By John Abraham 7 August 2017 (The Guardian) – Fossil fuels have two major problems that paint a dim picture for their future energy dominance. These problems are inter-related but still should be discussed separately. First, they cause climate change. We know that, we’ve known it for decades, and we know that continued use of […]
18 August 2017 (UN) – Warning about escalating suffering in Yemen’s man-made catastrophe, senior United Nations officials today addressed the Security Council, calling on the international community to push for a political solution to the more than two-year-old conflict. “Death looms for Yemenis by air, land and sea,” Special Envoy of the Secretary-General to Yemen, […]
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 Damian Carrington 4 August 2017 (The Guardian) – Cars must be driven out of cities to tackle the UK’s air pollution crisis, not just replaced with electric vehicles, according to the UK government’s top adviser. Prof Frank Kelly said that while electric vehicles emit no exhaust fumes, they still produce large amounts of tiny […]
By Damian Carrington 2 August 2017 (The Guardian) – Extreme heatwaves that kill even healthy people within hours will strike parts of the Indian subcontinent unless global carbon emissions are cut sharply and soon, according to new research. Even outside of these hotspots, three-quarters of the 1.7 billion population – particularly those farming in the Ganges […]
By Kathleen Maclay 31 July 2017 (Berkeley News) – Climate change has already caused more than 59,000 suicides in India over the last 30 years, according to estimates in a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that suggests failing harvests that push farmers into poverty are likely the […]
By Julia Belluz 28 July 2017(Vox) – If there was ever a moment to fear the anti-vaxxers could win, this is it.Consider the following: The president courts known anti-vaccine crackpots like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and makes the same kinds of pseudoscience claims about lifesaving immunizations that they do. RFK Jr. has seized on the […]
By Clive Cookson 25 July 2017 (Financial Times) – The sperm count of men in the western world has fallen by more than half over a period of 40 years, according to an international study described by its authors as “an urgent wake-up call” about declining male health. “Decreasing sperm count has been of great […]
PROVIDENCE, R.I., 25 July 2017 (Brown University) – A new study projects that if climate change continues unabated, heat-related deaths will rise dramatically in 10 major U.S. metropolitan areas compared to if the predicted increase in global warming is substantially curbed and cities take steps to adapt. “The conversation about climate change is typically focused […]
By Cathy Watson 24 July 2017 (The Guardian) – For the team managing Nairobi’s water, the stakes have never been so high. Water-rationing has been going on in Kenya’s capital since 1 January 2017, and supplies might run dry by September. The last two rainy seasons were dismal; more rain is not expected until October […]
