the Treaty process had apparently stalled, Hornaday tracked down a missing Canadian document to a British embassy cabinet where it had been sitting, misfiled. The treaty was signed soon after and Hornaday called it 'the greatest victory ever achieved for the birds of this continent'.

Today, WCS continues to play an important role - discovering new ways to protect myriad avian species and their habitats, leveraging partnerships with others, and inspiring people to share in our mission.


Hornaday's vivid testimonials on the fate of North American birds were part of his relentless campaign for bird protection and the Migratory Bird Treaty. From The Wild Life Call, March 1911, Number 1. Edited by William T. Hornaday, Director New York Zoological Park, ©WCS.


The Migratory Bird Treaty was crafted to protect wild birds from intentional killing for commercial markets and to recover dwindling populations. What was not anticipated when the Treaty was written was the rise of new and different forms of human activity that would result in the unintentional harm or killing of birds in the late 20th and early 21st century.

More than one-third of the 1,154 native bird species of North America are in need of urgent conservation action. Each year, billions of birds are killed and nests are lost as a direct result of human activity, including collisions with vehicles, buildings, and power lines; predation by domestic and feral cats; and, as a result of agriculture, forestry, and fishing by-catch.

A regulatory framework governing incidental death of birds under Migratory Bird legislation, combined with enforcement of existing Migratory Bird Regulations, is critical and decades overdue. But birds face other threats: habitat loss and fragmentation, pesticides, and climate change, among others. Effective recovery of all birds requires commitments to collaborate across borders and across agencies. The geography of our shared birds transcend the government systems developed to protect and manage our environment.


Lapland Longspurs migrate in the thousands along roads on their way to Arctic breeding grounds. Unfortunately, this makes them especially vulnerable to mortality from vehicle collisions. These six were among many that collided with a large truck on the Klondike Highway of the Yukon. Photo credit: Hilary Cooke/WCS Canada.

The successful cross-border partnerships initiated 100 years ago should inspire us to work even harder to identify shared values and goals while leveraging collective knowledge and capacity. Such efforts will secure a future for all North American bird species while inspiring other international collaborations on migratory birds.

Our ultimate goals should be to ensure that no bird is added to Hornaday's list of extinct species. I do not wish to end my career with regret knowing that, despite our knowledge, capacity, and tools to secure the future of North America's birds, we failed to rise to the challenge. So let us seize the opportunity of this 100th anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty to catalyze a new era of collaborative conservation.

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Marsupial lion's primate-like forearms made it a unique predator  
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5 Environmentally Safe Actions That Will Increase Your Home's Value  

Image source: PhotoDune

Sustainable building is all the rage these days, and for good reason. Climate change and the undoing of the earth's delicate ecosystem is no longer a point of conjecture. According to the EPA, "The global average temperature increased by more than 1.4°F over the last century." And "the decade from 2000 to 2010 was the warmest on record." Global warming is a real thing. And the sooner we as a society adapt to this reality, the sooner we'll adjust the way we live to be kinder to planet earth.

I've written in the past about "Ethical consumerism." That is the idea that we can buy our way to a better version of ourselves. I would also like to suggest that ethical consumerism extends to the home you live in. In other words: the idea that green homes do less harm to the earth has marketable value. If you reside in a more progressive neighborhood, this value is even more enhanced.

Recently, the Institute for Market Transformation released a study showing a positive correlation between home energy efficiency and curb appeal. On average, high-performance homes are valued at a premium of 3.46 percent more than non-high performance homes. Some were even valued as high as 6% to 7.7% more. That equated to between $10,343 to $53,000 that buyers were willing to pay for a high-performance home over a standard performance home.

What does this mean for you, the enterprising homeowner who wants to reduce their footprint? It means that renovations designed to improve the efficiency of your home can also boost its resale value. Here're some actions to get started.

1. Get an energy audit: When you are just starting out, getting an energy audit can be a great way to identify your home's specific energy deficiencies. Plenty of private companies offer this service. The Residential Energy Services Network is a database of qualified local professionals. A comprehensive audit can be conducted within the course of an afternoon. The auditor will do a full overview of your home; checking for leaks, examining insulation, inspecting ductwork and more. After a thorough walkthrough, the auditor can make recommendations based on your home's specific needs.

If you're up for it, you can go the DIY route. Keep in mind, conducting a proper energy audit is as much science as it is an art. The best auditors have years of construction experience and have reviewed all manner of houses. An energy audit also involves crawling up into your attic and down into your basement or crawlspace. But if you love DIY home projects, then, by all means, give it a go.

2. Spend an afternoon at the hardware store: Before you tackle any of the high budget considerations for upgrading your home (see below), start with the low cost & high yield repairs and upgrades that you can do yourself. Sealing up holes in your insulation and caulking windows is a good starting point. Energy.gov has a comprehensive guide to the process of caulking. This article on energy efficiency basics provides more suggestions on sealing, insulating, and smart home integrations.

3. Install energy efficient windows: When you have windows that are not energy efficient (think "old" or "thin") your house is losing energy. Through a process called "heat transfer," hot air is always trying to equalize with cold air. That means that heat is going out in the winter and coming in during the summer, even if you don't want it to.

The most permanent and energy efficient solution to this problem is to install energy efficient windows. The Department of Energy estimates that replacing your windows with ENERGY STAR® rated windows can reduce heat loss by 10%-20%. That means it will take a lot less energy to heat and cool your home. Say hello to lower energy bills.

4. Power your home with renewable energy: Believe it or not, there are some effective alternatives if you want to power your home without polluting the environment. Depending on the state you live in, wind power, geothermal, and solar may be great options.

The easiest way to switch is to work with your utility or an independent supplier to simply choose a 100% renewable plan. Wind energy is the most common form of renewable energy offered by providers.

Choosing to place solar panels on your roof requires a greater upfront investment, but that investment pays for itself over time. The amount you save overall will depend on where you live and how much sun your panels absorb. Project sunroof offers a calculator you can use to estimate savings based on your location.

5. Upgrade your appliances: In the eloquent words of ENERGY STAR Consumer Messaging Guide for 2015 "every appliance comes with two price tags: the purchase price and the cost of operating the product." Old or inefficient appliances are a significant drain on energy usage. Upgrading them all at once can constitute a major one-time cost but can benefit you over time. Many experts rank updated appliances as the number-one home improvement project for the kitchen.

6. Read up on green home rating accreditations and get your home rated: The term "Greenwashing" refers to people (usually those interested in inflating the price of a house for sale) who falsely represent the efficiency of a home. There are rating systems that will "grade" your home for efficiency so you can legitimize your efforts to prepare for a future sale. HERS, LEED, Energy Star, and Built Green are some of the more well-known certifying bodies. Each one of them has their defining criteria of what makes a home sustainable. Some homes have more than one certification. Once you've taken steps to move your home to a more sustainable footprint, research them to find out which one is right for you.

There's even a search engine to find certified homes for sale called Viva Green Homes. That will be useful if you'd like to do a bit of competitive analysis to determine what ratings are typical in your area.

Bottom line:

Follow these steps to transform your home into a more sustainable place. The world will thank you - so will your pocketbook.

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Life may have emerged not once, but many times on Earth  
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Lake Powell From the Space Station's EarthKAM  
The remotely controlled Sally Ride EarthKAM aboard the International Space Station acquired this photograph on July 14, 2016, as the orbiting laboratory flew over Lake Powell and the border of Utah and Arizona. Located on the Colorado River, Lake Powell is the second largest artificial reservoir in the United States.  
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How Companies Will Use VR and Read Your Brainwaves to Sell You More Stuff  

I'm passing through the front foyer of a major Chinese bank. I careen through well-lit hallways and teller booths, before sliding by some signage written in Cantonese. It's as if I'm there, minus the tellers, customers, and sounds of a bustling financial institution.

But the thing is, I'm not actually in China, or in a bank, although it almost feels as though I am. I'm using the Microsoft HoloLens to see a visual representation of this branch's layout, as designed by Toronto branding and design agency Shikatani Lacroix. Augmented reality gives me a bird's eye view of the scene. I then put on a Samsung Gear headset, and take a VR tour of the same space.

What I'm experiencing is part of the design firm's offering to its clients: An application that creates realistic retail environments using 3D technology, visualized through augmented reality and virtual reality. Experts say they can then analyze a consumer's brainwaves to judge how they're responding to the virtual environment, via electroencephalogram, or EEG. The EEG capability comes from a new partnership with True Impact, a neuromarketing research firm.

VR bank kiosks. Image: Shikatani Lacroix

This marriage of technologies is still in its newlywed phase, and it's difficult to assess its value this early. But it's easy to understand the appeal. Instead of a design firm building dollhouse prototypes to show focus groups, it can tour consumers through the environment in AR or VR, and report back to a client on what excited or bored them, using intimate details to make the case: These consumers will be outfitted with sensors across their bodies, including EEG.

“What we found with VR is that people aren't always honest about how they feel about what they're seeing,” said Daniel Terenzio, head of immersive solutions at Shikatani Lacroix. “But we eliminate that with neuroscience.”

The Chinese bank is this technology's first client (Terenzio declined to name the bank). Their tests found that in areas with lots of information and detail, for example where large signs were displayed, “cognitive responses go up,” noted Terenzio in our interview, “but in areas with larger more empty spaces that cognitive effort level goes down and it's more soothing and restful.”

A test subject is fitted with an EEG and Microsoft HoloLens headgear to view the AR retail environment. Image: Mark Willard

Shikatani Lacroix is not the first to harness neuroscience to give brands detailed data on what their consumers supposedly want. More companies are embracing it.

Earlier this year, Carl Marci, chief neuroscientist and executive vice president of Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience, spoke at the Digiday Retail Summit about how tools such as eye tracking, EEG and biometrics can help brands identify visual hot spots (areas in a store or on a product that attract the most attention) and blind spots and determine levels of emotional impact. For instance, wearing an eye-tracking glasses unit and EEG sensors, you can walk through a fake store and a firm can determine which area of the shelf your eyes turned to most and what made your heart rate fluctuate during your shopping trip.

AR and VR are also finding a home in retail. In 2013, IKEA introduced an app to let customers “place” a product in their home by placing the outline of that table, for example, in a living room space.

The web interface. Image: Shikatani Lacroix

And earlier this year, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba allowed shoppers to check out their goods on a VR headset to view at clothing and other fashion items in 360 degrees. This move comes several months after Alibaba opened a VR research lab to develop VR and AR technologies to help sellers on Alibaba platforms build their own 3D product inventories.

Terenzio demonstrated to me how they use a tablet outfitted with AR technology to display a digital label on a bottle of Pepsi (one of their clients), wrapping around the product fully. As I turned the bottle around, on the tablet I saw the new label, a moving image as opposed to a static one.

“This is a much better way to show clients how a label will look on their product, rather than just showing them flat pictures,” said Terenzio.

When I first heard about what Shikatani Lacroix was unveiling, I had that initial creepy feeling of “Oh great, another company hoping to read our brains to sell us more stuff.” It made me think of something out of a Cronenberg movie. But from their clients' perspective, it could save a lot of money. Who wouldn't want a virtual tour of a new shopping mall you're about to build, say, instead of seeing its miniature model that you literally can't walk through?

Reading our minds to build better stores and products will be the future or retail, for better or worse. Responsible companies have to ensure consumers give consent to have their bodies scanned to optimize shopping. It would be a dark day if this neuromarketing spun out of control: if we walked into a bank and didn't know our heart rates were being monitored.

 
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r0B0t: NASA's $1 million robotics contest will prep Valkyrie for Mars  
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The Looming Extinction of Humankind, Explained  

For most people, driving with a seat belt tightly strapped around their bodies is a smart habit. Not only is racing down the highway without it illegal—“click it or ticket,” as the slogan goes—but seat belts also “reduce serious crash-related injuries and deaths by about half.” Yet as we've previously estimated, your chances of dying in a car crash are at least 9.5 times lower than dying in a human extinction event.

If this sounds incredible—and admittedly, it does—it's because the human mind is susceptible to cognitive biases that distort our understanding of reality. Consider the fact that you're more likely to be killed by a meteorite than a lightning bolt, and your chances of being struck by lightning are about four times greater than dying in a terrorist attack. In other words, you should be more worried about meteorites than the Islamic State or al-Qaeda (at least for now).

The calculation above is based on an assumption made by the influential “Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change,” a report prepared for the UK government that describes climate change as “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen.” In making its case that climate change should be a top priority, the Stern Review stipulates a 0.1 percent annual probability of human extinction.

This number might appear minuscule at first glance, but over the course of a century it yields a whopping 9.5 percent probability of our species going extinct. Even more, compared to estimates offered by others, it's actually quite low. For example, a 2008 survey of experts put the probability of human extinction this century at 19 percent. And the co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Sir Martin Rees, argues that civilization has a 50:50 chance of making it through the current century—a mere coin toss!

How could the probability of a global disaster be so much greater than that of dying in a car accident?

How is this possible? How could the probability of a global disaster be so much greater than that of dying in a car accident? To be sure, these estimates could be wrong. While some existential risks, such as asteroid impacts and super-volcanic eruptions, can be estimated using objective historical data, risks associated with future technologies require a good dose of speculation. Nonetheless, we know enough about certain technological trends and natural phenomena to make at least some reasonable claims about what our existential situation will look like in the future.

There are three broad categories of “existential risks,” or scenarios that would either cause our extinction or permanently catapult us back into the Stone Age. The first includes natural risks like asteroid and comet impacts, super-volcanic eruptions, global pandemics, and even supernovae. These form our cosmic risk background and, as just suggested, some of these risks are relatively easy to estimate.

As you may recall from middle school, an assassin from the heavens, possibly a comet, smashed into the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago and killed almost all of the dinosaurs. And about 75,000 years ago, a super-volcano in Indonesia caused the Toba catastrophe, which some scientists believe dramatically reduced the human population, though this claim is controversial. Few people today realize just how close humanity may have come to extinction in the Paleolithic.

Although the “dread factor” of pandemics tends to be lower than wars and terrorist attacks, they have resulted in some of the most significant episodes of mass death in human history. For example, the 1918 Spanish flu killed about 3 percent (though some estimates are double that) of the human population and infected roughly a third of all humans between 1918 and 1920. In absolute numbers, it threw roughly 33 million more people into the grave than all the bayonets, bullets, and bombs of World War I, which lasted from 1914 to 1918. And based on CDC estimates, the fourteenth-century Black Death, caused by the bubonic plague, could have taken approximately the same number of lives as World War II, World War I, the Crusades, the Mongol conquests, the Russian Civil War, and the Thirty Years' War combined. (Take note, anti-vaxxers!)

Influenza patients during the 1918 flu pandemic in Iowa. Image: Office of the Public Health Service Historian

The second category of existential risks concerns advanced technologies, which could cause unprecedented harm through “error or terror.” Historically speaking, humanity created the first anthropogenic risk in 1945 when we detonated an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. Since this watershed event, humanity has lived in the flickering shadows of a nuclear holocaust, a fact that led a group of physicists to create the Doomsday Clock, which metaphorically represents our collective nearness to disaster.

While nuclear tensions peaked during the Cold War—President Kennedy even estimated that the likelihood of nuclear war at one point was “between 1 in 3 and even”—the situation improved significantly after the Iron Curtain fell. Unfortunately, US-Russian relations have recently deteriorated, leading Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to suggest that, “we have slid back to a new Cold War.” As we write this, the Doomsday Clock is set to a mere three minutes before midnight—or doom—which is the second closest it's been to midnight since its creation in 1947.

While nuclear weapons constitute the greatest current risk to human survival, they may be among the least of our concerns by the end of this century. Why? Because of the risks associated with emerging fields like biotechnology, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology. The key point to understand here is that these fields are not only becoming exponentially more powerful, but their products are becoming increasingly accessible to groups and individuals as well.

For example, it's increasingly possible for nonexperts to cobble together a makeshift gene-editing laboratory. The affordability of home-built labs is being driven in part by the biohacking movement, which aims to empower interested hobbyists by making inexpensive, automated equipment readily available. DNA material can also be ordered from commercial providers, as journalists for the Guardiandiscovered in 2006 when they managed to acquire “part of [the] smallpox genome through mail order.” Even more, anyone with an internet connection can access databases that contain the genetic sequences of pathogens like Ebola. We're a long way from programming organisms' DNA the way we program software. But if these trends continue (as they likely will), terrorists and lone wolves of the future will almost certainly have the ability to engineer pandemics of global proportions, and perhaps even more devastating than anything our species has previously encountered.

As for nanotechnology, the most well-known risk stems from what's called the grey goo scenario. This involves tiny self-replicating machines, or nanobots, programmed to disassemble whatever matter they come into contact with and reorganize those atoms into exact replicas of themselves. The resulting nanorobotic clones would then convert all the matter around them into even more copies. Because of the exponential rate of replication, the entire biosphere could be transformed into a wriggling swarm of mindlessly reproducing nanobots in a relatively short period of time.

Alternatively, a terrorist could design such nanobots to selectively destroy organisms with a specific genetic signature. An ecoterrorist who wants to remove humanity from the planet without damaging the global ecosystem could potentially create self-replicating nanobots that specifically target Homo sapiens, thereby resulting in our extinction.

Perhaps the greatest long-term threat to humanity's future, though, stems from artificial superintelligence. As one of us recently wrote, instilling values in a superintelligent machine that promote human well-being could be surprisingly difficult. For example, a superintelligence whose goal is to eliminate sadness from the world might simply exterminate Homo sapiens, because people who don't exist can't be sad. Or a superintelligence whose purpose is to help humans solve our energy crisis might inadvertently destroy us by covering the entire planet with solar panels. The point is that there's a crucial difference between “do as I tell you” and “do as I intend you to do,” and figuring out how to program a machine to follow the latter poses a number of daunting challenges.

A wildfire at Florida Panther NWR. Image: Josh O'Connor/USFWS

This leads to the final category of risks, which includes anthropogenic disasters like climate change and biodiversity loss. While neither of these are likely to result in our extinction, they are both potent “conflict multipliers” that will push societies to their limits, and in doing so will increase the probability of advanced technologies being misused and abused.

To put this in stark terms, ask yourself this: is a nuclear war more or less likely in a world of extreme weather, mega-droughts, mass migrations, and social/political instability? Is an eco-terrorist attack involving nanotechnology more or less likely in a world of widespread environmental degradation? Is a terrorist attack involving apocalyptic fanatics more or less likely in a world of wars and natural disasters that appear to be prophesied in ancient texts?

But this isn't the end of the story. There's also ample reason for optimism.

Climate change and biodiversity loss will almost certainly exacerbate current geopolitical tensions and foment entirely new struggles between state and nonstate actors. This is not only worrisome in itself, but with the advent of advanced technologies, it could be existentially disastrous.

It's considerations like these that have lead the experts surveyed above, Rees, and other scholars to their less-than-optimistic claims about the future. The fact is that there are far more ways for our species to perish today than ever before, and the best current estimates suggest that dying from an existential catastrophe is more likely than dying in a car accident. Even more, there are multiple reasons for anticipating that the threat of terrorism will nontrivially increase in the coming decades, due to the destabilizing effects of environmental degradation, the democratization of technology, and the growth of religious extremism worldwide.

But this isn't the end of the story. There's also ample reason for optimism. While the existential risks confronting our species this century are formidable, not a single one is insoluble. Humanity has the capacity to overcome every danger that lines the road before us. For example, advanced technologies could also mitigatethe risks posed by nature. A kamikaze asteroid barreling towards Earth could be deflected by a spacecraft or (perhaps) blown to smithereens by a nuclear bomb. Developments like space colonization and underground bunkers could enable humanity to survive a catastrophic asteroid impact or super-volcanic eruption. As for pandemics, recent incidents like the Ebola and SARS outbreaks have shown that scientists working with the international community can effectively contain the spread of pathogenic microbes that might otherwise have caused a global disaster.

Other risks like climate change and biodiversity loss could be solved by reducing population growth, switching to sustainable energy sources, and preserving natural habitats.

This leaves technological risks, which society could potentially neutralize by implementing policies and regulations intended to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of criminals, psychopaths, and terrorists. It's unclear, though, how effective such strategies could be, and this is in part why many experts see the biggest future threats as being associated with advanced technologies. Fortunately, organizations like the X-Risks Institute, Future of Life Institute, Future of Humanity Institute, and Centre for the Study of Existential Risks are working hard to ensure that a worst-case scenario for our species never occurs.

The cosmos is a vast obstacle course of life-threatening dangers. And while our extraordinary success as a species has improved the human condition greatly, it's also introduced a host of novel existential risks our species has never before encountered—and thus has no track record of surviving. Nonetheless, there are clear, concrete actions humanity can take to mitigate the threats before us and lower the probability of an existential catastrophe. As many leading experts have confirmed, the future is overflowing with hope, but realizing this hope requires us to take a sober look at the very real dangers all around.

Phil Torres is an author, contributing writer at the Future of Life Institute, and founding Director of the X-Risks Institute. His most recent book is called The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse. Follow him on Twitter: @xriskology.

Peter Boghossian is an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University. He is the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists and creator of the app Atheos. Follow him on Twitter: @peterboghossian

 
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China, The World, Greed, Cognitive Dissonance, The Best and the Brightest, Part 2: How To Avoid Getting Scammed - China Law Blog (blog)  

China Law Blog (blog)

China, The World, Greed, Cognitive Dissonance, The Best and the Brightest, Part 2: How To Avoid Getting Scammed China Law Blog (blog) The day before yesterday, I wrote a long post (with a long title), China, The World, Greed, Cognitive Dissonance, The Best and the Brightest, and Why People Seem to Encourage/Almost Enjoy Getting Scammed, on why people are so susceptible to getting ... and more »

 
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The urban plan of the L'Eixample district in Valencia, Spain is...  

The urban plan of the L'Eixample district in Valencia, Spain is characterized by long straight streets, a strict grid pattern crossed by wide avenues, and apartments with communal courtyards. A similar layout was used for the district of the same name in Barcelona. The circular structure in the upper right is the Plaza de Toros de Valencia - the city's largest bullfighting arena.

39°27′53″N 0°22′12″W

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Adaptability: The True Mark Of Genius  

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Good grades, aced tests, high IQs -- we have lots of ways to approximate someone's intelligence. These indicators are undoubtedly good at getting a general understanding of a person's ability to retain information and solve problems, but are they useful for indicating whether or not someone is a real "genius?"

First off, there is no universally accepted scientific definition of "genius." It is simply a word used to describe someone demonstrating exceptional intellectual ability. Even this is a vague understanding of the concept, as "exceptional" and "ability" are somewhat relative -- ultimately in the eye of the beholder(s).

What then, is the universal signature of genius? Rather than trying to define it through the narrow band of human uniqueness -- the traits making our species special like literacy, artistic expression, and so forth -- it might be better to think of genius as a concept existing independently of humanity. On this new playing field, genius is not determined by taking tests or possessing a high IQ. Instead, genius is calculated by how successfully an organism can adapt to changes in its environment.

Strange changes

Very few businesses can operate long term without changes to various parts of the system. Name an enterprise which was in operation before the year 1990 and it undoubtedly had to make a significant shift toward computer technology and the internet. These demands never stop thanks to an ever-changing market and the increasingly sophisticated nature of technology.

For example, the previously mentioned enterprise may now be struggling to coordinate resource planning among its various departments. For 20 years, it relied on a DIY, seat of its pants method of managing this information. The time has come to shop for top Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP software to reduce waste and inefficiencies. Its leaders now have to choose which of the dozens of possible solutions is right going forward.

Analysis paralysis

This is where the test of genius comes into play. Presented with a multitude of options for overriding a problem or set of challenges, it's very easy to become overwhelmed and unsure of what to choose. The basis for your ultimate decision -- the factors leading to leaning toward one particular solution -- are a product of how well you grasp the demands of change.

Faced with dozens of possible courses of action, it's common to be afflicted with analysis paralysis. This tendency to overthink a major decision often leads to people falling back on their worn-out playbooks for clues on what to do next. Whether we consciously or subconsciously do it, people desire the comfortable, the familiar, the routine. Among numerous choices, the common option stands out and holds appeal. In the face of changes, the "go-to" old ways of doing things are unlikely to prove advantageous.

Those with a gift for adaptability, on the other hand, are going to sever their emotional ties to the past and actively search for information regarding what to do next. Slowly but surely, the options get whittled down to a viable, practical array from which the final choice is selected.

What nature intended

Finding a specific way of doing things and sticking to it is human nature. In fact, it's nature across the board; the diversity of an animal kingdom sharing the majority of their DNA with one another is a result of millions if varying ways to survive. Being afraid or otherwise resistant to changes is instinctual, as we're hardwired to walk a relatively very specific path.

However, nature repeatedly challenged its own construct with mass extinction events, where over 90 percent of life on Earth would be eradicated. Dinosaurs are the most famous example of what happens when a successful species is thrust into a new environment and cannot cope with the changes. An established company incapable of making changes to evade destructive forces is not much different.

Free will vs. free won't

The stubbornness hardwired into us preventing successful adapting to cope with changes is perhaps the true seat of our "intelligence." There is growing evidence to suggest the concept of "free will" is an illusion and we are in fact driven by the desires of a subconscious, inner version of ourselves. This is why we so often do the things we "know" we ought not to do, and procrastinate with the things we "know" need to happen to achieve our clear goals.

A theory put forward by the late Benjamin Libet, a renowned pioneer of human consciousness research, suggests the persona we associate as our "self" is not the one leading the way. Rather, we are an executive of sorts, with limited direct control over how we react to change. Libet's ideas resulted in the concept of "free won't": we have the power to veto the courses of action taken by our subconscious, but are otherwise at the mercy of our nature.

Think of it this way: intelligence is that thing inside of us making all the decisions we mostly go along with; meanwhile, genius is the ability to know when these automatic choices are worth adjusting or switching up entirely.

Overriding the system

With all this in mind, a better understanding of "genius" starts to emerge. Can we take credit for the almost automatic way our brains take to making decisions? Calling someone a genius for test scores and grades is a bit like applauding software for doing what it was designed and programmed to perform. Predictable, routine paths of logic hinged on training and practice, while impressive, do not indicate a person's propensity for triumphing through change.

Rather, genius can be seen as the ability to break free from the predestined, comfortable route when all signs point to the need to change. It's the absorption of observations without precedent or plans. It's drawing conclusions and taking a new course of action to outmaneuver the inevitable drawbacks of staying on the same course. Everyone and everything alive today is a product of past genius and thus carries the potential for genius going forward.

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Moscow's industrial heritage 'at risk' in rush to redevelop old Soviet sites  

The former ZiL car factory is the latest to undergo a major redevelopment as part of a city-wide project to transform derelict industrial areas but campaigners are concerned their unique architectural heritage is under threat

A warning scrawled on a wall in the dismantled press shop of the former ZiL auto factory still reads: “Don't smoke, fine 100 roubles.”

This wall is all that's left to remind visitors of when the press shop, built in 1935, was part of the 400-hectare Soviet industrial hub a “city within a city” which enjoyed its own cafeterias, barber shop, bus line and fire department. At one point, 100,000 proletarians laboured here to put together trucks that could be found at almost every collective farm, as well as deluxe armoured limousines that carried the Soviet leadership.

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Related: Moscow then and now interactive with photographs from the Guardian archive

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