Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
by Chris Bing and Joel Schectman in Reuters….The U.S. military launched a clandestine program amid the COVID crisis to discredit China’s Sinovac inoculation – payback for Beijing’s efforts to blame Washington for the pandemic. One target: the Filipino public. Health experts say the gambit was indefensible and put innocent lives at risk.
Canada’s big worry: A US civil war
by Alexander Burns in Politico…Justin Trudeau probably won’t ask Joe Biden if the U.S. is headed for a war between the states. But a report from within his government says it’s time for Canada to get ready.
An object lesson from covid on how to destroy public trust
by Zeynep Tufekci in The New York Times….Big chunks of the history of the Covid pandemic were rewritten over the last month or so in a way that will have terrible consequences for many years to come.
Are we doomed? Here’s how to think about it
by Rivka Galchen in The New Yorker…..Climate change, artificial intelligence, nuclear annihilation, biological warfare—the field of existential risk is a way to reason through the dizzying, terrifying headlines.
Shrink the economy, save the world?
by Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times….Economic growth has been ecologically costly — and so a movement in favor of ‘degrowth’ is growing.
The case for hope
by NICHOLAS KRISTOF in The New York Times…The truth is that if you had to pick a time to be alive in the past few hundred thousand years of human history, it would probably be now.
Indicators of Global Climate Change 2023: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence
by Piers M. Forster, et al. in Earth System Science Data….This paper tracks some key indicators of global warming through time, from 1850 through to the end of 2023. It is designed to give an authoritative estimate of global warming to-date and its causes.
Is AI lying to me? Scientists warn of growing capacity for deception
by Hannah Devlin in The Guardian….Researchers find instances of systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing, pretending to be human and modifying behaviour in tests
3ºC Neighbourhood
by Civic Square in Neighbourhood Public Square…..We can ultimately control how much warming the world experiences, based on our choices as a society, and as a planet. Doom is not inevitable.
A review of ‘navigating the polycrisis’: A map of collapse, utopia, and the many paths in between
by Ben Shread-Hewitt in Resilience.org…The Polycrisis is the breakdown of our future.
Southern Africa drought flags dilemma for loss and damage fund
by Joe Lo in Climate Change News….Scientists blame the current drought on El Niño – which could exclude those affected from receiving aid for climate-change damage
North America’s biggest city is running out of water
by Caroline Houck in Vox…..Mexico City is staring down a water crisis. It won’t be the last city to do so.
Scorching heatwave ravages Southeast Asia’s food supplies, imperiling the poor
from Dimsum Daily-Hong Kong….And in a vicious spiral, the compounding nutritional deprivation and socio-economic dislocation unleashed by heatwave-driven price shocks and crop failures create fertile conditions for civil unrest, political upheavals and even armed conflicts – all of which merely deepen humanitarian emergencies.
Here’s what record-breaking temperatures looked like around the globe
by Sueellen Campbell in Yale Climate Connections…..Climate change is affecting every continent and the oceans.
Critical minerals, food crops at risk of climate disruption by 2050, report shows
by Darren Parker in Mining Weekly…More than 70% of critical minerals needed for the transition to net zero emissions will be at risk from climate disruption by 2050, professional services firm PwC says.
European summers will be hotter than predicted because of cleaner air
by Michael Le Page in the New Scientist…By ignoring declining air pollution, regional climate models have greatly underestimated how hot Europe’s summers and heatwaves will become