Stephan: If your diet contains a lot of red meat, or processed meats, take this report seriously.
Cut of raw Normande beef on black packaging paper Credit: Annick Vanderschelden/Getty
A new study provides more evidence that eating too much red meat and processed meat isn’t merely bad for you — it also makes it much more likely that you will develop several serious diseases.
Published in the medical trade journal BMJ, the paper focused on popular red meat and processed meat food items from animals like cows, pigs, lambs and goats. The researchers studied statistics on meat production and trade from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization between 1993 and 2018. Specifically, they studied 154 countries, then recorded how the quantity of their red meat and processed meat consumption corresponded with non-communicable diseases (NCD) associated with that type of food. In particular, they calculated the proportions of deaths and years of life spent with a disability that could be attributed to diet among people at least 25 years old and were caused by coronary artery heart disease, diabetes or bowel cancer.
Stephan: This is very interesting and significant. The Federalist Society is the intellectual hub of conservatism, in my view. Federalists see themselves as the arbiters of "Me" culture. Individual liberty above all other social conventions, and in their membership are many judges at every level. In science terms they are the old paradigm. They recognize there is a war going on. Not the Trumper MAGAt psycho drama, but a struggle for power between the old paradigm and the emerging new paradigm taking shape. All life is interconnected and interdependent; the "We" culture the Founders envisioned. The Federalists now see corporations as agents of the new paradigm
The podium backdrop at the Federalist Society’s 25th Anniversary gala in 2007. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty
This conspiracy, Keller claimed, includes companies as varied as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Twitter, and Walmart, all of which have joined forces with “the swelling ranks of so-called ‘woke’ people, who are completely and unabashedly opposed to individual rights.”
“Defenders of freedom must face reality,” Keller insisted, before adding the nation’s top advocacy group for big business to his list of enemies. “The Chamber of Commerce is not our friend. The C-suite grandees who finance it are not our friends either. They were erstwhile allies of convenience — and they are now the enemies of a freedom-loving people.”
It’s the sort of conspiratorial thinking one might expect to hear on the Alex Jones Show, or perhaps from disciples of QAnon. But […]
Lachlan Gilbert, Faculty University of New South Wales - Phys.org
Stephan: When I talk with people, or correspond with them, even people who have strong feelings about preparing for climate change, I notice that most seem to think that when we get to net zero carbon that that should fix things. As this paper by a researcher makes clear that is not the case, particularly concerning sea rise. The reality is that the best scientific projections make it clear 100s of millions of people around the world are going to be displaced by this sea rise, and that includes millions in the United States. If you live in a coastal area, or along an estuary, I would make an effort to see what the future of your area will look like, and when it will be time to move before your real estate is worthless, or nearly so.
A rendering shows what Marina Del Rey, California would look like due to eventual sea level rise with a global warming of 3 degrees Celsius. Credit: Climate Central
If you were to dig a (very) deep hole that passed through the center of the Earth and kept going to the other side of the planet, where do you think you’d come out?
Unless you start digging from a handful of locations on the planet, you are very likely to find that the antipodes—or opposite point on Earth to where you are now—will be in the ocean.
While this might be surprising initially, it isn’t really when you realize that land only covers 29 percent of the Earth’s surface, and even then, isn’t distributed evenly.
So how much water is there actually on the planet—in liquid, solid and gas form? And why are we in danger of the sea reclaiming some of the Earth’s land—aka rising sea levels?
Water, water, everywhere
There is estimated to be more than 1 billion cubic kilometers of water on the planet, or 1,386,000,000 km3 […]
Stephan: Yesterday I ran an article showing that MAGAt world not only isn't taking climate change seriously but actually is becoming less concerned. I found that quite depressing. But this article gives me some good news. Increasingly I see people who are smart enough to live in the real world and not some christofascist White supremacy fantasy world really engaging the implications of climate change.Here is a combination of art and science which you may find helpful.
Combining climate simulations with art, researchers envision a hotter future by 2500 that may transform landscapes across Earth, such as the Indian subcontinent, as shown here in an artist’s painting. Illustration by: James McKay
It’s hard to imagine what Earth might look like in 2500. But a collaboration between science and art is offering an unsettling window into how ongoing climate change might transform now-familiar terrain into alien landscapes over the next few centuries.
These visualizations — of U.S. Midwestern farms overtaken by subtropical plants, of a dried-up Amazon rainforest, of extreme heat baking the Indian subcontinent — emphasize why researchers need to push climate projections long past the customary benchmark of 2100, environmental social scientist Christopher Lyon and colleagues contend September 24 in Global Change Biology.
Fifty years have passed since the first climate projections, which set that distant target at 2100, says Lyon, of McGill University in Montreal. But that date isn’t so far off anymore, and the effects of greenhouse gas emissions emitted in the past and present will linger for centuries […]
Buying a house is complicated enough in a market that has become supercharged in many U.S. cities. Emerging climate change risks will further complicate those decisions. Investors will be less likely to regret their decisions if they do due diligence in researching local climate risks. Mortgage lenders will face less risk of borrowers defaulting, and insurers will face fewer losses, if they factor climate risks into decisions on loans and insurance policies.
