We scientists must rise up to prevent the climate crisis. Words aren’t enough

We scientists must rise up to prevent the climate crisis. Words aren’t enough

Charlie Gardner and Claire Wordley write: As scientists, we tend to operate under an unspoken assumption – that our job is to provide the world with factual information, and if we do so our leaders will use it to make wise decisions. But what if that assumption is wrong? For decades, conservation scientists like us have been telling the world that species and ecosystems are disappearing, and that their loss will have devastating impacts on humanity. Meanwhile, climate scientists have…

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Dorian one of strongest, longest-lasting Atlantic hurricanes on record

Dorian one of strongest, longest-lasting Atlantic hurricanes on record

InsideClimate News reports: Hurricane Dorian spun away from North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Friday as one of the longest-lasting named storms and the most powerful on record to hit the Bahamas, and it wasn’t finished yet—a hurricane warning had been posted for Nova Scotia, Canada. Compared to the path of devastation Dorian left across the northern Bahamas, the U.S. coast had largely been spared. Dorian had struck the northern Bahamas‘ Great Abaco and Grand Bahama islands as one of the…

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The companies practicing ‘secret sustainability’

The companies practicing ‘secret sustainability’

The Observer reports: There’s a factory in Asia that uses only a single litre of water to make a pair of jeans. That’s 346 litres less than Levi-Strauss estimated it took to make a pair of its jeans in 2015. Wouldn’t you love to buy your jeans from this amazingly innovative factory? Me too, but I don’t even know what it’s called. The manufacturer in question does not want to tell anyone about its groundbreaking water-conserving techniques – not even…

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The moral rot of the MIT Media Lab

The moral rot of the MIT Media Lab

Justin Peters writes: Founded in 1985, the Media Lab cultivated an image as a haven for misfit geniuses, for academics who, as the Lab’s most recent director put it, “don’t fit in any existing discipline either because they are between—or simply beyond—disciplines.”. These thinkers were the latest inheritors of MIT’s famed “hacker ethic”: iconoclastic engineers who used applied science to try and make the world a better place. Yet the money came from modern-day robber barons, whose main interest in…

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NOAA administrators place fealty to Trump above national interest

NOAA administrators place fealty to Trump above national interest

On Friday, an official at NOAA who thus far remains anonymous, released the following statement: From Wednesday, August 28, through Monday, September 2, the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama. This is clearly demonstrated in Hurricane Advisories #15 through #41, which can be viewed at the following link. The Birmingham National Weather Service’s Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms…

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Textbook corruption: The merging of Trump’s official duties and his commercial interests

Textbook corruption: The merging of Trump’s official duties and his commercial interests

The New York Times reports: At a table in the lobby bar of the Trump International Hotel this week, the final details of a black-tie, 40th anniversary gala for the Concerned Women for America were being worked out by the conservative group’s staff. There was the contract with the president’s hotel to be reviewed. And there was also unfinished business with the White House — logistical issues posed by two guests from the administration, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary…

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Is the Pentagon helping Trump’s Turnberry resort stay afloat?

Is the Pentagon helping Trump’s Turnberry resort stay afloat?

Politico reports: In early Spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies. What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland. Since April, the House Oversight Committee has been investigating why the crew on the C-17 military transport plane made the unusual stay — both en route to the Middle East and on the…

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How an MIT research center concealed its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

How an MIT research center concealed its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

Ronan Farrow reports: The M.I.T. Media Lab, which has been embroiled in a scandal over accepting donations from the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, had a deeper fund-raising relationship with Epstein than it has previously acknowledged, and it attempted to conceal the extent of its contacts with him. Dozens of pages of e-mails and other documents obtained by The New Yorker reveal that, although Epstein was listed as “disqualified” in M.I.T.’s official donor database, the Media Lab continued…

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How the right has tried to rebrand anti-Semitism

How the right has tried to rebrand anti-Semitism

Mairav Zonszein writes: On August 20, after President Donald Trump told a reporter that any American Jew who casts a “vote for a Democrat… shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” outraged reactions flooded social media, attributing to his statement the anti-Semitic trope of “dual loyalty.” This is the idea, rampant in so much nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought, that Jews cannot be trusted because their allegiances are inherently divided between their Jewish and their national identities. Captain…

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Boris Johnson’s government falling apart: Minister resigns from cabinet and surrenders Conservative whip

Boris Johnson’s government falling apart: Minister resigns from cabinet and surrenders Conservative whip

The Guardian reports: Amber Rudd has resigned from the cabinet and surrendered the Conservative whip in protest at Boris Johnson’s handling of Brexit. The Hastings and Rye MP said she was relinquishing the Tory whip after the prime minister sacked 21 rebels this week. The secretary of state for work and pensions posted on Twitter: “I have resigned from cabinet and surrendered the Conservative whip. I cannot stand by as good, loyal, moderate Conservatives are expelled. “I have spoken to…

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DNA indicates how ancient migrations shaped South Asian languages and farming

DNA indicates how ancient migrations shaped South Asian languages and farming

Science News reports: A new DNA study of unprecedented size has unveiled ancient human movements that shaped the genetic makeup of present-day South Asians in complex ways. Those long-ago treks across vast grasslands and through mountain valleys may even have determined the types of languages still spoken in a region that includes what’s now India and Pakistan. The investigation addresses two controversial issues. First, who brought farming to South Asia? Genetic comparisons indicate that farming was either invented locally by…

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The West has lost confidence in its values. Syria is paying the price

The West has lost confidence in its values. Syria is paying the price

Anne Applebaum writes: The crisis of Western values has many aspects, many faces. There is a decline in faith in liberal democracy, a loss of confidence in universal human rights, a collapse in support for all kinds of transnational projects. There is a constitutional crisis brewing in London. There is a president who defies democratic norms in Washington. There are challenges to the free press and independent judges in democracies everywhere, from Budapest to Manila. But this same crisis —…

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Trump administration considering drastic cut in refugees allowed to enter U.S.

Trump administration considering drastic cut in refugees allowed to enter U.S.

The New York Times reports: The White House is considering a plan that would effectively bar refugees from most parts of the world from resettling in the United States by cutting back the decades-old program that admits tens of thousands of people each year who are fleeing war, persecution and famine, according to current and former administration officials. In meetings over the past several weeks, one top administration official has proposed zeroing out the program altogether, while leaving the president…

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How climate change is driving emigration from Central America

How climate change is driving emigration from Central America

A farmer carries firewood during the dry season in Nicaragua, one of the Central American countries affected by a recent drought. Neil Palmer for CIAT/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND By Miranda Cady Hallett, University of Dayton Clouds of dust rose behind the wheels of the pickup truck as we hurtled over the back road in Palo Verde, El Salvador. When we got to the stone-paved part of the road, the driver slowed as the truck heaved up and down with the uneven…

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