Stephan: When someone thinks about the rise of the water level in coastal areas, most think of ocean coastal. Few, but locals, think about the Great Lakes. They should. This article explains why.
A storm on Lake Michigan isn’t the same as a storm on the ocean: There are different atmospheric factors and water-flow patterns that determine its ferocity. Credit: Jentara/Deposit Photos
A single road near Lake Superior connects Michigan’s Keweenaw Bay Indian Community to the rest of the state. During major rains, rocks and wood litter the route and cut off travel in and out. Over the summer, drivers have to take a 30-minute detour; in the winter, the trip can take more than two hours. Work crews eventually clear the path with plow-like machines, freeing the tribe’s movement.
Living at Superior’s southern edge, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) manages close to 19 miles of its shoreline. They rely on it for tourism revenue, drinking water, and fish for the tribal hatchery. A full lake is good news for KBIC, but if the levels spill over, it could spell danger for the residents’ subsistence.
This precarious balance shifted toward disaster during the 2018 Father’s Day flood, when more than seven inches of […]
Stephan: One of the weaknesses of the Biden administration is their poor handling of leases in the Gulf of Mexico. In my view although the judge blocked oil leases in the already damaged Gulf of Mexico. It is my opinion that this entire situation should be seen as an example of just how corrupt the American government is, and how much administrations, both Republican and Democratic march to the tune of the petroleum industries. These companies are not going to stop trying to block the transition to a noncarbon energy world, until they figure out how to make money in that new world.
Credit: Chris Graythen / Getty
On Thursday, a federal judge threw out the Department of Interior’s decision to lease more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas production — the largest offshore auction in U.S. history. The sale, which came just days after Biden vowed to “lead by example” in cutting emissions during U.N. climate talks in Scotland, could have resulted in 600 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Guardian analysis of Interior Department data.
In a lawsuit filed by Earthjustice and others, the groups argued that the environmental analysis conducted under the Trump administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act by vastly underestimating the proposed sale’s climate impacts. In its assessment of the five-year leasing plan, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management concluded that the climate impacts would be worse if the leases went unsold because it would result in an increase in less-regulated development overseas.
In his decision, Washington D.C. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras agreed, ruling that the Biden administration relied […]
Stephan: Another article based on actual research showing that Covid has long term effects that are only slowly being understood. We are far from through this pandemic.
Citation for the paper upon which this report was based: https://academic.oup.com/braincomms/article/4/1/fcab295/6511053
A study shows how even a mild case of COVID-19 can lead to long-term neurological problems Credit:vectorfusionart/Depositphotos
A novel study led by researchers from the University of Oxford has investigated the lingering cognitive effects of mild COVID-19 in the months following infection. The research revealed minor deficits in attention and memory can be seen for up to six months following a mild infection.
This new study, published in the journal Brain Communications, set out to investigate the other end of the disease spectrum. Here, the focus was on cognitive impacts in asymptomatic to moderate COVID-19 patients who do not report symptoms of long COVID.
More than 150 subjects were recruited for the study, with around 60 reporting a PCR-confirmed case of mild COVID-19 up to […]
Stephan: When people think about the White supremacy christofascist movement they mostly think about White men with big guts hanging over their belts. Not true. Although, as this article describes, the media hardly ever discusses the role of White women in the MAGAt movement, in fact, they play a major role. Here is some of the rare coverage I have seen explaining their role.
Marjorie Taylor Greene. Credit: Screenshot/YouTube.com
White women have played a central role in America’s neofascist movement and its assault on multiracial pluralist democracy.
Either as figureheads or actual leaders, white women have stood at the forefront of the Republican Party’s attempt to use the bogeyman of “critical race theory” to launch a widespread moral panic and restrict the teaching of American history. The ultimate goal is to severely undermine or fully destroy our current system of public education, and replace it with “patriotic” indoctrination meant to reinforce and protect white privilege and other forms of inequality.
White women are also among the loudest voices in the movement to take away women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. The anti-choice movement has found considerable common ground with overt white nationalists and other white supremacists. In a new essay at the Guardian, Moira Donegan explores this:
Explicit white nationalism, and an emphasis on conscripting white women into reproduction, is not a fringe element of the anti-choice movement. Associations between white supremacist groups and anti-abortion forces are robust […]
Stephan: Human activity based on the exploitation of resources and profit as the only social priority is destroying the balance of the earth's matrix of life, and we just don't seem to get that this destruction will destroy our civilization as well. Bees are dying at an alarming rate, butterflies are disappearing, the ocean ecosystem are collapsing,and now birds are disappearing. Will we wake up to what is happening before it is too late to reverse it? I don't know. But one thing you can do is put out a bird seed feeder and a hummingbird liquid feeder and keep them well stocked year round. What is stopping you from doing that? What's your excuse?
How diminished our world would be without birds, those dinosaurs with feathers and songsmiths with wings.’ Credit: Robin Loznak/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
When the poet Mary Oliver wrote “Instructions for living a life,” she reminded us: “Pay attention. Be astounded. Tell about it.”
This past autumn, wildlife officials announced that a bird, a male bar-tailed godwit, flew nonstop across the Pacific Ocean 8,100 miles from Alaska to Australia in just under 10 days. Fitted with a small solar-powered satellite tag, the godwit achieved “a land bird flight record”. But of course godwits have been doing this for centuries. Come next April-May, all things well, determined godwits will make the trip in reverse, bound for Alaska to nest and raise their young.
Northern wheatears, songbirds less than six inches long, will arrive in Alaska from sub-Saharan Africa. Arctic terns will return from Antarctica, with each bird flying the equivalent of three trips to the moon and back in a single lifetime. Bar-headed geese will fly over the Himalayas at altitudes exceeding 20,000 feet.
