We humans just aren't getting it. We aren't taking climate change seriously enough, and our failure to do that guarantees that we, the land creatures, are going to experience increasingly violent, destructive, and deadly weather events. Will that wake us up? I wouldn't bet on it.
The temperature of the world’s ocean surface has hit an all-time high since satellite records began, leading to marine heatwaves around the globe, according to US government data.
“The current trajectory looks like it’s headed off the charts, smashing previous records,” said Prof Matthew England, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales.
Three years of La Niña conditions across the vast tropical Pacific have helped suppress temperatures and dampened the effect of rising greenhouse gas emissions.
But scientists said heat was now rising to the ocean surface, pointing to a potential El Niño pattern in the tropical Pacific later this year that can increase the risk of extreme weather conditions and further challenge global heat records.
Dr Mike McPhaden, a senior research scientist at Noaa, said: “The recent ‘triple dip’ La Niña has come to an end. This prolonged period of cold was […]
Yet further evidence that we are simply not taking climate change seriously enough. You would think that the weather this year alone would wake people up. But corporate greed yet again has over-powered common sense.
A methane flare is seen at a natural gas drilling site. Credit: WildEarth Guardians / Flickr
Driven primarily by human activities including fossil fuel extraction, methane levels in the atmosphere had their fourth-largest annual increase in 2022, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday.
Scientists detected 1,911.9 parts per billion (ppb) of methane in the atmosphere last year, indicating a rise of 14 ppb. The level rose by 17.75 ppb in 2021 and 15.20 ppb the previous year.
Benjamin Poulter, a scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), told the Associated Press that researchers are “confident that over half of the methane emissions are coming from human activities like oil and gas extraction, agriculture, waste management, and landfills.”
Responding to pressure from experts and climate campaigners, policymakers and corporations in recent years have made pledges to reduce carbon emissions, but scientists have begun to push for more policies focused on slashing the release of methane into the environment, due to the gas’ ability to trap heat over a short period of time.
What kind of country have we become when the major cause of death for children in the United States is a bullet in their bodies, and it is getting much worse year by year. As this Pew study reports, "The number of children and teens killed by gunfire in the United States increased 50% between 2019 and 2021, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the latest annual mortality statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)." And yet the obvious never gets done. It is quite clear at this point that there are people in this country who value guns more than children.
The number of children and teens killed by gunfire in the United States increased 50% between 2019 and 2021, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the latest annual mortality statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, there were 1,732 gun deaths among U.S. children and teens under the age of 18. By 2021, that figure had increased to 2,590.
The gun death rate among children and teens – a measure that adjusts for changes in the nation’s population – rose from 2.4 fatalities per 100,000 minor residents in 2019 to 3.5 per 100,000 two years later, a 46% increase.
Both the number and rate of children and teens killed by gunfire in 2021 were higher than at any point since at least 1999, the earliest year for which information about those younger than 18 is available in the CDC’s mortality database.
How we did this
The rise in gun deaths among children and teens is part of a broader recent increase in firearm deaths among Americans overall. In […]
What I see in Tennessee, what I see in Texas, what I see in Florida and the other Republican-controlled states is a shrinking, but increasingly angry, fearful, and aggressive White minority that sees they are losing control and are prepared to do anything to stay in power. If you look at the polls you see that Trump's approval rating is actually going up amongst Republicans while dropping like a rock amongst Democrats and Independents. This article makes an important point by giving a sense of the religiosity that is such a big part of MAGAt Christian nationalism.
Protesters outside the courthouse in Manhatten wait for Trump’s arrival on April 4th. Credit: Yuvraj Khanna / The New Republic
Diane was up at six this morning, customizing a Christian flag for the former president.
I met her as we stood in a park in lower Manhattan, at the fringe of what the New York Young Republicans Club promoted as a rally to support Donald Trump, who was arraigned today at the courthouse behind us. Diane brushed her yellow-blonde curls off her face, the thin, whippy flagpole in her hand. She’d ordered the flag, she said, and added the slogan herself: “GOD BLESS PRESIDENT TRUMP.” “The white represents Christ’s purity. The blue represents baptismal waters and faithfulness of loyalness of Christ. And the red, of course, the blood of Jesus.” The flag symbolizing the crucifixion, one of which was carried on the House floor on January 6, was flying here during holy week, while Trump at last stood before a judge and was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
A carefully selected MAGAt judge with a long history of being against a woman's right to control her own body, and with no medical training whatever, has just rendered a judgment that is so factually inaccurate and poorly argued that it is like an SNL version of anti-womens' rights. This at the same time that a judge at the same level in the judiciary in Washington state issued a judgment that is factually based and reaches exactly the opposite ruling. This will now go to the very corrupt ideological Supreme Court. It will be interesting to see how that goes. What needs to happen, in my opinion, is that the 2024 election should produce a House and a Senate, and a Presidency all strongly controlled by Democrats who then pass legislation making it the law nationwide that women have the right to control their own bodies. Period.
The J. Marvin Jones Federal Building and Mary Lou Robinson United States Courthouse where U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk will decide on a lawsuit to ban the abortion drug mifepristone Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023, in Amarillo, Texas. Credit: Justin Rex / AP
A Texas federal judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, ruled Friday to suspend the FDA’s approval of mifepristone — one of two drugs used together to cause an abortion — virtually banning the sale of the pills across the country.
The decision, however, gives the Biden administration a week to appeal, meaning the hundreds of thousands of patients who use the medication both for abortions and treating miscarriages will not be immediately impacted.
The pills, which the FDA approved for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy more than two decades ago, recently became the most common method of abortion in the United States, and a way many people have circumvented state bans since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June.
Both abortion-rights supporters and opponents have focused intensely on the pills in recent […]
