JEFF SPROSS, - Think Progress
Stephan: Here is the latest in the Water is Destiny trend. We are going to be seeing more and more such stories. Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Boston are just the beginning.
Click through to see the map. It will appall you.
Flooding from sea level rise is threatening to wash away many of Boston’s historical buildings and archaeological sites, according to WGBH News.
In 2012, the city was spared when Hurricane Sandy turned west and slammed into New York instead. But the close call sparked a May conference of experts and stakeholders to consider what would have happened if Sandy had hit Boston. What they discovered was that historic sites like Faneuil Hall and the Blackstone Block of colonial streets – which sit within the city’s 100-year tidal flood zone – would already have been flooded three times since Sandy if storms had hit during high tide instead of low. A May report by the Union of Concerned Scientists noted both sites as some of the most at-risk in the entire country thanks to increased flooding from climate change and sea level rise.
The group also reported that since 1921, Boston has 20 instances of high tides with waves 3.5 feet taller than normal. Half of those instances hit within the last decade.
‘When you start thinking about where the ocean is going to come in and how big the ocean is, and you start thinking about how the water will flow, you realize […]
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CARLO ROVELLI, professor at Université de la Méditerranée, Marsei - New Republic
Stephan: This is a really excellent essay on the nature of science. Rovelli's observation: "Science is not about certainty. Science is about finding the most reliable way of thinking at the present level of knowledge" is one of the most insightful things I have read about science in a decade.
There are also very insightful comments about the competing worldviews in physics, and science's relationship to religion.
This piece has been excerpted from The Universe: Leading Scientists Explore the Origin, Mysteries, and Future of the Cosmos.
e teach our students: We say that we have some theories about science. Science is about hypothetico-deductive methods; we have observations, we have data, data require organizing into theories. So then we have theories. These theories are suggested or produced from the data somehow, then checked in terms of the data. Then time passes, we have more data, theories evolve, we throw away a theory, and we find another theory that’s better, a better understanding of the data, and so on and so forth.
This is the standard idea of how science works, which implies that science is about empirical content; the true, interesting, relevant content of science is its empirical content. Since theories change, the empirical content is the solid part of what science is.
Now, there’s something disturbing, for me, as a theoretical scientist, in all this. I feel that something is missing. Something of the story is missing. I’ve been asking myself, ‘What is this thing missing?” I’m not sure I have the answer, but I want to present some ideas on something else that science is.
This is particularly relevant today in science, and particularly in physics, because-if I’m allowed to be polemical-in my field, fundamental theoretical physics, for […]
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VANESSA QUIRK, - Arch Daily
Stephan: Here is an example of what environmental remediation might look like. Instead of pouring tens of billions into useless fighters like the F-35, this is what we should be building. The ubiquitous presence of plastic particles in the ocean has become a tremendous problem with dire long term effects. To quote the report, "Today there are six mega-vortexes of floating plastic: five between the continents and a sixth close to the Arctic, which is similar in size to Brazil (8.5 million square kilometers) and is 10 meters thick. It is in this environment that Halobates - a wild insect that feeds on zooplankton - thrives. The insect has experienced such exponential growth, in fact, that it's endangering the zooplankton, essentially eliminating the base of the oceanic food chain."
Click through to see the illustrations which will make this story much more comprehensible.
Plastic is an extremely durable material, taking 500 years to biodegrade, yet it’s designed to be used for an average of 5 minutes, and so it’s thrown away. Few know where this mass of junk will end up … in the oceans, killing and silently destroying everything, even us.”
Cristian Ehrmantraut has developed a prototype for a floating platform that filters the ocean and absorbs plastic. Located 4 km from the coast of Easter Island, close to the center of the mega-vortex of plastic located in the South Pacific, the tetrahedral platform performs a kind of dialysis, allowing the natural environment to be recovered as well as energy and food to be produced.
From the Architect. The idea for the project comes from a reality that, although few realize it, affects us all: the disposable culture and its principal actor – plastic
Since the 1960s, plastic has become a part of our daily lives, allowing us, among other things, to extend our lifespan. However, behind this remarkable reality lies an uncomfortable fact: plastic is an extremely durable material, taking 500 years to biodegrade, yet it’s designed to be used for an average of 5 minutes, and so it’s thrown away. Few know where […]
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ANNIE-ROSE STRASSER, - Think Progress
Stephan: The DEA and the ATF are out of control government agencies whose very existence depends on the continuation of the War on Drugs. The measure of their corruption can be seen in this report. Clearly they will do anything to keep the money for their budgets flowing.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) has coerced mentally disabled people into unwitting participation in undercover stings, and later arrested them for the actions performed during those stings, according to a new investigation released Monday by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
In several cities across the United States, the Sentinel found that ATF repeatedly used questionable tactics to try to further their investigations. A few of these involved paying or training mentally disabled people to involve themselves in crimes. For example, a man agents described as ‘slow-headed,” with an IQ in the 50s, was hired to work in a fake storefront set up by ATF. Undercover agents then encouraged by him to try to go out and find guns to buy. When he found them some, they arrested him, on over 100 counts of being a felon in possession of a gun.
ATF agents also once taught a man how to saw off a shotgun so that they could charge him with a more serious crime, and another time hired a felon to buy guns in a pawn shop, despite it being illegal for someone to knowingly sell a gun to a felon. And those are just some of the stories […]
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PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer - ABC/The Associated Press
Stephan: This development amongst the BRICS nations holds portentous implications for the United States. I think the days of the U.S. currency being the reference currency for the world are numbered. America is now seen by a growing number of national governments as a dangerous unreliable partner. A far cry from the Marshall Plan days.
Fed up with U.S. dominance of the global financial system, five emerging market powers this week will launch their own versions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -the so-called BRICS countries – are seeking “alternatives to the existing world order,” said Harold Trinkunas, director of the Latin America Initiative at the Brookings Institution.
At a summit Tuesday through Thursday in Brazil, the five countries will unveil a $100 billion fund to fight financial crises, their version of the IMF. They will also launch a World Bank alternative, a new bank that will make loans for infrastructure projects across the developing world.
The five countries will invest equally in the lender, tentatively called the New Development Bank. Other countries may join later.
The BRICS powers are still jousting over the location of the bank’s headquarters – Shanghai, Moscow, New Delhi or Johannesburg. The headquarters skirmish is part of a larger struggle to keep China, the world’s second-biggest economy, from dominating the new bank the way the United States has dominated the World Bank.
The bloc comprises countries with vastly different economies, foreign policy aims and political systems – from India’s raucous democracy to China’s one-party state.
Whatever […]
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