A mystery in the Pacific is complicating climate projections

A mystery in the Pacific is complicating climate projections

Yale Climate Connections reports: Nothing has a bigger influence on year-to-year variations in the global climate than the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, commonly called ENSO. And the tropical waters at the heart of ENSO aren’t behaving exactly as climate scientists expected they would in a warming world, with potentially major implications for Atlantic hurricane seasons, droughts in the U.S. Southwest and the Horn of Africa, and other weather phenomena around the world. ENSO is a recurring ocean-and-atmosphere pattern that warms and…

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More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered

More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered

Science reports: The U.S. submarine fleet’s biggest adversary lately hasn’t been Red October. In 2005, the nuclear-powered USS San Francisco collided with an underwater volcano, or seamount, at top speed, killing a crew member and injuring most aboard. It happened again in 2021 when the USS Connecticut struck a seamount in the South China Sea, damaging its sonar array. With only one-quarter of the sea floor mapped with sonar, it is impossible to know how many seamounts exist. But radar…

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The sleeping beauties of biological evolution

The sleeping beauties of biological evolution

Andreas Wagner writes: What are the most successful organisms on the planet? Some people might think of apex predators like lions and great white sharks. For others, insects or bacteria might come to mind. But few would mention a family of plants that we see around us every day: grasses. Grasses meet at least two criteria for spectacular success. The first is abundance. Grasses cover the North American prairies, the African savannahs and the Eurasian steppes, which span 5,000 miles…

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Putin’s war on Ukrainian memory

Putin’s war on Ukrainian memory

Richard Ovenden writes: Librarians and archivists in Ukraine today are fighting to retain control of the country’s institutional repositories of memory. The bodies of knowledge for which they are responsible are under attack from Russian forces. According to the Ukrainian Library Association, three national and state libraries, including the National Scientific Medical Library of Ukraine, as well as some 25 university libraries, have been severely damaged or destroyed. The most shocking statistics relate to public libraries: 47 have been completely…

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China’s ambassador to France says ex-Soviet states lack basis for sovereignty

China’s ambassador to France says ex-Soviet states lack basis for sovereignty

The Wall Street Journal reports: France and countries across Eastern Europe condemned remarks by China’s ambassador in Paris claiming that post-Soviet states lack a firm basis for their sovereignty under international law. Ambassador Lu Shaye made the comments during an interview late Friday on French TV, in which he was asked whether he considered the peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, part of Ukraine under international law. “Even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective…

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As war rages in Sudan, other countries angle for advantage

As war rages in Sudan, other countries angle for advantage

The New York Times reports: As war consumes Sudan, nations from around the world have mobilized swiftly. Egypt scrambled to bring home 27 of its soldiers, who had been seized by one of Sudan’s warring parties. A Libyan warlord offered weapons to his favored side, American officials said. Diplomats from Africa, the Middle East and the West have appealed for a halt to the fighting that has reduced parts of the capital, Khartoum, to a smoking battlefield. Even the leader…

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Forced assimilation of Native American children: ‘Our history has been hidden — the attempted genocide of our people’

Forced assimilation of Native American children: ‘Our history has been hidden — the attempted genocide of our people’

Brandi Morin writes: “The U.S. has some internal searching inside that we have to do as a collective,” says Deborah Parker. The CEO of the Native American Indian Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) — a network of Native academics, researchers, tribal leaders, boarding school survivors and their descendants working to establish a Congressional Truth Commission — Parker, 52, is at the helm of the efforts to expose the damages inflicted by the insidious 150-year program. The purpose of the commission,…

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Gun violence is actually worse in Republican states. It’s not even close

Gun violence is actually worse in Republican states. It’s not even close

Colin Woodard writes: Listen to the southern right talk about violence in America and you’d think New York City was as dangerous as Bakhmut on Ukraine’s eastern front. In October, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis proclaimed crime in New York City was “out of control” and blamed it on George Soros. Another Sunshine State politico, former president Donald Trump, offered his native city up as a Democrat-run dystopia, one of those places “where the middle class used to flock to…

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Losing ballot issues on abortion, GOP now tries to keep them off the ballot

Losing ballot issues on abortion, GOP now tries to keep them off the ballot

The New York Times reports: Voters pushed back decisively after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, approving ballot measures that established or upheld abortion rights in all six states where they appeared. Now, with abortion rights groups pushing for similar citizen-led ballot initiatives in at least six other states, Republican-controlled legislatures and anti-abortion groups are trying to stay one step ahead by making it harder to pass the measures — or to get them on the ballot…

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Imagination makes us human – this unique ability to envision what doesn’t exist has a long evolutionary history

Imagination makes us human – this unique ability to envision what doesn’t exist has a long evolutionary history

Your brain can imagine things that haven’t happened or that don’t even exist. agsandrew/iStock via Getty Images Plus By Andrey Vyshedskiy, Boston University You can easily picture yourself riding a bicycle across the sky even though that’s not something that can actually happen. You can envision yourself doing something you’ve never done before – like water skiing – and maybe even imagine a better way to do it than anyone else. Imagination involves creating a mental image of something that…

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EPA to propose first controls on greenhouse gases from power plants

EPA to propose first controls on greenhouse gases from power plants

The New York Times reports: President Biden’s administration is poised to announce limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that could compel them to capture the pollution from their smokestacks, technology now used by fewer than 20 of the nation’s 3,400 coal and gas-fired plants, according to three people who were briefed on the rule. If implemented, the proposed regulation would be the first time the federal government has restricted carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, which generate…

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Photos: Glimpses of a changing Earth, as seen from above

Photos: Glimpses of a changing Earth, as seen from above

The Associated Press reports: Charred, drained or swamped, built up, dug out or taken apart, blue or green or turned to dust: this is the Earth as seen from above. As the world commemorates Earth Day on Saturday, the footprints of human activity are visible across the planet’s surface. The relationship between people and the natural world will have consequences for years to come. In Iraq, lakes shrivel and dry up as rain fails to fall, weather patterns altered by…

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A California journalist documents the far-right takeover of her town: ‘We’re a test case’

A California journalist documents the far-right takeover of her town: ‘We’re a test case’

The Guardian reports: In a seemingly long gone era – before the Trump presidency, and Covid, and the 2020 election – Doni Chamberlain would get the occasional call from a displeased reader who had taken issue with one of her columns. They would sometimes call her stupid and use profanities. Today, when people don’t like her pieces, Chamberlain said, they tell her she’s a communist who doesn’t deserve to live. One local conservative radio host said she should be hanged….

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Chris Christie doesn’t want to hear the name Trump

Chris Christie doesn’t want to hear the name Trump

Mark Leibovich writes: “How many different ways are you gonna ask the same fucking question, Mark?” Chris Christie asked me. We were seated in the dining room of the Hay-Adams hotel. It’s a nice hotel, five stars. Genteel. Christie’s sudden ire was a bit jolting, as I had asked him only a few fairly innocuous questions so far, most of them relating to Donald Trump, the man he might run against in the presidential race. Christie, the former governor of…

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