Saturday, September 24th, 2016
Michael Reilly , - MIT Technology Revivew
Stephan: Here is an optimistic assessment of the Paris Climate Accord status. Excellent news if it continues on track.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s getting hot in here. “Here” being Earth. July and August both set records for the hottest ever, and 2016 is all but guaranteed to be the warmest year on record. But if we’re lucky, what really sets this year apart is that it could be the moment when we as a civilization finally decided to put a stop to global warming.
That was the take-home message from the United Nation’s General Assembly meeting today, where Secretary General Ban Ki-moon led the announcement that an additional 31 countries have signed on to the Paris climate accord. That brings the total number of countries formally on board to 60, accounting for nearly 48 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
In order for the agreement made last year at the UN’s COP 21 climate meeting to go into effect, 55 countries representing 55 percent of emissions must sign on. With one of the two major thresholds reached and the other near at hand, Ban told the assembly he was “ever more […]
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Saturday, September 24th, 2016
Stephan: Water is destiny. Here is the latest report from Greenland. Searise is coming faster, will be larger and more destructive than previously thought and the days to prepare for what is coming fewer.
Melting Greenland Ice Sheet
Greenland’s ice sheet is losing 40 trillion additional tons of ice each year, melting about 7% faster than previously thought, according to a new study. (emphasis added)
The new calculated loss is equivalent to more than 50,000 Empire State Buildings, the Associated Press reported. Overall, the sheet is losing about 590 trillion tons of ice each year.
Melting ice from Greenland and Antarctica contributes to sea-level rise, which threatens low-lying countries and cities around the world. Greenland’s ice sheet is the world’s second-largest behind Antarctica. Warmer air and sea temperatures caused by man-made climate change is one of the main reasons the ice is melting.
The study’s findings don’t change scientists’ estimates of the total loss in Greenland that much, “but it brings a more significant change to our understanding of where within the ice sheet that loss has happened, and where it is happening now,” said study co-author Michael Bevis of Ohio State University.
Bevis said the discovery holds big implications for measuring ice loss elsewhere in the world. The new correction will help researchers better identify the levels of global sea level rise, he said, which has averaged about 8 inches […]
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Saturday, September 24th, 2016
Stephan: We just don't seem to be able to put wellbeing ahead of profit. It is our cultural curse. Here is the latest on the Gulf of Mexico, rapidly becoming one of the most damaged bodies of water in the world.
An offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Under current Environmental Protection Agency standards, offshore platform operators can dump unlimited amounts of fracking chemicals mixed with water from undersea wells directly into the ocean. (Photo: Jonathan Henderson / Vanishing Earth)
Environmentalists are warning the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that its draft plan to continue allowing oil and gas companies to dump unlimited amounts of fracking chemicals and wastewater directly into the Gulf of Mexico is in violation of federal law.
In a letter sent to EPA officials on Monday, attorneys for the Center for Biological Diversity warned that the agency’s draft permit for water pollution discharges in the Gulf fails to properly consider how dumping wastewater containing chemicals from fracking and acidizing operations would impact water quality and marine wildlife.
The attorneys claim that regulators do not fully understand how the chemicals used in offshore fracking and other well treatments — some of which are toxic and dangerous to human and marine life — can impact marine environments, and crucial parts of the draft permit are […]
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Saturday, September 24th, 2016
Mary Elizabeth Dallas, - U.S. News & World Report
Stephan: Child obesity in the U.S. has increased from 7% of 6-11 year olds being obese in 1980, to nearly 18% in 2012. At the same time the number of children experiencing food insecurity and hunger has similarly increased. In 2014 15.3 million children -- 14% fell into this category. Both conditions arise from the same trend: we are a society which routinely places profit above wellbeing.
And there are long term physiological differences in our bodies arising from the trend that are personally and socially costly in a many ways. Some are obvious like Type II diabetes, others less so. Here is the emerging story of one of the later.
Obese children and teens have different types of bacteria living in their digestive tract than their normal-weight peers, a new study reports.
The researchers said this finding might eventually lead to a way to target specific species of bacteria and help prevent or treat early onset obesity.
For the study, the researchers analyzed the gut bacteria and weight of 84 young people between the ages of 7 and 20. Of these kids, 27 were obese, 35 were severely obese, seven were overweight and 15 were normal weight.
The children and teens underwent an MRI to assess their body fat distribution. They also gave blood samples and kept track of what they ate in a food diary for three days.
The study authors found eight groups of gut bacteria that were linked to the amount of fat in the body. Four of them thrived more in the young people who were obese, the study showed.
Smaller amounts of the other four bacteria groups were found in the young people […]
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Friday, September 23rd, 2016
JULIA PRESTON, - The New York Times
Stephan: It is an article of nativist faith and a common assertion of compulsive panderers to that community like Donald Trump -- and I use the word "faith" precisely to make the point that it is a belief completely inconsistent with the facts -- that immigrants cost the country money and take jobs away from "native born" Americans.
This is not only factually wrong it betrays the fundamental strength of the United States. The truth is every human in North America including Indians (I have to say that rather than native Americans for obvious reasons) are either themselves immigrants or descendants of immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants; it is our strength not our weakness, as more than two centuries of history prove. Every business in America was started by an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant. Here are the facts.
Immigrants taking Oath of Allegiance
Credit: CNN
Do immigrants take jobs from Americans and lower their wages by working for less?
The answer, according to a report published on Wednesday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, is no, immigrants do not take American jobs — but with some caveats.
The question is at the heart of the furious debate over immigration that has divided the country and polarized the presidential race. Many American workers, struggling to recover from the recession, have said they feel squeezed out by immigrants.
Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, has called for a crackdown on illegal immigrants, saying they “compete directly against vulnerable American workers.” He promises to cut back legal immigration with new controls he says would “boost wages and ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.”
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