Email Bomb. What is it and Why?

A few weeks ago I was alerted by PayPal and Amex that a $1000+ charge from Ebay was made to my PayPal account.  Someone was able to use my PayPal account for a MacBook order with overnight USPS delivery.  These alerts stopped all transactions, but not the headache.

Within minutes I noticed that my linked email account had unusual activity.  I received welcoming messages from bulletin boards and companies, and instructions to confirm my online registration.

First a few dozen, then hundreds, then thousands !

The email avalanche continued through the evening, with many filling my Inbox and many more in the Spam box of my Gmail account.  Worried about missing real emails, I deleted the first hundred or so by hand, but then had to use mass delete to keep up with the 15,000+ messages in a few hours.  The Spam folder also had 10,000+, but they needed no action.  Blissfully, Gmail offers unsubscribe as part of Inbox spam identifier, which I used.

This is called an Email Bomb.

While tracking the email avalanche I turned to the Internet for insight.  I surmised that the emails were used as a distraction, which the Internet search confirmed.  The culprit hopes that a spending alert gets lost in thousands of other emails, so that the order goes through undetected.  Luckily, not in this case, as I use text messaging to confirm large credit card orders.  I even know the source of my headache, as the USPS order included delivery details.  The culprit lives in Indianapolis.

I assume that the email bomb is created with a registration bot on websites that do not use captchas and such.  The result is a huge nuisance and I must have lost a few regular emails, but the email avalanche stopped within two days.  Since then, I got the occasional "you have not confirmed" reminders, but as a trickle.  I assume that my email is still registered on many sites that did not ask confirmation, and hopefully nothing too embarrassing or disturbing.  This story is also a mea culpa.

I reset my passwords and was told to replace my credit card (though that account was not breached, nor were funds removed from PayPal).
Take-home messages:

1. Set confirmation text messages for (large) orders.
2. Use 2-step verification on financial and other sensitive accounts.
3. Keep Inbox mostly empty.

The 2019 Ridgecrest CA Earthquake Pair

Two large earthquakes rocked California in July 2019.  On July 4th a large M6.4 moved a NE-SW trending fault that parallels the Garlock left-lateral fault system and a major (10x larger) M7.1 occurred on July 6 (June 5 local time) along the NW-SE East California Shear Zone that parallels the right-lateral plate boundary to the East.

Displacement from the larger quake are on the order of meters over a fault length of several tens of kilometers.  Offsets are captured by updated images on Google Earth.

The distance from populated areas limited their impact, but local shaking was severe and damaging.  The earthquake magnitudes are equivalent in energy to ~4 (M6.4) and ~45 (M7.1) Hiroshima-type atomic bombs.  There are typically ~15 M7+ earthquakes around the world and it was two decades ago when one occurred in California.  Large M7 aftershock earthquakes are not likely in the area, but many smaller will continue along the two fault trends, with more M5+ certainly possible.

The use of technical terms mainshock and aftershock is confusing semantics.  The largest earthquake in a cluster is called the mainshock and earthquakes recently (hours/days) before are called foreshocks.  Earthquakes days (and weeks) after the main shock are called aftershocks.  Here, some aftershocks are related to the M6.4 on the NE-SW fault system, and others to the M7.1 on the NW-SE system.  The shocks were recorded by Ann Arbor RaspiShakes, illustrated by the M7.1 event.

Westerly movement from the M6.4 may have primed the M7.1 by releasing sliding resistance on the latter's fault system,  Both are ultimately the result of regional strain from plate movement with a relative displacement of the Pacific plate of ~5cm/year, which accumulates stresses that are released periodically.

The area has historic seismic activity, with the larger reflecting continuing northwesterly motion of the Pacific plate along the N American plate margin (represented by the San Andreas Fault trace to the west). Over the past 40 years, 8 other M5+ earthquakes have occurred within 50 km of the July 6th, 2019 earthquake. The largest was a M 5.8 event on September 20, 1995, just 3 km west. The M7.1 Hector Mine event of Oct 16, 1999 occurred ~150km to the SE, and was similar lateral slip fault movement as the Ridgecrest M7.1.

Do these earthquakes change the potential for the Big One? No, because continuing Pacific-North America relative plate movement in western California means that a large quake along the San Andreas Fault system must occur in the near future. These recent California earthquakes to the east do nothing to reduce that threat.

#ExxonKnew - #WeKnew

From Twitter

In 1982, #Exxon predicted 400-420ppm #CO2 and ~1.1C warming (since 1960) for today in proprietary report.  They were right, but did not share.  Also, predicting ~3C increase for 21st Century. 

Paper at:
https://insideclimatenews.org/system/files_force/documents/1982%20Exxon%20Primer%20on%20CO2%20Greenhouse%20Effect.pdf

12:20pm · 14 May 2019 

Read the report!  It assesses the (published) climate science of the day and inserts consumption predictions, all of which was public knowledge.  No conspiracy here; society decided to ignore that knowledge.

11:54am · 15 May 2019

Those upset by #ExxonKnew, here is prior year spot-on Hansen etal analysis using basic energy balance calculation and similar fast growth projection. New hashtag #WeKnew.
Paper at:

https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_ha04600x.pdf

7:52am · 16 May 2019

Coda  

Read the 2018 NYT Magazine article "Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change", By Nathaniel Rich.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

Road to a Resilient Global Society

Daily news reports bring harrowing testimonials by communities, aid organizations and local officials of rapid environmental changes that are underway.  Yet, our society’s response to these changes is slow, and, in many cases, remains non-existent.  This inaction may reflect the perception that change is inherently slow and gradual, such as climate warming over several decades. 

The meaning of long-term change is embodied in the concept of sustainability, defined as a world where human needs are met equitably without harm to the environment, and without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs.  However, changes are impacting human society more quickly in many areas, affecting wealthy nations and poor nations alike.  This is captured by the complementary concept of resilience, which examines the ability of human society to prepare for, to absorb, to recover from, and to adapt to adverse events.  Societal resilience forms the foundation of a connected set of scientific perspectives by Susan Anenberg, Andrea Dutton, Christine Goulet, and Daniel Swain that explore the changing domains of air quality, sea level rise, earthquakes, and extreme weather in a long-form commentary in the science journal Earth's Future (https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EF001242).

Society’s progress along the four corners of prepare, adsorb, respond and adapt resilience square is uneven, in spite of our understanding of the foundational science and a growing sense that urgent action is needed.  The resilience vignettes describe the meaning and impact of current and near-term change in four major domains: human health impacts from air pollution, coastal inundation from sea-level rise, damaging earthquakes in populated areas, and impacts from extreme precipitation. 

Given our understanding of the scientific principles, societal action, from preparation to adaption, will be critical in minimizing the negative impacts of today’s changes.  The unprecedented rates of change in today's Earth system argue for urgent action in support of a resilient global society.

Toward a Resilient Global Society: Air, Sea Level, Earthquakes, and Weather, by Susan C. Anenberg, Andrea Dutton, Christine Goulet, Daniel L. Swain, Ben van der Pluijm.
Earth's Future, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EF001242

The Long and Winding Road: Making Resilience Real

More than 40 years ago the economist John Kenneth Galbraith remarked that the world had arrived at the “Age of Uncertainty.” Fast forward to 2019 and human society’s pace of change is ever more rapid. Artificial intelligence, the internet of things, climate change, the rise of China and India, among other factors, have multiplied the challenges and risks. We cannot get back to a less connected world, nor can we dismiss concerns about the major challenges we face. Indeed, technological, social and environmental drivers will transform our world into an even riskier place in 2050 than it already is today. 

Human society faces many challenges ahead;
creating a sustainable and resilient world
will not be a straightforward journey.
Credit: Free-Photos (public domain)

In other words, to ensure that we are on track toward a sustainable future, we urgently need decision-making that allows social-ecological-economic systems to ‘bounce back’ or to become transformed, such that our planet maintains desirable (from a human and planetary perspective) properties.

Several major insights emerge from theoretical, model and empirical considerations:

• Integrated modelling, robust decision-making, methods from the nexus and proven practices offer innovations that can transform ‘business as usual’ into responses to risks.
• In the decades to come, a failure to integrate new approaches into the decision-making of public and private sectors could be catastrophic. 
• To successfully face our world’s challenges, we cannot return to a world that no longer exists.

We urgently need to transform our decision-making, and use innovative and proven methods to deliver a sustainable and resilient world for tomorrow. This will be a long and winding road, but a journey we must make together.


R. Quentin Grafton (The Australian National University) and Ben van der Pluijm (University of Michigan)

Citation: Grafton, R. Q., and B. van der Pluijm (2019), The long and winding road: Making resilience real, Eos, 100, https://doi.org/10.1029/. 

Book Review of "Timefulness", by Marcia Bjornerud

Book Review:
"Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World."
by Marcia Bjornerud.
Princeton University Press.

I don’t read that many books these days, I must admit. Indeed, Jeff Goodell’s much celebrated "The Water Will Come" remains mostly unread on my nightstand. So when the request to review Marcia Bjornerud’s Timefulness appeared I gladly accepted this motivating opportunity. This little book is only ~180 pages, but its size masks the breadth of coverage and detail presented. In five substantive chapters and several informative appendices, the book explores geologic time, tectonics and landscapes, atmospheric evolution, and modern (Ice Age) time, and offers, in the last chapter, a reflective take on today and our future.

Following a brief introductory chapter, a series of four self-contained chapters offer a breezy approach to major topics in the Earth Sciences that are taught in most colleges these days. In fact, I assume that they reflect the activities of the author in this realm, given the relevant examples and key details in places. Combining a pleasant writing style with just enough science information creates informative long-form journalism style pieces on these major topics. The takes in each chapter reflect the majority opinion on a topic and do not stray into new or minority opinions. For example, when getting to climate action in the atmospheric section, the descriptions of geo-engineering approaches are (appropriately?) guarded and not about urgency for correcting, perhaps risky action. Given that the book’s name is a play on mindfulness, these chapters are less transcending than the title and sleeve cover would suggest, but they are certainly informative and complete. Much use is made of creative quotes and section titles, as well as (mostly dead) geo-star icons. The concept of geologic time, or Deep Time, is sprinkled throughout, hence the book’s title, although the latter chapters are mostly about Modern Time. The final chapter, ‘Timefulness, Utopian and Scientific’, is a joy to read. It is the engaging type of writing one finds in The New Yorker or similar, and the author’s skill as a writer shines. As before, no new ground is covered, but the content and structure make it a compelling read. Among other uses, it makes a wonderfully motivating piece for today’s students that grudgingly take their required science course.

This book will appeal to the ‘John McPhee audience’. It makes for a great gift to friends and family interested in meaningful science and Earth Science history. Unlike many of today’s pieces in magazines and blogs, it is not preachy and offers the reader the underlying science in sufficient detail to develop an understanding and perhaps an opinion on the challenges before us. The Anthropocene makes its appropriate entrance near the end, linking geology of the long past to issues of today and tomorrow. As the author philosophically concludes, ‘we need to grow up and navigate on our own’.

From:
Holocene book review: Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World. The Holocene, 2019, 29(2), 363–363.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683618819934

What Generation Z likes in 1960-1980 rock/pop music

In a very professional music survey that only relies on songs I like, about 100 undergraduates at the University of Michigan voted on their favorite tunes that were played at the opening of each class in Earth Interactions (E119).  The class started with "We Will Rock You" (which we did) and ended with "Hello, Goodbye".  Voting on 39 songs was in 3 thematic sets; no crossover options. You may notice that all songs have an Earth theme (though requiring a little thinking for some, like Ben Folds). 

Clearly, there is a lot of Queen love in Fall 2018, while much less for icons like REM, Springsteen and Stones. The full list of songs and their scores (1 vote per set of 13 songs):

Under pressure – Queen/Bowie 30

We will rock you – Queen 24

Mr Blue Sky - ELO 22

Time – Pink Floyd 19

Ring of fire - Johnny Cash 18

Hello, Goodbye – Beatles 17

It's my Life - Bon Jovi 15

Good vibrations - Beach Boys 14

Ice ice baby – Vanilla Ice 13

I am a rock – Simon & Garfunkel 12

The times they are a-changin’ – Bob Dylan 9

Have you ever seen the rain – CCR 9

Changes – David Bowie 8

Waiting on the world to change – John Mayer 8

Every breath you take – Police 8

Rock the casbah – The Clash 8

Starman – David Bowie 7

It’s the end of the world as we know it – REM 6

Wild World – Cat Stevens 5

Army - Ben Folds Five 5

Down by the river - Neil Young 5

Always look on the bright side of life - MP 4

Surfin' USA – Beach Boys 4

Badlands - Bruce Springsteen 3

Village ghetto land - Stevie Wonder 3

Rock of ages - Def Leppard 3

Little red Corvette – Prince 2

Rain - Beatles 2

Fire and Ice – Pat Benatar 2

Kokomo Beach- Beach Boys 2

Shiny happy people – REM 2

Great balls of fire - Jerry Lee Lewis 2

Land of confusion – Genesis 1

River deep, mountain high – Ike & Tina Turner 1

Rockaria – ELO 1

Rock this town – Stray Cats 1

Rockville – REM 0

Rock and a hard place – Rolling Stones 0

Who'll stop the rain – CCR 0