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What are we reading? July 1, 2021

Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web.
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Kirk LaPointe, publisher and editor in chief

This exceptional insider account, sourced heavily, reveals the rupture in the relationship between Donald Trump and his attorney general William Barr over allegations of fraud in the 2020 election. The language is pretty frank. - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/06/william-barrs-trump-administration-attorney-general/619298/

What have we understood about the origins of the coronavirus? Not as much as we think. This essay examines the larger questions of source of COVID-19 and the many medical and political implications ahead. - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html

Mark Falkenberg, deputy managing editor

Leaks from oilsands tailings ponds and environmental threats posed by B.C.’s Site C dam could put the vast Wood Buffalo National Park on a list of endangered world heritage sites, a report by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee warns  – The Narwhal

https://thenarwhal.ca/wood-buffalo-national-park-unesco-report-2021/

Political and social polarization in the United States has crippled that country’s ability to respond to crises such as COVID-19, concludes an assessment by the Fragile States Index: “A hyper-partisan media landscape, reinforced by social media vortexes and rabbit holes turbocharged by opportunists, pranksters, and trolls has laid waste to whatever social capital we once had – even as the economy recovered.” – fragilestatesindex.org

https://fragilestatesindex.org/2021/05/20/a-booming-economy-will-not-save-us-the-us-needs-to-deal-with-its-polarization-problem/


 

Timothy Renshaw, managing editor:

Anybody in the heat dome interested in potential breakthroughs in air conditioning technology? If so, here's a short Freethink story on an electricity-free option.

https://www.freethink.com/articles/cooling-paper

While we are on the subject of heat domes and other extreme weather events, Inverse has a new theory on what really wiped out all those dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction. Wayward asteroids, climate change and lack of diversity it turns out make for a pretty lethal cocktail for life on Earth. So far we have not had to deal with the asteroid factor. https://www.inverse.com/science/new-dinosaur-study-debunks-famous-extinction

Nelson Bennett, reporter

While no one in B.C. is happy that the Site C dam will cost nearly twice what it was estimated to cost in 2015 to complete, some solace may be found in a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that reminds us why hydro power is “the forgotten giant of low-carbon electricity” and a critical part of net zero by 2050 targets. The report points out that, while costly to build, hydro power is the most valuable source of low-carbon electricity, due to its dispatchable nature. “Reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 worldwide calls for a huge increase in hydropower ambitions,” the report states. -- IEA

https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/83ff8935-62dd-4150-80a8-c5001b740e21/HydropowerSpecialMarketReport.pdf

Glen Korstrom, reporter

Thoughts from two men in their 90s about newfangled technology might be viewed with bemusement were they not two of the most successful investors of all time. So, whenever Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger share thoughts, market watchers stop and listen. 

One curiosity is their disagreement over the value of Zoom, and whether it will stay relevant post-pandemic. 

Munger, 97, likes Zoom and says it’s convenient. 

Buffett: “I did it once or twice, and they had a whole screen of people. I just didn’t figure it was adding to the experience. I find the telephone a very satisfactory instrument.”

Here is more based on a CNBC interview that aired June 29 – Barron’s https://www.barrons.com/articles/buffett-munger-zoom-robinhood-pandemic-51625020162?st=4wc6x4zaa7z2fxu

The oppressive heat in the Pacific Northwest and B.C. this week was fodder for countless staggering headlines that stuck to what we know, and can prove. 

This one, I think, goes overboard, given that our weather and temperature records go back about 130 to 140 years: Pacific Northwest bakes under once-in-a-millennium heat dome. 

Nonetheless, it aims to make that case – CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/heat-wave-dome-2021-seattle-portland-weather/