Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

‘What we now know … they lied’: How big oil companies betrayed us all

‘What we now know … they lied’: How big oil companies betrayed us all

The Guardian reports: There is a moment in the revelatory PBS Frontline docuseries The Power of Big Oil, about the industry’s long campaign to stall action on the climate crisis, in which the former Republican senator Chuck Hagel reflects on his part in killing US ratification of the Kyoto climate treaty. In 1997, Hagel joined with the Democratic senator Robert Byrd to promote a resolution opposing the international agreement to limit greenhouse gases, on the grounds that it was unfair…

Read More Read More

Fewer Americans see climate change as a priority than they did a year ago, CBS News poll

Fewer Americans see climate change as a priority than they did a year ago, CBS News poll

CBS News reports: With issues like the economy and inflation, crime, and the war in Ukraine weighing most on Americans’ minds, the percentage who think climate change needs to be addressed right now has dipped some since one year ago. This dip in urgency, while not steep, is widespread. Fewer people across age, race, and education groups, as well as partisan stripes, think climate change needs to be addressed right away than thought so a year ago. Still, most Americans…

Read More Read More

Obama warns social media disinformation is hurting democracy

Obama warns social media disinformation is hurting democracy

HuffPost reports: Former President Barack Obama said Thursday that disinformation on social media is hurting democracy, and that social media companies should be subject to regulation. “One of the biggest reasons for democracy’s weakening is the profound change that’s taken place in how we communicate and consume information,” Obama said in a speech at Stanford University. Obama noted that most people rely on search tools and social media as main sources for news and information, but warned a constant feed…

Read More Read More

‘We Build the Wall’ leaders who worked with Bannon plead guilty to fraud

‘We Build the Wall’ leaders who worked with Bannon plead guilty to fraud

NBC News reports: “We Build the Wall” campaign crowd-funders Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato pleaded guilty Thursday for their roles in pocketing donations solicited to help build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Kolfage, 39, and Badolato, 57, each pleaded guilty in federal court in New York City to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Kolfage, a triple-amputee Air Force veteran, also pleaded guilty to tax…

Read More Read More

Moral equivalence and Ukraine

Moral equivalence and Ukraine

Gabriel Schoenfeld writes: The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a criminal act: waging aggressive war, the supreme crime for which the Nazis were punished at Nuremberg. And Russian forces have also engaged in other crimes of war: the unremitting shelling and bombing of civilian targets like the martyr city of Mariupol, widespread rape, and the torture and murder of civilians, as seen in Bucha and other Kyiv suburbs as revelations come before the world. With every passing day, Ukrainian suffering…

Read More Read More

Some Kremlin insiders alarmed over growing toll of Putin’s war in Ukraine

Some Kremlin insiders alarmed over growing toll of Putin’s war in Ukraine

Bloomberg reports: Almost eight weeks after Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine, with military losses mounting and Russia facing unprecedented international isolation, a small but growing number of senior Kremlin insiders are quietly questioning his decision to go to war. The ranks of the critics at the pinnacle of power remain limited, spread across high-level posts in government and state-run business. They believe the invasion was a catastrophic mistake that will set the country back for years, according to ten…

Read More Read More

The renewable energy revolution will need renewable storage

The renewable energy revolution will need renewable storage

Matthew Hutson writes: The German word Dunkelflaute means “dark doldrums.” It chills the hearts of renewable-energy engineers, who use it to refer to the lulls when solar panels and wind turbines are thwarted by clouds, night, or still air. On a bright, cloudless day, a solar farm can generate prodigious amounts of electricity; when it’s gusty, wind turbines whoosh neighborhoods to life. But at night solar cells do little, and in calm air turbines sit useless. These renewable energy sources…

Read More Read More

Seed banks — the last line of defense against a global food crisis

Seed banks — the last line of defense against a global food crisis

The Guardian reports: As the risks from the climate crisis and global conflict increase, seed banks are increasingly considered a priceless resource that could one day prevent a worldwide food crisis. Two in five of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction, and though researchers estimate there are at least 200,000 edible plant species on our planet, we depend on just three – maize, rice and wheat– for more than half of humanity’s caloric intake. There are roughly…

Read More Read More

Energy requirements of a good life are surprisingly low

Energy requirements of a good life are surprisingly low

Anthropocene magazine reports: The average global energy consumption—79 gigajoules per person per year—is sufficient to power a healthy, comfortable life for everyone on the planet, according to a new study. The analysis is part of a growing body of research aimed at figuring out how to achieve climate goals while also providing modern energy resources to those who lack it. The findings suggest that this balance might be easier than expected to strike: the world doesn’t need a massive expansion…

Read More Read More

Trump’s most loyal lawmakers are actually losing money

Trump’s most loyal lawmakers are actually losing money

The Daily Beast reports: Last year, it was a fundraising feast for the MAGA Goon Squad. But in 2022, without the donor stimulus of an attempted insurrection, things are going in the wrong direction. The first three months of the year took more than $275,000 combined out of the pockets of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL)—the foursome of America First, Donald Trump-loving, exhibitionist election objectors. All told, it was their…

Read More Read More

Jupiter’s moon Europa may have water where life could exist, scientists suggest

Jupiter’s moon Europa may have water where life could exist, scientists suggest

The Guardian reports: Subterranean pools of salty water may be commonplace on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, according to researchers who believe the sites could be promising spots to search for signs of life beyond Earth. Evidence for the shallow pools, not far beneath the frozen surface of the Jovian moon, emerged when scientists noticed that giant parallel ridges stretching for hundreds of miles on Europa were strikingly similar to surface features discovered on the Greenland ice sheet. If the extensive ice…

Read More Read More

Bleak assessments of the Russian economy clash with Putin’s rosy claims

Bleak assessments of the Russian economy clash with Putin’s rosy claims

The New York Times reports: Russia’s central bank chief warned on Monday that the consequences of Western sanctions were only beginning to be felt, and Moscow’s mayor said that 200,000 jobs were at risk in the Russian capital alone, stark acknowledgments that undermined President Vladimir V. Putin’s contention that sanctions had failed to destabilize the Russian economy. The bleak assessments from two senior officials align with the forecast of many experts that Russia faces a steep economic downturn as its…

Read More Read More

The U.S. can prosecute Russian leaders for war crimes

The U.S. can prosecute Russian leaders for war crimes

Tom Nachbar writes: Since April 4, when President Biden accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being a war criminal, many commentators have focused on how Russian leaders might be subject to international war crimes trials. But there is another option that should be on the table: a U.S. prosecution. It is a remarkable thing for the president of the United States to personally accuse a foreign leader of being a war criminal. Such an allegation should not be made unless…

Read More Read More

Rep. Jamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’

Rep. Jamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’

The Guardian reports: When it comes to fighting for democracy and climate change – two of Jamie Raskin’s top priorities – the whole thing feels a bit like a game of chicken and egg to the Democratic congressman. On the one hand there is the planet, heating up quickly past the limit that is safe and necessary for human survival, while Congress stalls on a $555bn climate package. On the other, a pernicious movement, spurred by Donald Trump and other…

Read More Read More