Map of New York City if sea levels rise 3 meters (areas underwater are in light blue).
Recent research on climate change has emphasized the fact that sea levels are rising quickly, and can have dangerous and costly impacts on human infrastructure.
Researchers are discovering just how costly climate change can be. On Monday, climate scientists at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research published a new study in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences that found that the economic costs of sea level rise increase more quickly than sea levels themselves.
“Our study illustrates that the complexity of climate change, adaptation, and flood damage can be disentangled by surprisingly simple mathematical functions,” said Markus Boettle, the lead author of the Potsdam Institute’s study, in a press release, “to provide estimates of the average annual costs of sea-level rise over a longer time period.”
Poisoned fish from Puget Sound
Credit: Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters
Fish found in Washington’s Puget Sound are tripping on cocaine, Prozac, Advil, Benadryl, and Lipitor. Unfortunately, there is no aquatic drug dealer responsible for it. Instead, the intoxication is the result of tainted discharge water.
Pharmaceutical pollution could be to blame for the many drugs showing up in the tissues of juvenile Chinook salmon. Estuary waters near the sewage treatment plants were found to contain a cocktail of up to 81 different drugs, according to a new study out of the National Oceanie and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
There are several plausible theories about the Puget Sound’s high concentration of drug-infused water. Jim Meador, an environmental toxicologist at the NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, published a study that offered two options.
One possibility is that people in the areas around the Puget Sound use more of the detected drugs. However, it is also likely that the problem […]
An argument over getting out of bed for school Tuesday morning led a teenage boy to open fire on four family members, including his grandmother and two young children, in an East Nashville home, Metro police said.
Nashville police spokeswoman Kris Mumford said that shortly before 7:17 a.m. a relative was attempting to wake up the 16-year-old boy inside his home at Berkshire Place Apartments on Porter Road when an argument broke out.
“There was a quarrel about getting up and getting ready for the day when (at some point) the 16-year-old ran to a closet, got a 9 mm handgun and started firing,” Mumford said.
Bullets struck the teen’s 67-year-old grandmother twice, and his 12-year-old sister and 6-year-old nephew were both grazed by gunfire. The teen’s nephew is his older sister’s son, Mumford said.
The teen also tried to shoot his 42-year-old mother in the living room of the home, but Mumford said the woman ducked behind a couch and avoided being hit.
The teen’s 2-year-old sister was also in the home when the gunfire broke out but she was not struck by bullets, Mumford said.
The teen then fled the home on foot and tossed the gun at a nearby apartment.
Police […]
US Sheridan tanks
Credit: sondevir
The United States is driving the global surge in militarization, as the number one arms exporter over the past five years—during which it shipped deadly weapons to at least 96 countries—according to a disturbing new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
From 2011 to 2015, the U.S. oversaw the dramatic rise in weapons transfers, the global volume of which jumped a stunning 14 percent compared to levels seen during the previous five years.
The Middle East was the top recipient of American arms, and within the region, Saudi Arabia was the number one importer. These shipments continued despite human rights calls for an arms embargo, over concerns that the Saudi-led coalition is committing widespread war crimes in Yemen.
In fact, SIPRI researchers note that the coalition has been able to continue its relentless aerial assault of Yemen thanks primarily to U.S. and European shipments. “A coalition of Arab states is putting mainly U.S.- and European-sourced advanced arms into use in Yemen,” said Pieter […]
The federal agency already tests for residues of many agricultural chemicals on food. Now it will include the widely used weed killer linked to cancer.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation’s chief food safety regulator, plans to start testing certain foods for residues of the world’s most widely used weed killer after the World Health Organization’s cancer experts last year declared the chemical a probable human carcinogen.
The FDA’s move comes amid growing public concern about the safety of the herbicide known as glyphosate, and comes after the U.S Government Accountability Office (GAO) rebuked the agency for failing to do such assessments and for not disclosing that short-coming to the public.
Private companies, academics, and consumer groups have recently launched their own testing and claim to have detected glyphosate residues in breast milk, honey, cereal, wheat flour, soy sauce, infant formula, and other substances.
FDA officials dubbed the issue “sensitive” and declined to provide details of the plans, but FDA spokeswoman Lauren Sucher said the agency was moving forward to […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
