The US gov is investing $3.5bn in Direct Air Capture machines to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere & try to keep warming to 1.5C. But the top recipient is using DAC to peddle "net zero oil." Is DAC saving the climate, or saving fossil fuels? - for SciAm www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-...

Can Thousands of Huge Carbon Capture Machines Save the Warming World?

Tech firms, oil companies and the U.S. government are investing billions of dollars in carbon capture technology to suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Can it save the warming world?

Cornell invites Ann Coulter to give a talk called "Immigration: The Conspiracy To End America," but suspends a British student for speaking out against Gaza, so he can be deported www.thenation.com/article/soci...

A Cornell Graduate Student Faces Deportation After a Pro-Palestine Action

Momodou Taal, who is attending the university with a F-1 visa, was suspended after a September 18 protest under a new policy seeking to quash Gaza solidarity actions.

Current status: Gobsmacking, but not quite as bananas as September 2023.

"The Doomsday Clock reveals how close we are to total annihilation" by Kristen Rogers, Megan Marples, and Rachel Ramirez for CNN www.cnn.com/2024/01/23/w...

Doomsday Clock 2024: When will the world end and how long do we have on Earth? | CNN

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its Doomsday Clock at a new time that indicates how close we are to making Earth uninhabitable for humanity.

“The sun gave forth its light without brightness … Men were free neither from war nor pestilence,” a scholar wrote before the Plague of Justinian. A sediment core shows Italy grew drier & colder then, so climate change may have contributed to Rome’s decline. www.newscientist.com/article/2414...

Plagues that shook the Roman Empire linked to cold, dry periods

A study reconstructing the climate of Italy during the Roman Empire based on marine sediments shows that three pandemics coincided with cooler, drier conditions

I'm sorry it's deeply fucked that we're still living through a pandemic that has killed millions and keeps killing millions and we as a human society are like do you know what we should do? Wars.

The Doomsday Clock was set at just 90 seconds to midnight again today. Luckily scientists have found a food source that could save the world in case of nuclear winter: seaweed. www.newscientist.com/article/2413...

Seaweed could save a billion people from famine after a nuclear war

A nuclear war could lead to food shortages due to soot blocking out the sun, but a model suggests seaweed farming could expand to meet up to 15 per cent of the food eaten by humans

Is Nikki Haley a moderate or a conservative? Yes.

Is Nikki Haley a moderate or a conservative? Yes.

She’s a down-the-line conservative on almost every issue — except for one really important one.

“If you look at the history of epidemic outbreaks, one of the key drivers has been change in land use … that is what we are about to witness in the Arctic: a complete change in land use, and that could be dangerous” www.theguardian.com/society/2024...

Arctic zombie viruses in Siberia could spark terrifying new pandemic, scientists warn

Threat of outbreak from microbes trapped in permafrost for millennia raised by increased Siberian shipping activity

Hydropower generation could fall 20% by 2050 as the western US dries up. Meanwhile electricity demand will skyrocket (AC, irrigation, etc.) This is going to make decarbonizing the grid even harder. www.newscientist.com/article/2412...

Hydropower generation in western US set to fall as climate gets drier

A model of US water systems foresees a big drop in hydropower generation by 2050 as the climate gets drier and river flow decreases, while electricity demand is set to increase