As Climate Changes, Southern States Will Suffer More Than Others

Stephan:  I first wrote and predicted this in a paper called Migration which I published in Explore in 2009. The old South, already crippled by its Red value social policies is rapidly being besieged by a society threatening climate crisis, as this report originally published by Science describes. The thing is, climate change doesn't give a damn whether you believe in it or not.

The map shows median estimates of economic damage per year in 2080 to 2099 under a high-emissions scenario (RCP8.5). Damage is calculated as a percentage of county G.D.P., factoring in agriculture, mortality, crime, labor productivity, coastal impacts and energy demand. Counties with negative damage (green) are projected to see economic benefits. In the chart, the ranges labeled “likely” refer to outcomes with a two-thirds chance of occurring.
Source: Hsiang, Kopp, Jina, Rising et al., 2017

As the United States confronts global warming in the decades ahead, not all states will suffer equally. Maine may benefit from milder winters. Florida, by contrast, could face major losses, as deadly heat waves flare up in the summer and rising sea levels eat away at valuable coastal properties.

In a new study in the journal Science, researchers analyzed the economic harm that climate change could inflict on the United States in the coming century. They found that the impacts could prove highly […]

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U.S. to expand laptop ban to all flights that flunk safeguards

Stephan:  Air travel is an increasingly unpleasant activity, unless you can afford First Class, and belong to the club room your airline maintains or, of course, have private jet or belong to a private jet club. And now it is about to get  even more complicated and unpleasant. Here's the story.

Credit: A traveler walks past a TSA Pre-check application center at Terminal C of the LaGuardia Airport in this Jan. 27, 2014,
Credit. John Moore

The Trump administration said Wednesday it will ban large electronics on flights to the United States altogether — on board, and in checked bags — unless airlines comply with new directives to ramp up passenger and baggage screening.

The mandate, announced by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, would affect 280 last-point-of-departure airports and as many as 2,000 daily international flights to the United States and potentially throw a huge wrench into business travelers’ plans.

The restrictions DHS discussed Wednesday would go further than a March order banning passengers from carrying any device larger than a smartphone on U.S.-bound flights from 10 airports, mostly in the Middle East — both in the scope of where they could apply and in expanding the ban to checked bags. Effectively, electronics larger than a smartphone simply could not be carried inside a plane in any fashion unless carriers adopt […]

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George Pell – and the Catholic abuse scandal that is driving the faithful away

Stephan:  There just never seems to be an end to the Roman Catholic child abuse scandal; and the trend has reached a point where it is having an effect on the faithful. Here is the latest. The correlation between intense religiosity and sexual dsyfunction becomes more established every year.

Cardinal George Pell has said he will return home to Australia to defend himself – a turnaround from last year when he refused to fly home to give evidence on child abuse.
Credit: Franco Origlia/Redferns

When the reforming Pope Francis set up an advisory council of cardinals soon after his election in 2013 and appointed, alongside his fellow liberals, the arch-conservative Cardinal George Pell, it caught the Catholic church by surprise. So did Pell’s later appointment as the pope’s chief financial adviser. But it also made sense: Pell is a bruiser and if the byzantine workings of the Vatican and its mired-in-scandal financial operation needed sorting out, then Pell could be the prelate to knock heads together.

Now, though, Francis may well regret his choice of attack-dog-in-chief. For Australian Pell’s place at the side of the pontiff has brought the church’s child sex abuse scandal right into the heart of the Vatican. Pell has been charged with alleged historical sexual assaults on children.

Police in the […]

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The Silence of the Lambs

Stephan:  As social scientists and physicians dig deeper into child abuse the correlation between conservative religiosity and the sexual abuse of children becomes more and more pronounced. But, of course, no one wants to talk about it; particularly in the Fundamentalist Protestant and Orthodox Jewish world it is a taboo subject. If we can't tell ourselves the truth about something we can't fix it, and religious child abuse is an  issue that definitely needs to be acknowledged and addressed. The Roman Catholic aspect of it, which has received world attention, shows how difficult that is to do. It has damaged the lives of hundreds of thousands of children the world over, including several I have personally known.  

Kim James and her younger sister Anne
Courtesy of the James Family

It was a hot day in July, a Saturday afternoon, and Kim James was bored. Her older sisters had taken her to a church event in their small hometown in Indiana, where the girls were spending their summer. Her parents were back in Bangladesh, working at the remote Baptist missionary compound where the family had lived, on and off, for five years. For an adventurous and high-spirited 13-year-old like Kim, Indiana seemed dull compared to Bangladesh. She missed her friends, the dozen or so missionary kids everybody called “MKs.” She missed the menagerie her parents let her keep: goats, cows, a parrot, a monkey. She missed the jackals that called in the distance at night, and the elephants that sometimes crashed through the compound fence.

As she thought about the mission, though, Kim felt troubled. Something was weighing on her mind. So she decided to skip out of the church event—it was for little kids, anyway—and go see the […]

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California to List Monsanto Herbicide as Cancer-Causing

Stephan:  Once again California serves as the antipode to Trump. It is going to be very interesting to see the social outcome data of the Trump policies and those of Governor Jerry Brown's California.

Workers spraying crops.

Glyphosate, an herbicide and the active ingredient in Monsanto Co’s (MON.N) popular Roundup weed killer, will be added to California’s list of chemicals known to cause cancer effective July 7, the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) said on Monday.

Monsanto vowed to continue its legal fight against the designation, required under a state law known as Proposition 65, and called the decision “unwarranted on the basis of science and the law.”

The listing is the latest legal setback for the seeds and chemicals company, which has faced increasing litigation over glyphosate since the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said that it is “probably carcinogenic” in a controversial ruling in 2015.

Dicamba, a weed killer designed for use with Monsanto’s next generation of biotech crops, is under scrutiny in Arkansas after the state’s plant board voted last week to ban the chemical.

OEHHA said the designation of glyphosate under Proposition 65 will proceed following an unsuccessful attempt by Monsanto to block the listing […]

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