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Category: Humanity

Yuval Noah Harari sees a big-data threat to humanity

Yuval Noah Harari sees a big-data threat to humanity

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Steve Paulson interviews historian Yuval Noah Harari: What’s different about this moment in history? What’s different is the pace of technological change, especially the twin revolutions of artificial intelligence and bioengineering. They make it possible to hack human beings and other organisms, and then re-engineer them and create new life forms. How far can this technology go in changing who we are? Very far. Beyond our imagination. It can change our imagination, too. If your imagination is too limited to…

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Portrait of the Earth at the threshold of climate catastrophe

Portrait of the Earth at the threshold of climate catastrophe

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The Guardian reports: On Sunday morning hundreds of politicians, government officials and scientists will gather in the grandeur of the International Congress Centre in Katowice, Poland. It will be a familiar experience for many. For 24 years the annual UN climate conference has served up a reliable diet of rhetoric, backroom talks and dramatic last-minute deals aimed at halting global warming. But this year’s will be a grimmer affair – by far. As recent reports have made clear, the world…

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The insect apocalypse is here. What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?

The insect apocalypse is here. What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?

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Brooke Jarvis reports: Sune Boye Riis was on a bike ride with his youngest son, enjoying the sun slanting over the fields and woodlands near their home north of Copenhagen, when it suddenly occurred to him that something about the experience was amiss. Specifically, something was missing. It was summer. He was out in the country, moving fast. But strangely, he wasn’t eating any bugs. For a moment, Riis was transported to his childhood on the Danish island of Lolland,…

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You can’t characterize human nature if studies overlook 85 percent of people on Earth

You can’t characterize human nature if studies overlook 85 percent of people on Earth

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By only working in their own backyards, what do psychology researchers miss about human behavior? Arthimedes/Shutterstock.com By Daniel Hruschka, Arizona State University Over the last century, behavioral researchers have revealed the biases and prejudices that shape how people see the world and the carrots and sticks that influence our daily actions. Their discoveries have filled psychology textbooks and inspired generations of students. They’ve also informed how businesses manage their employees, how educators develop new curricula and how political campaigns persuade…

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Air pollution is shaving years from people’s lives

Air pollution is shaving years from people’s lives

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McClatchy reports: People could add years to their lives in California and other smog-plagued parts of the world if authorities could reduce particulate pollution — soot from cars and industry — to levels recommended by the World Health Organization, a new study reported Monday. No other large U.S. city would benefit more than Fresno, which has soot concentrations at roughly twice the WHO guidelines. Fresno residents would live a year longer if the region could meet the health organization’s recommended…

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Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

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The Guardian reports: The world must thrash out a new deal for nature in the next two years or humanity could be the first species to document our own extinction, warns the United Nation’s biodiversity chief. Ahead of a key international conference to discuss the collapse of ecosystems, Cristiana Pașca Palmer said people in all countries need to put pressure on their governments to draw up ambitious global targets by 2020 to protect the insects, birds, plants and mammals that…

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Humanity’s preoccupation with short-term gains threatens the future of life on Earth

Humanity’s preoccupation with short-term gains threatens the future of life on Earth

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Jane Goodall writes: We are experiencing the sixth great extinction. The most recent report from WWF describes the situation as critical – in the last 40 years, we have lost some 60% of all animal and plant species on Earth. We are poisoning the soil through large-scale industrial agriculture. Invasive species are choking out native animal and plant life in many places. Carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere by our reliance on fossil fuels, destruction of the rain forests…

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Call to protect dwindling wilderness ‘before it disappears forever’

Call to protect dwindling wilderness ‘before it disappears forever’

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Mongabay reports: New, highly detailed maps now reveal the state of the world’s wilderness, both on land and at sea, and the picture looks bleak. In a series of recent studies, a group of researchers led by ecologist James Watson of the Wildlife Conservation Society and Australia’s University of Queensland analyzed the surface of Earth for significant human activity, such as roads and railways, pastures and farmland, and population centers, at a resolution of 1 square kilometer (0.4 square miles)….

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Humanity is destroying life on Earth

Humanity is destroying life on Earth

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  The Guardian reports: Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation. The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the…

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As rich nations close the door on refugees, Uganda welcomes them

As rich nations close the door on refugees, Uganda welcomes them

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The New York Times reports: President Trump is vowing to send the military to stop migrants trudging from Central America. Europe’s leaders are paying African nations to block migrants from crossing the Mediterranean — and detaining the ones who make it in filthy, overcrowded camps. But Solomon Osakan has a very different approach in this era of rising xenophobia. From his uncluttered desk in northwest Uganda, he manages one of the largest concentrations of refugees anywhere in the world: more…

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Humanity is ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists

Humanity is ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists

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The Guardian reports: Humanity’s ongoing annihilation of wildlife is cutting down the tree of life, including the branch we are sitting on, according to a stark new analysis. More than 300 different mammal species have been eradicated by human activities. The new research calculates the total unique evolutionary history that has been lost as a result at a startling 2.5bn years. Furthermore, even if the destruction of wild areas, poaching and pollution were ended within 50 years and extinction rates…

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Limiting global warming to 1.5°C will require deep emissions cuts

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C will require deep emissions cuts

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Climate Central reports: The Paris Climate Change Agreement set a goal of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C (2.7°F).” In that agreement, world leaders asked the IPCC, the preeminent climate science body, “to provide a Special Report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways.” After being formally…

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A growing wave of extinctions is sweeping across the continents

A growing wave of extinctions is sweeping across the continents

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The Guardian reports: Spix’s macaw, a brilliant blue species of Brazilian parrot that starred in the children’s animation Rio, has become extinct this century, according to a new assessment of endangered birds. The macaw is one of eight species, including the poo-uli, the Pernambuco pygmy-owl and the cryptic treehunter, that can be added to the growing list of confirmed or highly likely extinctions, according to a new statistical analysis by BirdLife International. Historically, most bird extinctions have been small-island species…

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Wildlife preservation depends on saving animals, their habitats, and their cultures

Wildlife preservation depends on saving animals, their habitats, and their cultures

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Ed Yong writes: In the 1800s, there were so many bighorn sheep in Wyoming that when one trapper passed through Jackson Hole, he described “over a thousand sheep in the cliffs above our campsite.” No such sights exist today. The bighorns slowly fell to hunters’ rifles, and to diseases spread from domestic sheep. Most herds were wiped out, and by 1900, a species that once numbered in the millions stood instead in the low thousands. In the 1940s, the Wyoming…

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Mollie Tibbetts’ father: Don’t distort her death to advance the racism she opposed

Mollie Tibbetts’ father: Don’t distort her death to advance the racism she opposed

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Rob Tibbetts writes: As I write this, I am watching Sen. John McCain lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda and know that evil will succeed only if good people do nothing. Both Mollie and Senator McCain were good people. I know that both would stand up now and do something. The person who is accused of taking Mollie’s life is no more a reflection of the Hispanic community as white supremacists are of all white people. To suggest otherwise…

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