In the last few weeks various media have reported that Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR), the world's largest coral reef system, is experiencing a "sixth mass bleaching" that threatens lasting devastation. NPR, CNN, and The Guardian, with many others, all told essentially the same story.But actual experts on the GBR challenge the narrative.In Quadrant Online marine biologist and reef specialist Leonard Starck writes:Contrary to the incessant bleating of office-based Great Barrier Reef … [Read more...]
Playing Telephone with a Climate Report: Politicians Obscure Science, Media Fall in Line
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just released its latest big report, this one titled Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change (a mere 2,913 pages). Practically nobody will ever read it. (I confess haven't.) Its Technical Summary is just 142 pages. (No, haven't read that yet, either.) Its Summary for Policymakers is a mere 64 pages. (Still nope---though this one I might actually try to read in the next week or so.)Why would I write about a report of … [Read more...]
Does Climate Change Threaten a Surge in Low-Salt Hospitalizations?
Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden, speculate that an increase in global average temperature of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit could cause heat waves that would boost hospitalizations for hyponatremia (insufficient amount of salt in the bloodstream to sustain proper body electrical function) by 6.3%, and warming of 3.6 degrees F would boost hospitalizations by 13.9%."Without adaptive measures, this suggests that over the next decades rising global temperatures alone will increase … [Read more...]
House Members Wrong Not Just on Priorities But also on Facts about Climate Change
When it comes to addressing the crisis of our rapidly warming planet, the February 28th, 2022 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forcefully concluded that time is running out: “Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation,” the world’s scientists wrote, “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” Leading the world in limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius … [Read more...]
Hundred-Year-Old Mistake Comes Back to Bite US
In 1920, to protect American shipping from foreign competition, Congress passed the Merchant Marine Act, also known as the Jones Act. Section 27 requires that ships carrying goods from one US port to another be built and flagged in the US and owned and crewed mostly by Americans.While they can make sense in terms of national defense if they prevent the country from becoming dependent on hostile foreign nations for commodities and manufactured goods critical for national defense, such … [Read more...]
New Cobalt Mine in Idaho Could Start a Trend Good for People and the Planet
Regardless how stringent climate policies are, or how rapidly we move from internal combustion to electric vehicles, increasing battery needs around the world presage a huge increase in demand for cobalt.Right now, as Ronald Stein and Todd Royal demonstrate in their book Clean Energy Exploitations, most of the world’s cobalt comes from mines with very low environmental protection standards and huge human rights problems—child and slave labor in highly toxic settings, sometimes at the point of a … [Read more...]
Do Fossil Fuels Really Account for CO2 Added to the Atmosphere?
Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere has risen from about 280 to about 417 parts per million. Most scientists studying the issue think most of the increase has come from burning fossil fuels. Some people, however, question that.For instance, one person wrote to us:From a basic calculation I have carried out, my estimate is that of the over 200 gigatons[gt]-C CO2 increase of CO2 in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution … [Read more...]
Must Media Exaggerate Scary Weather By Extra Scary Language?
There's a major winter storm brewing for New England and, possibly, the mid-Atlantic states' coastal regions. It could dump two feet of snow on Boston and New York City, similar amounts in surrounding areas, and over three feet in some places. It could also bring Category 1 hurricane-force winds (74--95 mph).Newsmax titled its report "Intense Weekend Storm Could Deliver 'Bomb Cyclone' to Northeast, Mid-Atlantic." The actual text of the report didn't sensationalize as much as the title, but since … [Read more...]
Can’t Refute ’em? Shut ’em Up!
That's the mentality behind a letter calling on public relations and advertising firms to drop clients whose messaging displeases scientists upset that the whole world hasn't yet embraced their views on global warming.The letter, signed by over 450 "scientists who study and communicate the realities of climate change," complains that some fossil fuel firms "seek to obfuscate or downplay our data and the risks posed by the climate crisis.""In fact," the letter continues, "these misinformation … [Read more...]
Did Anything Good Come from Glasgow?
Did anything good come from Glasgow?Well, that depends on how far back you go.Go back 245 years and you get Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. That was most definitely good, the University of Glasgow professor of moral philosophy solidifying the growing case for free-market economies, arguably indispensable to the Industrial Revolution’s lifting more and more of humanity out of extreme poverty.Go back another 8 years and you get Rev. John … [Read more...]
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