Stephan: I have been telling readers for years that water is destiny. As sea levels rise getting safe potable drinking water in coastal areas is going to become ever more complicated. Here is a report that explains one of the reasons I say this.
The Delaware River flows under the Delaware Memorial Bridge, near Wilmington. Credit: ALAMY
The Delaware River, a major source of drinking water for Philadelphia, is facing an emerging threat as rising seas push saltwater farther upstream. It’s a problem that other places, from Miami to Shanghai, will also confront, especially as increasing drought lowers river flows.
t the Delaware Memorial Bridge, about 35 miles southwest of Philadelphia, the tidal waters of the Delaware River estuary push upstream with every incoming tide but are opposed by the river’s downstream flow. For years, this balance has kept salty water well away from intakes that supply drinking water to millions of people in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey.
With the so-called salt front in its normal range, some 40 miles downstream from the intakes, any threat to the region’s water supply has seemed distant. But the combination of sea level rise and the expectation of reduced downstream flow as a result of climate change-related droughts have raised new fears that the region’s biggest source of drinking water could at some point become contaminated […]
Steve Macek & Andy Lee Roth, , Professor of Communication and Media Studies at North Central College - truthout
Stephan: American corporate media has all sorts of problems, but none of them are what Trump and the Trumpers believe. This article presents the corporate media reality.
Close to 73 million people voted for President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, and millions of these voters believe his false claims that the election was stolen. The hashtag “#StoptheSteal” has been tweeted a couple million times, and several thousand Trump supporters recently gathered in Washington, D.C., for a “Million MAGA March.”
The event prompted White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany to tweet that a million people marched in support of the president, echoing claims of a previous Trump press secretary, Sean Spicer, who, back in January 2017, wildly exaggerated the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration. Former counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer’s claim as a simple matter of “alternative facts.”
Why do so many Americans accept Trump’s claims of electoral fraud or his spokespersons’ blatantly false assertions as truth? Widespread distrust of the news media is at least part of the answer. Well before the 2020 election season began, Trump spent much of his presidency demonizing the press as “the enemy of the people” and dismissing any reporting, reporters or news outlets he disliked as “fake […]
Angelina Chapin, Senior Writer - The Cut/New York Magazine
Stephan: Trump, the Republican Party, FOX, and the rest of the alt-right media working together have brainwashed a large segment of the American population who literally cannot distinguish fantasy from reality. This has many implications for the country's future, but this is one of the saddest effects.
In the spring, Michelle Schultz had a particularly difficult COVID-19 patient. The man, who was in his 60s, had come to the emergency room short of breath a few days before. Even though his oxygen levels were pretty low, he refused medication and wanted to leave the Indiana hospital without a mask on. The nurse and some of her colleagues tried convincing him to stay, but the man insisted he felt fine. Besides, he said, COVID-19 is a fake virus hospitals are using to make money. As he put on his MAGA hat and walked out the door, she worried about what would happen next. Would he infect others? Would he go to bed and not wake up?
“We never have had people who thought we were lying to them,” said Schultz, who asked to be identified by her middle name to protect her privacy. “It feels like the public doesn’t trust us anymore.”
On November 14, a South Dakota nurse named Jodi Doering wrote a viral Twitter thread about her experience treating COVID patients in intensive […]
