Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
RICHARD BLACK, U.S. Environmental Correspondent - BBC News (U.K.)
Stephan: The overwhelming majority of Republican candidates in the coming Senatorial election are climate deniers (see the next story). This is not a partisan left-leaning bias on my part but a fact -- let me again state publicly that I don't care about political parties, or their various ideologies. If that was my interest I would be a polemic blogger. I care about facts and, particularly, the fact of what people actually do. If you read any of the scientific reports you can easily detect a growing sense of crisis in the peer-reviewed literature. Climate change, and its denial are not an argument over competing and equal theories, any more than Creationism is of equal stature with evolutionary science. The earth is more than 6,000 years old, and we are aiding and abetting the climate crisis. That's reality. And I think we need to confront both issues honestly. Anything else is willful ignorance.
Global warming is set to cut rice yields in Asia, research suggests.
Scientists found that over the last 25 years, the growth in yields has fallen by 10-20% in some locations, as night-time temperatures have risen.
The group of mainly US-based scientists studied records from 227 farms in six important rice-producing countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, India and China.
This is the latest study to suggest that climate change will make it harder to feed the world’s growing population.
Continue reading the main story
We haven’t seen a scenario where daytime temperatures cross over a threshold where they’d stop benefiting yields and start reducing them
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Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
STEPHANIE PAPPAS, Senior Writer - LiveScience
Stephan:
An estimated 250 million people become infected with malaria each year and nearly a million die from it, according to the World Health Organization. Now, a new study finds that most of these human infections might trace back to one infected gorilla.
The study, published in the Sept. 23 issue of the journal Nature, used a genetic analysis of the parasites that cause malaria found in primate feces to create an evolutionary family tree for the disease. The parasite most closely related to human malaria came from gorillas, the researchers found, and may have made the leap from animal to human host in a single mosquito bite.
Five types of malaria parasites infect humans, but the most common (and most deadly worldwide) is Plasmodium falciparum. Like all Plasmodium parasites, P. falciparum, as it is called, is carried from host to host by mosquitoes. When the mosquito bites someone, the parasite infects the person’s red blood cells, causing fatigue, fever and vomiting. Untreated, the infection is fatal.
The malaria family tree
For many years, researchers thought the closest relative of P. falciparum was a similar Plasmodium infection found in chimpanzees. This led to the theory that the malaria parasite originated in the common ancestor of […]
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Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
YAGIL HERTZBERG, - San Francisco Chronicle
Stephan: Take the quiz honestly without peeking, and think about your answers and the key.
For years I have been trying to persuade supporters of the other major American party to change their mind and vote with me, to no avail. That is, until last week, when three politically minded friends came over for an evening of snacks and politics, and, halfway through the evening, I unleashed my new one-two approach to political persuasion.
First, I asked my friends how they would go about choosing a new dishwasher. We agreed that the responsible and rewarding method would be to ignore any marketing hype and instead follow the Best Buy recommendations by Consumer Reports. Because nobody mentioned the virtues or shortcomings of, say, Whirlpool’s executives as a valid criterion for choosing the appliance, I asked why they argue for hours about the perceived personalities of the candidates instead of comparing the track records of the major parties. My friends answered that it’s simple enough to summarize the essential properties of dishwashers, while the elections are about a large number of issues that defy easy tabulation. Therefore, they concentrate on the candidates, hoping that by choosing the right person for the job, the elected official will make the right decisions when dealing with all those different issues.
I used […]
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Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
BRAD JOHNSON, Climate Editor - THE WONK ROOM
Stephan: The following compilation may help you decide for whom you wish to cast your vote. There are a few Democrats in opposition to sensible climate change policy, but the candidates from the Republican bloc are almost universally in opposition -- a notable fact that I think deserves attention.
The overwhelming majority of scientists throughout the world -- with the exception of a tiny cadre of scientists funded or on the payroll of energy special interest foundations, think tanks, or corporations -- agree we are facing very dire times if we do not address climate change meaningfully. This election is your chance to make your vote on this issue heard.
A comprehensive Wonk Room survey of the Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate finds that nearly all dispute the scientific consensus that the United States must act to fight global warming pollution. In May, 2010, the National Academies of Science reported to Congress that ‘the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change
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Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
Stephan: Out of the hysteria of 9/11 has grown a whole movement designed to compromise civil liberties. It had been my hope -- obviously a vain one -- that the Democrats would stop this erosion of privacy. Clearly both parties find fear too politically useful to honor the Constitution.
The Obama administration has urged a federal appeals court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move.
The Justice Department is demanding a federal appeals court rehear a case in which it reversed the conviction and life sentence of a cocaine dealer whose vehicle was tracked via GPS for a month, without a court warrant. The authorities then obtained warrants to search and find drugs in the locations where defendant Antoine Jones had travelled.
The administration, in urging the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse a three-judge panel’s August ruling from the same court, said Monday that Americans should expect no privacy while in public.
‘The panel’s conclusion that Jones had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the public movements of his Jeep rested on the premise that an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the totality of his or her movements in public places,
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