31 December 2021 (Desdemona Despair) – For Des, 2021 was the second year of studying pandemic numbers daily and obsessively. In the U.S., the go-to site was Covid Act Now, which presents the latest data at the county level. Tracking the changing numbers every day was like watching the weather report, but with mass death […]
31 December 2021 (Desdemona Despair) – If you’ve been on the internet for a few years, you may have encountered a skirmish with climate denialists or evolution “skeptics”. Frequently, these threads start with a “concern troll” who questions some aspect of science and insinuates corruption or deception on the part of scientists. The accusations are […]
By Vivian Wang and Joy Dong 30 December 2021 (The New York Times) – China, racing to control one of its worst outbreaks in a single city since the beginning of the pandemic, has put in place a sweeping lockdown and mass testing drives, making clear that the country has no intention of abandoning its “zero […]
By Isabel Kershner 29 December 2021 JERUSALEM (The New York Times) – Israel is acting to contain a severe outbreak of avian flu that has already led to mass culling of infected poultry and has caused the deaths of about 5,000 migratory cranes in a popular nature reserve in the north of the country. The minister […]
28 December 2021 (Desdemona Despair) – Bill Gates tweeted, “Just when it seemed like life would return to normal, we could be entering the worst part of the pandemic.” In a seven-tweet thread, he went on to say that the Omicron variant “is spreading faster than any virus in history” and it “will be the […]
By Matt Hills 23 December 2021 (The Guardian) – Typhoon Rai has devastated the Philippines, killing at least 375 people, and causing damage in excess of $500m (£375m). The system developed on 13 December, tracked westwards across the Philippines on the 16th and 17th, before crossing the South China Sea on the 18th. Rai reached […]
By Venkat Gopalakrishnan, Divyanshi Wadhwa, Sara Haddad, and Paul Blake 21 December 2021 (World Bank) – From uneven economic recovery to unequal access to vaccines; from widening income losses to divergence in learning, COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on the poor and vulnerable in 2021. It is causing reversals in development and is dealing a […]
By T. A. Moon, M. L. Druckenmiller, and R. L. Thoman 6 December 2021 (NOAA) – As the influences of human-caused global warming continue to intensify, with the Arctic warming significantly faster than the globe overall, the 2021 Arctic Report Card (ARC2021) brings a broad view of the state of the Arctic climate and environment. […]
By Allison Quinn and Justin Baragona 21 December 2021 (The Daily Beast) – Anthony Fauci has called for Fox News host Jesse Watters to be axed from the cable channel for encouraging his supporters to “ambush” the infectious-disease expert with a “kill shot.” [UPDATE 21 Dec 2021: Fox News has defended the violent language as […]
By Pep Canadell, Corinne Le Quéré, Glen Peters, Pierre Friedlingstein, Robbie Andrew, and Rob Jackson 3 November 2021 (The Conversation) – Global carbon dioxide emissions have bounced back after COVID-19 restrictions and are likely to reach close to pre-pandemic levels this year, our analysis released today has found. The troubling finding comes as the COP26 climate talks […]
