Blogging the End of the World™
By Brendan O’Connor 11 August 2017 (Splinter) – In 2005, at its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., the National Association of Evangelicals was on the verge of doing something novel: affirming science.Specifically, the 30-million-member group, which represents 51 Christian denominations, was debating how to advance a new platform called “For the Health of a Nation.” […]
By Kurt Andersen 8 August 2017 (The Atlantic) – When did America become untethered from reality?I first noticed our national lurch toward fantasy in 2004, after President George W. Bush’s political mastermind, Karl Rove, came up with the remarkable phrase reality-based community. People in “the reality-based community,” he told a reporter, “believe that solutions emerge […]
By Dino Grandoni 9 August 2017(The Washington Post) – During his confirmation hearing for the job of running the Department of the Interior, Ryan Zinke told the Senate he wanted taxpayers to get “fair value” on resources extracted from public lands by private companies. But a recent move by him means taxpayers will get millions […]
By Lindy West 9 August 2017 SEATTLE (The New York Times) – The weather forecast for Seattle on Wednesday reads “89 degrees, smoke.” We first noticed the smoke, drifting down from wildfires still burning in British Columbia, around Aug. 2, just as a heat wave sent temperatures spiking well into the 90s (the historical average […]
By David Leonhardt 7 August 2017 (The New York Times) – Many Americans can’t remember anything other than an economy with skyrocketing inequality, in which living standards for most Americans are stagnating and the rich are pulling away. It feels inevitable. But it’s not.A well-known team of inequality researchers — Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and […]
By Chris Harris 27 July 2017 (Euronews) – Exclusive: The number of forest fires in the EU has trebled so far this year, according to figures obtained by Euronews, affecting an area nearly the size of Luxembourg. There have been 677 blazes in 2017 – a huge increase on the 215 the bloc saw annually […]
By Lisa Friedmanaug 7 August 2017 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years, according to a sweeping federal climate change report awaiting approval by the Trump administration. The draft report […]
By Nick Miroff 7 August 2017 LAKE PALCACOCHA, Peru (The Washington Post) – After a day of bright sunshine, a chunk of ice the size of a dump truck broke off the glacier on Mount Pucaranra a few weeks ago. It plunged into the lake below and kicked up a wave nine feet high. Victor […]
By Hannah Hickey 31 July 2017(UW News) – Warming of the planet by 2 degrees Celsius is often seen as a “tipping point” that people should try to avoid by limiting greenhouse gas emissions.But the Earth is very likely to exceed that change, according to new University of Washington research. A study using statistical tools […]
By Matt McGrath 7 August 2017 (BBC News) – Potent, climate warming gases are being emitted into the atmosphere but are not being recorded in official inventories, a BBC investigation has found. Air monitors in Switzerland have detected large quantities of one gas coming from a location in Italy. However, the Italian submission to the […]
