By Bryan Menegus26 January 2017 (Gizmodo) – George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, occupied the number one spot on Amazon’s best-selling books list yesterday, where it remains today. A cautionary tale about a brutal, amoral dictator has evidently felt relevant to people lately. But as of today, Amazon—the world’s largest bookseller—is unable to keep up with […]
By Brady Dennis 26 January 2017 (The Washington Post) – It turns out there will be a conference in Atlanta next month about climate change and its effects on public health. It just won’t have the federal government behind it. The reason? Former vice president Al Gore. “He called me and we talked about it […]
By Steve Gorman; Editing by Lisa Shumaker26 January 2017 Los Angeles, California (Reuters) – Employees from more than a dozen U.S. government agencies have established a network of unofficial “rogue” Twitter feeds in defiance of what they see as attempts by President Donald Trump to muzzle federal climate change research and other science. Seizing on […]
25 January 2017 (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) –Editor’s note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear […]
26 January 2017 (AFP) – Comments by US President Donald Trump and a “darkening global security landscape” have made the world less safe, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned Thursday, moving its symbolic “Doomsday Clock” 30 seconds closer to midnight. The clock — which serves as a metaphor for how close humanity is […]
By Darryl Fears24 January 2017 (The Washington Post) – Badlands National Park tugged on Superman’s cape Tuesday. It spit into the wind. It pulled the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and it messed around with President Trump. In tweets about climate change that lit up Twitter, the park ignored Jim Croce’s advice in his […]
[NASA and NOAA are likely to be targeted next. –Des] [UPDATE: USDA lifts gag order: report] By Dina Fine Maron24 January 2017 (Scientific American) – President Donald Trump’s administration moved quickly this week to shore up its control over communications with the public and the press, as officials at the Environmental Protection Agency and the […]
By Natalie Gallón19 January 2017 (CNN) – An indigenous activist who protested against illegal logging in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains has been killed, highlighting the dangers that Latin American environmentalists face. Isidro Baldenegro López, 51, a leader of the Tarahumara people and fervent environmentalist — was shot dead Sunday at his uncle’s home in the […]
By Zoë Schlanger19 January 2017 (Wired) – At 10 AM the Saturday before inauguration day, on the sixth floor of the Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania, roughly 60 hackers, scientists, archivists, and librarians were hunched over laptops, drawing flow charts on whiteboards, and shouting opinions on computer scripts across the room. They […]
Washington, DC, 12 January 2017 (Human Rights Watch) – The rise of populist leaders in the United States and Europe poses a dangerous threat to basic rights protections while encouraging abuse by autocrats around the world, Human Rights Watch said today in launching its World Report 2017 [pdf]. Donald Trump’s election as US president after […]
