Climate change will displace millions
Wildfires tearing across Southern California have forced thousands of residents to evacuate from their homes. Even more people fled ahead of the hurricanes that slammed into Texas and Florida earlier this year, jamming highways and filling hotels. A viral social media post showed a flight-radar picture of people trying to escape Florida and posed a provocative question: What if the adjoining states were countries and didn’t grant escaping migrants refuge? By the middle of this century, experts estimate that climate change is likely to displace between 150 and 300 million people. If this group formed a country, it would be the fourth-largest in the world, with a population nearly as large as that of the United States. Yet neither individual countries nor the global community are completely prepared to support a whole new class of “climate migrants.”
The 2018 Midterms and the Specter of Voter Suppression
Read: The ‘hubris’ of the Supreme Court’s voting-rights ruling On Saturday, President Donald Trump ensured that the issue would be front and center as Election Day approached. “All levels of government and Law Enforcement are watching carefully for VOTER FRAUD, including during EARLY VOTING,” he tweeted. “Cheat at your own peril. Violators will be subject to maximum penalties, both civil and criminal!” Trump’s tweet could be read straight, as a warning from the president against the threat of fraud.
World’s great forests could lose half of all wildlife as planet warms – report
The world’s greatest forests could lose more than half of their plant species by the end of the century unless nations ramp up efforts to tackle climate change, according to a new report on the impacts of global warming on biodiversity hotspots. Mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds are also likely to disappear on a catastrophic scale in the Amazon and other naturally rich ecosysterms in Africa, Asia, North America and Australia if temperatures rise by more than 1.5C, concludes the study by WWF, the University of East Anglia and the James Cook University. The research in the journal Climate Change examined the impact of three different levels of warming – 2C (the upper target in the 2015 Paris agreement), 3.2C (the likely rise given existing national commitments) and 4.5C (the forecast outcome if emissions trends remain unchanged) on nearly 80,000 plant and animal species in 35 of the world’s most biodiverse regions.
How Segregation Shapes Fatal Police Violence : Code Switch
The family of Dontre Hamilton marked a spot in red paint to memorialize where he was shot by a Milwaukee police officer. Carrie Antlfinger/AP hide caption toggle caption
Refusing to act on climate change will cost future generations $530 trillion (at least) - Techly
By continuing to delay significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, we risk handing young people alive today a bill of up to US$535 trillion. This would be the cost of the “negative emissions” technologies required to remove CO₂ from the air in order to avoid dangerous climate change. These are the main findings of new research published in Earth System Dynamics, conducted by an international team led by US climate scientist James Hansen, previously the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
More acidic oceans 'will affect all sea life'
Image copyright JAGO-TEAM/GEOMAR All sea life will be affected because carbon dioxide emissions from modern society are making the oceans more acidic, a major new report will say. The eight-year study from more than 250 scientists finds that infant sea creatures will be especially harmed. This means the number of baby cod growing to adulthood could fall to a quarter or even a 12th of today's numbers, the researchers suggest. The assessment comes from the BIOACID project, which is led from Germany.
The tragic story of America's only native parrot, now extinct for 100 years
It was winter in upstate New York in 1780 in a rural town called Schoharie, home to the deeply religious Palatine Germans. Suddenly, a flock of gregarious red and green birds flew into town, seemingly upon a whirlwind. The townspeople thought the end of the world was upon them. Though the robin-sized birds left quickly, their appearance was forever imprinted on local lore.
Ghana's Illegal Galamsey Gold Mining Affecting Cocoa Farmers, Chocolate Supply
Obuasi, GhanaKwaku Asare grabbed his machete and trekked through the bush to his cocoa farm—through winding pathways and hills, past ominous pits of muddy water, and underneath the low-hanging canopy of dried cocoa leaves. But the trees were bare. A few rotting cocoa pods littered the ground, while other stunted pods refused to ripen on the branches. “When the Chinese came, they told me that my plants were not yielding anymore because there was so much gold under the soil,” Asare said. After a few years of low production, he sold his 14 acres to a group of small-scale gold miners, also called galamsey miners, with a Chinese sponsor.
Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature'
The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review. More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century. The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study.
Growing Up Surrounded by Books Has a Lasting Positive Effect on the Brain, Says a New Scientific Study
Image by George Redgrave, via Flickr Commons Somewhere in the annals of the internet--if this sprawling, near-sentient thing we call the internet actually has annals--there is a fine, fine quote by filmmaker John Waters: We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them.
Humpback whales stop their song when human vessels make noise
Scientists have found yet another way we’re disrupting wildlife: when cargo ships start producing a lot of noise, humpback whales reduce or even stop their singing. Image credits: Christopher Michel. Not only do whales (and other marine mammals) use sounds to communicate, but they’re much more dependent on sounds than land creatures because their other senses are so limited in water. For human ships, meanwhile, sounds are more of a side-effect. When a ship cuts through the water, its engine working at full power, it’s a huge cacophony of sounds — and in our modern world, there are a lot of ships. A team of Japanese researchers wanted to see how these ship sounds affect whales.
The World’s Water Crisis Explained on World Water Day
“Day Zero,” when at least a million homes in the city of Cape Town, South Africa, will no longer have any running water, was originally scheduled for April. It was recently moved to July. The three-year long drought hasn’t ended, but severe water rationing—limiting people to a mere 13 gallons (50 litres) per person per day—has made a difference.
People who think their opinions are superior to others are most prone to overestimating their relevant knowledge and ignoring chances to learn more
By guest blogger Tom Stafford We all know someone who is convinced their opinion is better than everyone else’s on a topic – perhaps, even, that it is the only correct opinion to have. Maybe, on some topics, you are that person. No psychologist would be surprised that people who are convinced their beliefs are superior think they are better informed than others, but this fact leads to a follow on question: are people actually better informed on the topics for which they are convinced their opinion is superior?
