Geology's Timekeepers Are Feuding - The Atlantic - 0 views
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, in 2000, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen won permanent fame for stratigraphy. He proposed that humans had so throughly altered the fundamental processes of the planet—through agriculture, climate change, and nuclear testing, and other phenomena—that a new geological epoch had commenced: the Anthropocene, the age of humans.
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Zalasiewicz should know. He is the chair of the Anthropocene working group, which the ICS established in 2009 to investigate whether the new epoch deserved a place in stratigraphic time.
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In 2015, the group announced that the Anthropocene was a plausible new layer and that it should likely follow the Holocene. But the team has yet to propose a “golden spike” for the epoch: a boundary in the sedimentary rock record where the Anthropocene clearly begins.
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New Guidelines Call for Changes in Science Education - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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Educators unveiled new guidelines on Tuesday that call for sweeping changes in the way science is taught in the United States
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The guidelines, known as the Next Generation Science Standards, are the first broad national recommendations for science instruction since 1996. They were developed by a consortium of 26 state governments and several groups representing scientists and teachers.
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The focus would be helping students become more intelligent science consumers by learning how scientific work is done: how ideas are developed and tested, what counts as strong or weak evidence, and how insights from many disciplines fit together into a coherent picture of the world.
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Opinion | Scott Pruitt's Attack on Science Would Paralyze the E.P.A. - The New York Times - 0 views
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It is his latest effort to cripple the agency. Mr. Pruitt, who as Oklahoma’s attorney general described himself as “a leading advocate against the E.P.A.’s activist agenda,” said in an interview published in The Daily Caller last week that he would no longer allow the agency to use studies that include nonpublic scientific data to develop rules to safeguard public health and prevent pollution.
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Opponents of the agency and of mainstream climate science call these studies “secret science.” But that’s simply not true. Peer review ensures that the analytic methodologies underlying studies funded by the agency are sound.
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Some of those studies, particularly those that determine the effects of exposure to chemicals and pollution on health, rely on medical records that by law are confidential because of patient privacy policies. These studies summarize the analysis of raw data and draw conclusions based on that analysis. Other government agencies also use studies like these to develop policy and regulations, and to buttress and defend rules against legal challenges. They are, in fact, essential to making sound public policy.
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Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Stree... - 1 views
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Instead of self-confident and self-centered answers, the author humbly asks fundamental questions: What is economics? What is its meaning? Where does this new religion, as it is sometimes called, come from? What are its possibilities and its limitations and borders, if there are any? Why are we so dependent on permanent growing of growth and growth of growing of growth? Where did the idea of progress come from, and where is it leading us? Why are so many economic debates accompanied by obsession and fanaticism?
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The majority of our political parties act with a narrow materialistic focus when, in their programs, they present the economy and finance first; only then, somewhere at the end, do we find culture as something pasted on or as a libation for a couple of madmen.
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most of them—consciously or unconsciously—accept and spread the Marxist thesis of the economic base and the spiritual superstructure.
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Right and Left React to the Paris Climate Agreement News - The New York Times - 0 views
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The political news cycle is fast, and keeping up can be overwhelming. Trying to find differing perspectives worth your time is even harder. That’s why we have scoured the internet for political writing from the right and left that you might not have seen.
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“Its breakthrough was not in lifting nations up to higher levels of ambition, but rather in dropping expectations to the lowest common denominator.”
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He argues that the treaty did little to reduce emissions because of one central flaw in the agreement’s logic: the “pledge and review” process that governed international talks. “That logic relied on a misunderstanding of what motivates developing nations,” he writes.
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the right and the left are presented to be in heavy disagreement from the quotes in these articles. understanding climate change is a thing that needs to be stopped will not get through some minds and it is very frustrating. this article also has a brief excerpt on quickly choosing a favored candidate based on limited information, similar to an interview!
How G.O.P. Leaders Came to View Climate Change as Fake Science - The New York Times - 0 views
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President Trump, has called global warming a hoax, reversed environmental policies that Mr. McCain advocated on his run for the White House, and this past week announced that he would take the nation out of the Paris climate accord, which was to bind the globe in an effort to halt the planet’s warming.
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The Republican Party’s fast journey from debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist is a story of big political money, Democratic hubris in the Obama years and a partisan chasm that grew over nine years like a crack in the Antarctic shelf, favoring extreme positions and uncompromising rhetoric over cooperation and conciliation.
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entire climate change debate has now been caught up in the broader polarization of American politics.
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Climate Science Meets a Stubborn Obstacle: Students - The New York Times - 0 views
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WELLSTON, Ohio — To Gwen Beatty, a junior at the high school in this proud, struggling, Trump-supporting town, the new science teacher’s lessons on climate change seemed explicitly designed to provoke her.So she provoked him back.When the teacher, James Sutter, ascribed the recent warming of the Earth to heat-trapping gases released by burning fossil fuels like the coal her father had once mined, she asserted that it could be a result of other, natural causes.When he described the flooding, droughts and fierce storms that scientists predict within the century if such carbon emissions are not sharply reduced, she challenged him to prove it. “Scientists are wrong all the time,” she said with a shrug, echoing those celebrating President Trump’s announcement last week that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
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She was, he knew, a straight-A student. She would have had no trouble comprehending the evidence, embedded in ancient tree rings, ice, leaves and shells, as well as sophisticated computer models, that atmospheric carbon dioxide is the chief culprit when it comes to warming the world.
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When she insisted that teachers “are supposed to be open to opinions,” however, Mr. Sutter held his ground.“It’s not about opinions,” he told her. “It’s about the evidence.”
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I thought this article was very interesting as it showed students' increasing suspicion of climate change. Something I found remarkable is that one student said that teachers should be open to opinions, but the environmental teacher said, 'It's not about opinions, it's about the evidence." The article also touched on the way economic self-interest led to a town's climate skepticism.
Just 2.5% of Pandemic Response Spending So Far is Green | Time - 0 views
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“build back better,” promising to use economic recovery funds to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and create societies that are more resilient to extreme weather and other climate-related shocks.
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“Governments in many cases are just trying to return to the old normal,” he told a launch event for the report. “It seems like the world is trying to put out a house fire with a garden hose when a perfectly good fire hydrant is available just next door.”
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Still, the report “clearly shows that we are not yet building back better when it comes to recovery spending,”
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How a Global Ecocide Law Could Hold Polluters to Account | Time - 0 views
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When a Nigerian judge ruled in 2005 that Shell’s practice of gas flaring in the Niger Delta was a violation of citizens’ constitutional rights to life and dignity, Nnimmo Bassey, a local environmental activist, was thrilled.
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“For the first time, a court of competence has boldly declared that Shell, Chevron and the other oil corporations have been engaged in illegal activities here for decades,” Bassey said on Nov. 14, 2005, the day the Federal High Court of Nigeria announced the ruling. “We expect this judgement to be respected and that for once the oil corporations will accept the truth and bring their sinful flaring activities to a halt.”
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“Shell could ignore [the case] because it wasn’t in the international media but if it had gone to the ICC, it would have gotten global attention and shareholders would have known what the company was doing,” he says. “If we had had an ecocide law, things would have turned out differently.”
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Elon Musk is trying to win China back - CNN - 0 views
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Elon Musk is trying to win China back
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Elon Musk's Tesla has endured a rough couple of months in China. Now he's working overtime to win Beijing back
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The Tesla CEO lavished praise on China during an interview with state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), where he pledged that the country would become his electric carmaker's "biggest market" in the long run
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Amazon Walks a Political Tightrope in Its Union Fight - The New York Times - 0 views
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It backs a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. It has pledged to meet all the goals of the Paris climate agreement on reducing emissions. It has met with the administration to discuss how to help with the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines.
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staying on the good side of Washington’s Democratic leaders while squashing an organizing effort that President Biden has signaled his support for.
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Approval would be a first for Amazon workers in the United States and could energize the labor movement across the country.
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Big Banks Are 'Fueling Climate Chaos' By Pouring Trillions Into Oil, Gas And Coal | Huf... - 0 views
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The world’s largest banks have funneled $3.8 trillion into the fossil fuel industry over the last five years, according to new figures published Wednesday.
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“Major banks around the world, led by U.S. banks in particular, are fueling climate chaos by dumping trillions of dollars into the fossil fuels that are causing the crisis
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Though U.S. banks dominate fossil fuel financing, European banks are also big. French bank BNP Paribas, which has pledged to be a leader in climate strategy, provided $40.8 billion in fossil fuel financing in 2020, an increase of 41% from the previous year. Since 2016, the bank’s fossil fuel financing has risen 142%, according to the report.
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Geoengineering The Climate Just Became More Of A Real Possibility In The U.S. | HuffPost - 1 views
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devising a plan to artificially cool the planet if humans fail to cut climate-changing emissions quickly enough.
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a handful of techniques to reflect sunlight back into space or manipulate cloud coverage to temporarily alleviate the effects of pollution-fueled heating.
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Providing governments with a global thermostat risks disincentivizing the hard work of phasing out fossil fuels and industrial meat farming. There’s conflicting research on whether the most common proposal to geoengineer the planet ― spraying reflective sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere ― might inflict worse droughts and storms in different hemispheres, potentially exacerbating inequities between rich northern countries and poorer nations south of the equator.
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Democrats Move To Scrap Trump-Era Rollback Of Methane Rules | HuffPost - 1 views
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Democrats have turned to an obscure procedural tool in an attempt to undo the Trump administration’s rollback of an Obama-era regulation on methane, a potent greenhouse gas released by oil and gas operations.
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“Methane standards are one of the most important ways to address an important source of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute significantly to climate change, and the Trump administration’s weakening of those standards was a dagger in the heart of efforts to address the climate crisis,”
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The Congressional Review Act is a 1996 law that gives Congress the power to nullify any major regulation finalized within the final 60 legislative days of a president’s term.
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Modern Science Didn't Appear Until the 17th Century. What Took So Long? - The New York ... - 0 views
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While modern science is built on the primacy of empirical data — appealing to the objectivity of facts — actual progress requires determined partisans to move it along.
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Why wasn’t it the ancient Babylonians putting zero-gravity observatories into orbit around the earth,” Strevens asks, “the ancient Greeks engineering flu vaccines and transplanting hearts?”
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transforming ordinary thinking humans into modern scientists entails “a morally and intellectually violent process.”
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Functional magnetic resonance imaging | Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry - 0 views
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A variety of methods have been developed over the past few decades to allow mapping of the functioning human brain. Two basic classes of mapping technique have evolved: those that map (or localise) the underlying electrical activity of the brain; and those that map local physiological or metabolic consequences of altered brain electrical activity. Among the former are the non-invasive neural electromagnetic techniques of electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). These methods allow exquisite temporal resolution of neural processes (typically over a 10–100 ms time scale), but suffer from poor spatial resolution (between 1 and several centimetres). Functional MRI (fMRI) methods are in the second category. They can be made sensitive to the changes in regional blood perfusion, blood volume (for example, using injected magnetic resonance contrast agents), or blood oxygenation that accompany neuronal activity. Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) fMRI, which is sensitive primarily to the last of these variables, allows an image spatial resolution that is of the order of a few millimetres, with a temporal resolution of a few seconds (limited by the haemodynamic response itself). An accessible and more detailed introduction to the technique than is possible in this brief review is found in a recent book.1
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Methods such as positron emission tomography (PET) provide an absolute measure of tissue metabolism. In contrast, BOLD fMRI can at present be used only for determining relative signal intensity changes associated with different cognitive states during a single imaging session. The most time efficient approach for comparing brain responses in different states during the imaging experiment is the “block” design19 (fig 3). This design uses relatively long alternating periods (for example, 30 seconds), during each of which a discrete cognitive state is maintained. In the simplest form, there may only be two such states, which are alternated throughout the experiment in order to ensure that variations arising from fluctuations in scanner sensitivity, patient movement, or changes in attention have a similar impact on the signal responses associated with both states.
COP25 will review a scary year for climate change - Quartz - 0 views
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The answer, of course, is that they have been warning about severe global impacts from climate change for more than three decades. But over the past 12 months those warnings have intensified.
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on the potential impacts of a rise in global temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius or more.
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“global carbon dioxide emissions (to) start to decline well before 2030” to avoid the most severe consequences of global warming. It said “global warming is likely to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.”
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