Nicola Jones, Science Journalist - The Tyee / Yale 360
Stephan:
It is infuriating and disgusting. The earth’s ecosystems are in dramatic transformation that is going to affect not just human life, but the entire matrix of life. And what is the U.S. Congress doing? Driven by the Republicans it is either doing little or nothing preparing the country for what is happening, or in the House, for instance, spending its time and millions of dollars investigating whether the FBI was tough enough on Hunter Biden, trying to pass laws about drag shows, or sucking on the teat of the petroleum industry to finance their campaigns.
Atlantic bluefin tuna have been driven into narrower layers of water by oxygen declines. Credit: Shutterstock
Off the coast of southeastern China, one particular fish species is booming: the oddly named Bombay duck, a long, slim fish with a distinctive, gaping jaw and a texture like jelly. When research ships trawl the seafloor off that coast, they now catch upwards of 440 pounds of the gelatinous fish per hour — a more than tenfold increase over a decade ago.
“It’s monstrous,” says University of British Columbia fisheries researcher Daniel Pauly of the explosion in numbers.
The reason for this mass invasion, says Pauly, is extremely low oxygen levels in these polluted waters. Fish species that can’t cope with less oxygen have fled, while the Bombay duck, part of a small subset of species that is physiologically better able to deal with less oxygen, has moved in.
The boom is making some people happy, since Bombay duck is perfectly edible. But the influx provides a peek at a bleak future for China and for the planet as a […]
A Republican judge has given the Republican Party and the oligarchs that fund and control it what they have sought. They can weaponize disinformation in any way they wish to manipulate the MAGAt world. If this judgment stands, and it is being appealed and will almost certainly end up being validated by the christofascist cabal that controls the Supreme Court, the United States will become a nation of strategic dishonesty
The government’s ability to fight disinformation online has suffered a legal setback that experts say will have a chilling effect on communications between federal agencies and social media companies.
A Tuesday ruling by a federal district judge in Louisiana could have far-reaching consequences for the government’s ability to work with Facebook and other social media giants to address false and misleading claims about COVID, vaccines, voting, and other issues that could undermine public health and erode confidence in election results.
District Court Judge Terry Doughty, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday that bars several federal departments and agencies from various interactions with social media companies.
On Wednesday, the Justice Department filed a notice that it will appeal the injunction with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The government also expects to ask the court to stay the district judge’s decision, meaning it would not go into effect while the appeal is heard.
What is this lawsuit about?
The case, brought by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, addresses what has become […]
We are not paying attention. We are entering a new world, and it is going to change our reality. The only way to get through this with a minimum of suffering and disorder is to make fostering wellbeing our first priority. Or we are going to face a very unpleasant transformation. The data on this is unimpeachable. This is going to come down to how we vote in the 2024 election.
Credit: SKAMAN306 / Getty
Scientists are raising alarms about the risk of simultaneous crop failures occurring in multiple regions across the globe as a result of human-driven climate change, a catastrophe that poses an underestimated threat to the global food supply, reports a new study.
Using sophisticated climate models, researchers zeroed in on the effects of the jet stream, a system of rapidly flowing winds in the atmosphere, on heat extremes around the world. The results revealed that “meandering” jet stream patterns can produce weather anomalies in some of the most important crop-producing lands on Earth, an ominous signal that “synchronized” harvest collapses could occur in the future.
Climate change, which is driven by human consumption of fossil fuels, is placing enormous new pressures on humans and other lifeforms on the planet. In particular, rising temperatures are fueling more intense extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, droughts, floods, wildfires, and storms, all of which have adverse effects on food production worldwide. Given that disruptions to the global food supply can be deadly, especially for import-reliant nations, […]
The world’s first “rainbow street,” created to honor LGBTQ+ pride, is seen in Raykjavik, Iceland on July 22, 2022. Credit: Finn Huwald / picture alliance / Getty
The United States has fallen 10 spots in the last three years in the Global Peace Index, driven by a high degree of militarization and a rising homicide rate.
Iceland was named the most peaceful country in the world for the 15th consecutive year in the annual ranking compiled by the Institute for Economics & Peace on Wednesday, while the organization warned that militarization in the United States is steadily making the wealthiest country in the world less peaceful.
In its 2023 Global Peace Index, the group ranked 163 countries where 99.7% of the world’s population lives, determining how countries compare based on the level of “societal safety and security,” “ongoing domestic and international conflict,” and the degree of “militarization.”
Iceland had low rankings for each of the three categories and maintained its place at the top of the list, which it’s held every year the IEP has released […]
After talking with Ronlyn and then reading the previous article, I wondered how long Amnesty International has been warning the rest of the world about traveling to the United States. It turns out it was four years ago in 2019. Here is the warning. This is how we are seen by other nations. World leaders, that’s us. Makes you proud to be an American, right? (That’s sarcasm.)
Police work the scene of a mass shooting Monday 3 July 2023 in the Kingsessing neighborhood of Philadelphia. Credit: Tracie Van Auken / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
Amnesty International today issued a travel warning calling for possible travelers and visitors to the United States to exercise extreme caution when traveling throughout the country due to rampant gun violence, which has become so prevalent in the United States that it amounts to a human rights crisis. It aims to hold up a mirror to the U.S. using the model of the United States Department of State’s travel advice for U.S. travelers to other countries.
“Travelers to the United States should remain cautious that the country does not adequately protect people’s right to be safe, regardless of who they might be. People in the United States cannot reasonably expect to be free from harm – a guarantee of not being shot is impossible,” said Ernest Coverson, campaign manager for the End Gun Violence Campaign at Amnesty International USA. “Once again, it is chillingly clear that the U.S. government is unwilling to […]
