Emboldened by deregulation, fossil fuel companies take aim at biodiverse reef As scientists, explorers, and conservationists scramble to get environmental protection for a large coral reef recently discovered near the Brazilian mouth of the Amazon River, oil conglomerates BP and Total have already begun drilling in the area. One of the researchers who discovered the […]
The man who coined the term tacitly disinvites the clamoring ignoramuses There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “My ignorance […]
“Miles of ice collapsing” as disintegration fears mount In the first of three recent dispatches from Antarctica, The New York Times led with this: “The acceleration is making some scientists fear that Antarctica’s ice sheet may have entered the early stages of an unstoppable disintegration.” “Unstoppable disintegration.” Of a continent. Will the climate change deniers […]
We hear a lot from moneyed interests and government, but what about regular citizens? Like it or not, we in the U.S. tend to think of governance in “top-down” terms. We forget that our nation was founded with “We the People” governing from the “bottom” up. All three branches of government are meant to act […]
“This was absolutely a wakeup call,” says Kelly Brunt, talking about the 2002 disintegration of a Rhode-Island-sized section of the Larsen Sea Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Why should we care about the opinion of this woman speaking to the PBS Newshour? Well, for starters, she’s a glaciologist for the Goddard Spaceflight Center at NASA and […]
Celebrations regarding the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision not to issue a permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) had hardly waned when another North Dakota pipe segment burst, spilling over four thousand barrels (1,764 gallons) of crude. More than three-fourths of the oil entered a creek that feeds a tributary of the Missouri River, […]
A bionuclear physicist explores our “yuge,” “big-league” culture Nobody ever said that human beings would somehow be capable of incorporating all the latest technologies without losing anything. Every day, in fact, it seems we lose more. Sadly, this phenomenon appears to be of low priority, except among the few social psychologists who study it. More […]
What self-respecting nation will honor climate accord, if #1 polluter (U.S.) pulls out? The president-elect of the United States continues to threaten that he’ll withdraw the world’s top per-capita carbon-polluter nation from the historic Paris Agreement on climate change. The unconscionable act would be devastating to prospects for abating global warming, not only because of […]
Agreement became international law only four days before new president elected The effective date of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change—November 4, 2016—just a few days before the major election in the United States, made sense to the parties involved and was not coincidental, it turns out. The 100 nations that have ratified the pact […]
The Great Barrier Reef in Australia, a massive coral ecosystem, needs life support Well, the good news is that the 1,400 mile reef off the Australian coast is not dead. A travel writer authored a sarcastic “obituary” of the Great Barrier Reef last week, and it went viral. Many readers didn’t catch the humor, and […]