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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
It seems like almost everyday now I see yet another well-conducted research study screaming at humanity to take climate change as an existential threat, and yet look at the report I published yesterday about COP28, and the oil executive who is leading it. We are getting very close to the tipping point, or maybe we have passed it. If I were a young person today I think I would be growing very bitter about the greed and stupidity that seems to dominate the thinking of most of humanity’s leaders.
Residents walk through a flooded street after heavy rains in Bago township in Myanmar’s Bago region on Oct. 10, 2023. Credit: Sai Aung Main / AFP / Getty
According to a recent study by scientists from Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, some newer climate models greatly underestimate the extent to which global heating leads to extreme rainfall.
“Extremes appear to intensify faster with global warming than the models predict,” said Anders Levermann, one of the authors of the study and a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, as New Scientist reported. “Extreme rainfall will be heavier and more frequent. Society needs to be prepared for this.”
The researchers examined the frequency and intensity of daily land-based precipitation extremes in 21 climate models classified as “next generation” that were used by a United Nations body to conduct global assessments, reported AFP.
The research team compared historical changes with those predicted by the climate models and found that almost all the models […]
This was entirely predictable. In fact, I think I did predict it. How pathetic the Red states of America have become. I have been doing research not just for my daily SR, but for the monthly SR in Explore Journal and the weekly SR podcast, and what has become clear is that America is no longer a world leader in anything but weapons that kill people. Education, healthcare, longevity, child care, elder care, pick whatever you like, we don’t lead in anything that involves social and individual wellbeing.
Illustration for Mother Jones / YangYin / Getty
One last-minute round-trip flight from Biloxi, Mississippi, to Cancún, Mexico, runs about $171 USD; three nights at a three-star hotel there can cost as little as $129. A three-day car rental in the resort town rings in at just $20 per day. And the price for one surgical abortion at MSI Reproductive Choices’ Cancún clinic would be about $350. The total cost for a trip to Cancún to access reproductive health services no longer available in some American states? $710.
Starting November 23, when the international sexual health organization MSI Reproductive Choices opens the doors to its first Cancún reproductive health center, a pregnant American from a US state where abortion is banned could find the procedure to be both more affordable and more accessible in Mexico. Quintana Roo, the Mexican state where Cancún is located, has become one of at least a dozen Mexican states to decriminalize abortion in the last two years amid a series of judicial rulings that have strengthened reproductive rights, culminating […]
Here is the kind of stupidity the Republican candidates talk about. Just what we need, another Boebert, Greene, or Jordan to name just a few. I think there must be a difference of 20 or 30 points between the IQs of Republican and Democratic Congress members.
Patient lying in hospital bed. Credit: Shutterstock
A top Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Montana floated eliminating all health insurance and bringing back the old-timey payment system where cash-strapped patients could barter with their doctors for medical care .
Semafor reports that Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy argued in a meet-and-greet with voters in August that “we need to return healthcare to pure privatization,” despite the fact that the United States government has been providing financial assistance to help Americans get medical care for decades.
When asked about what this would entail, Sheehy pointed to the kinds of payment systems that were more common in the 19th century.
“I mean, healthcare worked before health insurance existed. Each town had a doctor that would drive to your house, take care of you and you’d pay him,” Sheehy said.
“And guess what? It worked. It worked when you actually paid a doctor for services provided. And then we started getting into this HMO, insurance, mega-conglomerate […]
Annie Waldman, Aliyya Swaby and Anna Clark, Staff Writer - ProPublica
Stephan:
The United States as in most things has the most unequal education system amongst the developed nations. Public education has gotten so bad in America that according to the National Center for Education Statistics, 48 million adults in this country struggle to read schoolchild basic English, and do not comprehend multisyllabic words. Low education, low IQ, high fear, and resentment. That’s MAGAt world. These are the people criminal Trump manipulates. The obvious solution to this is better public education, and education opportunities for adults and immigrants. This, of course, is why Republicans have been trying to dismantle public education in the United States for years, and why criminal Trump is now proposing a national university to indoctrinate fascism and conspiracy fantasies while charging low or no fees.
A student makes reading progress during a one-on-one tutoring session through Literacy Mid-South. Applicants often face a monthslong waitlist. Credit: ProPublica
They never got the help they needed with learning disabilities. Or they came to this country without the ability to read English. Or they graduated from schools that failed to teach them the most crucial skills.
For a number of sometimes overlapping reasons, 48 million American adults struggle to read basic English, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That may leave them unable to find and keep a decent job, navigate the signage on city streets, follow medical instructions and vote. They’re vulnerable to scams and face stigma and shame.
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The main remedy available is adult education: free classes where they can improve their reading and earn a high school credential.
But the infrastructure for adult education is profoundly inadequate, a ProPublica investigation found — and, as the nation’s persistently low literacy rates reveal, the government’s efforts haven’t done enough to […]
From my own extensive research, and from my 2060 remote viewing project, I have been warning my readers for almost 10 years that this was coming. We are going to have more pandemics that are going to change the earth’s matrix of life. Viruses and bacteria are going to mutate as the climate changes and the ecosystems change to accommodate those changes. And as a result millions of people are going to die until the earth’s matrix of life stabilizes. This isn’t even discussed by Republican politicians, although Independents like Bernie Sanders and Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren see it coming and are trying to get other politicians to pay attention.
Climate change can result in the spread of infectious diseases such as anthrax Credit: Getty
As temperatures shift, animals move to different regions and pathogens have more opportunities to jump between hosts. Could the next pandemic be fuelled by an unstable climate?
When temperatures rise, everything changes and disease arrives. As the thick ice melts and the seas and the air warm, so new life arrives in Arctic waters. Minke, bottlenose, fin and sperm whales are heading north, even as grizzly bears, white-tailed deer, coyotes and other animals and birds expand their range into boreal forests to the south.
But the geography of disease is also changing as novel pathogens affecting plants, animals and humans increase their range. New beetles are heading north and devastating Siberian forests, Alaskan mammals are struggling as new ticks arrive and human habitations in northern Norway are infested by new insects.
This article is an extract from Fevered Planet: How Diseases Emerge When We Harm Nature, by the late John Vidal, who was former environment editor for The Guardian […]
Damian Carrington and Ben Stockton, Reporters - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
Yesterday I presented a story about how John Kerry was working with some seeming success at COP28 with the man selected as president of the conference, who is also chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company Adnoc, Sultan Al Jaber, seeking to find a way to exit the carbon era. Tragically, John Kerry seems to have miscalculated, and Al Jaber has revealed who he really is, and how he thinks. Once again greed trumps all other considerations, and humanity is going to pay a horrible price so these Muslim kingdoms that offer nothing else but oil to the rest of the world can stay ultra rich. May the future bankrupt them all.
Sultan Al Jaber: ‘There is no science out there that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C.’ Credit: Anadolu / Getty
The president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.
Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.
The comments were “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate denial”, scientists said, and they were at odds with the position of the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
Al Jaber made the comments in ill-tempered responses to questions from Mary Robinson, the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate change, during a live online event on 21 November. As well as running Cop28 in Dubai, Al Jaber is also the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil […]
I have warned you several times not to fall for the Medicare Advantage schemes that have and will plague every advertising break on any television channel until the 7th December. Don’t fall for these offers. Here’s why.
Medicare was founded in 1965 to end the crisis of medical care being denied to senior citizens in America, but private insurers have been able to progressively expand their presence in Medicare.Credit: Lev Radin / SIPA USA / AP
One of the biggest selling points of Obamacare was that it would finally end discrimination against patients on the basis of pre-existing conditions. But for one vulnerable sector of the population, that discrimination never ended. Insurers are still able to deny coverage to some Americans with pre-existing conditions. And it’s all perfectly legal.
Sixty-five million seniors are in Medicare open enrollment from October 15 until December 7. Nearly 32 million of those patients are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, a set of privately run plans that have come under fire for denying treatment and overbilling the government. Medicare Advantage patients theoretically have the option to return to traditional Medicare. But in 46 states, it is nearly impossible for those people to do so without exposing themselves to great financial risk.
It is happening all over the world. This is the story of the loss of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, but similar stories are happening in the U.S.. Consider The vanishing Great Salt Lake, or Lake Mead. Water is destiny, and humans just can’t seem to understand that. The result is going to be great misery.
Boats that once plied the Aral Sea are now stranded more than 75 miles from water. Credit: Sergey Ponomarev / The New York Times
Walking toward the shrinking remnants of what used to be the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was like entering hell.
All around was a desert devoid of life, aside from scrubby saxaul trees. Dust swirled in 110-degree Fahrenheit heat under a throbbing red sun. I reached the edge of one of the scattered lakes that are all that remain of this once-great body of water. I took off my shoes and waded in. The water was so full of salt that it felt viscous, not quite liquid.
In the nearby town of Muynak, black-and-white newsreels in the local museum and pictures in the family photo albums of residents tell of better times. During the Soviet era, fishing communities like Muynak ringed the sea, thriving off its bounty: sturgeon, flounder, caviar and other staples of Soviet dinner tables. In the town I met Oktyabr Dospanov, an archaeologist who grew up along the Aral’s […]
