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clairemann

Why Are People Afraid of Clowns? | Time - 0 views

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  • It’s been a rough few years for people who have a fear of clowns. In the wake of the ‘clown attack’ craze that reached a fever pitch in 2016, movies about creepy clowns have taken over the entertainment landscape.
  • A local legend, Wrinkles is a 69-year-old retiree who will show up in a terrifying clown suit to scare the pants off anyone you ask him to — even your misbehaving child. In 2015, he told the Washington Post that he gets hundreds of phone calls a day requesting his services. “We know that there’s a human underneath and yet, you don’t know their identity,” a voiceover says of Wrinkles in the trailer for the doc. “That creeps people out.” Indeed.
  • “Clowns’ faces are disguised and they have these large artificial displays of emotion. So you have a clown with a painted face and a big smile, but you don’t really know what they’re actually feeling,” he tells TIME. “There’s this inherent mistrust that what they’re presenting to you isn’t what they’re actually feeling.”
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  • “When people hear ‘clown,’ the first associations that pop into their head are the killer clowns in the movies — It, the Joker— and then John Wayne Gacy, the real-life mass murderer,” McAndrew says of the 1970s serial killer who became known as the “Killer Clown” for his volunteer clown work. “It’s kind of hard to get past all of that.”
  • “[Some of the] very first clowns were the court jesters who poked fun at kings and made people in high places uncomfortable. That’s why they exist,” he tells TIME of the history of clowns in medieval Europe. “They’re designed to make people afraid. If you go all the way back to the beginning of clownhood, they’ve always been bad. They’re pranksters, they play tricks.”
  • However, while many people are apprehensive or fearful of clowns, both Nader and McAndrew agree that someone having an actual phobia of clowns, a.k.a. coulrophobia, is rare.
  • “Fortunately, we live in a society where clowns aren’t just wandering around, so it’s pretty easy to avoid them or at least not come into contact with them very regularly. Rarely does this fear ever cause a person to experience a disruption in their lifestyle or ability to do things.”
  • “We like to learn about dangers in a safe way so that we’re prepared in some unknown future time to deal with them if they ever come our way. So by going to see IT and watching this evil clown lure children in and kill them, we learn strategies for avoiding that kind of fate ourselves,” he says. “We’re not consciously sitting there, watching the movie and thinking these things, but that impulse to like to scare ourselves is there.”
clairemann

Why Some People Love Black Friday-and Others Hate It | Time - 1 views

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  • If the thought of taking part in the annual ritual of Black Friday gives you cold chills rather than a rush of excitement, you’re not alone.
  • It’s not just a lack of appreciation for bargains that drives this disconnect. Psychology research indicates that several factors determine which side of the shop-‘til-you-drop divide you land on. Some people just aren’t wired to enjoy the more social aspects of shopping.
  • Task-oriented shoppers typically focus on finding the things they need as quickly as possible and with the least amount of effort. Socially oriented shoppers, on the other hand, enjoy the presence of others while they shop.
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  • The same research suggests that social shoppers are actually energized by the presence of other consumers. These folks enjoy the experience more when there are others nearby, even if they don’t directly interact.
  • Psychology researchers talk about this preference in what they call field theory. If you’ve ever been bothered by a “close-talker” who leans in too close or touches your arm as they tell you a story, then you are likely someone who requires a little more personal space than that storyteller does.
  • Taken together, these two theories explain a lot about the way you feel about Black Friday-style shopping.
clairemann

Wealthy, Male and American Students More Likely to BS | Time - 0 views

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  • Students who are wealthier and male are more likely than others to claim that they know more than they actually do, says a new study.
  • The study, which reviewed surveys of 40,000 15-year-old students from across nine English-speaking countries, found that boys and people from wealthier families are more likely to be “bullshitters,” which it defines as “individuals who claim knowledge or expertise in an area where they actually have little experience at all.”
  • “You’re claiming expertise in things you have absolutely no knowledge of,” says Shure. “You couldn’t. These things don’t exist.”
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  • The countries where students were guilty of the most BS? The U.S. and Canada. Students in the two counties had scores that were .25 and .3 above average on the study’s “bullshit scale.” However, the two counties also had the narrowest gap between boys and girls, with a gap of .25 and .34 between the genders. In England and Ireland, the gap was much wider – .48 and .46 points.
  • Shure says that she is interested in determining whether a person’s ability to BS has a major impact on economic inequality between men and women, and how the ability plays out across socioeconomic lines.
  • “You can imagine that the people that score high on this bullshit index are good at certain things that might be rewarded,” says Shure. “It might be an interview to get into college. It could be an interview for a job, or an internship. It could be those skills end up helping exacerbate the gap that we observe between people from rich backgrounds and poor backgrounds, and even men and women.”
  • However, Shure says that it’s conceivable that “bullshitters” may have an advantage when it comes to getting ahead: “They clearly have very high opinions of themselves. And that could be associated with becoming leaders in the future.”
clairemann

WHO Makes 'Gaming Disorder' an Official Medical Condition | Time - 0 views

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  • Nearly anywhere you go, it’s easy to find children and adults alike transfixed by their phones, and while texting and social media certainly claim a big part of that attention, increasingly it’s gaming that’s drawing us in.
  • Last year, the WHO voted to include gaming disorder as an official condition in the draft version of its latest International Classification of Diseases (ICD); the vote finalizes that decision. The WHO’s ICD, currently in its 11th edition, serves as the international standard for diagnosing and treating health conditions.
  • According to the WHO experts who analyzed studies on gaming behavior, people’s use of gaming is different from their use of the internet, social media, online gambling and online shopping. There isn’t sufficient data, they say, to indicate that people’s reliance on those is a “behavioral addiction” the way gaming can be.
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  • The criteria used by the WHO are similar to those used to distinguish any addictive behavior—namely. that the behavior starts to take priority over a person’s life to the exclusion of behaviors essential to good health.
  • “But clinicians are approaching this behavior from an understanding of a disorder based on a continuum of normative, recreational and problematic use rather than from the setting or context of a unique, new culture.” Carras, for example, points out that gaming fulfills a participatory and social need for some.
clairemann

Why Some People Lie in Therapy | TIME - 1 views

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  • Lying is, for better or worse, a behavior humans take part in at some point in their lives. On average, Americans tell one to two lies a day, multiple studies have suggested. But it’s where some people are fibbing that might come as a surprise.
  • Laura is far from alone. In a comprehensive 2015 study published by the American Psychological Association book Secrets and Lies in Psychotherapy, 93% of respondents admitted they had lied during therapy at least once.
  • The 2015 study found 61% of participants cited embarrassment as the main reason for dishonesty with their therapist.
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  • Morin acknowledges many clients are scared of “getting in trouble” for what they confess in therapy. “They may worry that the therapist will terminate their sessions because they aren’t making progress or they may be concerned the therapist will somehow punish them,” she says.
  • “Sometimes people don’t really mean to lie, but they minimize their problems because they can’t quite accept them yet,” Morin says. “Someone with a substance abuse problem might insist she didn’t drink much this week even though she drank heavily every day. Individuals often need help coming to terms with their problems before they can be honest with themselves.”
  • “I don’t want to talk about trauma because discussing it is going to overwhelm me,” Farber says of this mindset. “It’s going to bring me back to an experience or experiences that have been so difficult [and] so overwhelming, and I’m fearful that if I talk about it, it will re-traumatize me.”
  • Altering the truth in an attempt at kindness is still problematic, though, because it limits how effective treatment can be. “If you’re censoring your experience, then the therapist can’t be helpful to you,” Kolod says. Therapists are aware clients sometimes omit the truth or downplay the significance of certain life experiences, and there has been research on how mental health professionals can better spot dishonesty and adapt their treatment accordingly.
clairemann

Why We Can't Ignore Conspiracy Theories Anymore, Experts Say | Time - 0 views

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  • Conspiracy theories, both powerful and enduring, can wreak havoc on society. In recent years, fringe ideas prompted a gunman to storm a Washington, D.C. pizzeria and may have motivated another to fatally shoot 11 worshippers inside a Pittsburgh synagogue. They are also largely to blame for a worldwide surge in measles cases that has sickened more people in the U.S. in the first half of 2019 than in any full year since 1994.
  • “very likely” inspire domestic terrorists to commit criminal and sometimes violent acts and “very likely will emerge, spread and evolve” on internet platforms, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by Yahoo News.
  • “It’s increasingly becoming clear that lots and lots of people believe in them, and they have negative outcomes,” says Viren Swami, a social psychology professor at Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K., who has published several studies on conspiracy theories.
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  • More recently, following Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent suicide in federal jail, Trump retweeted an uncorroborated theory that suggested the death of the well-connected financier, who was charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy, was suspicious and somehow linked to former President Bill Clinton.
  • “The chief conspiratorialist of the last 10 years is now the President of the United States,” says Harvard University researcher Joseph Vitriol, who studies political psychology. “Because of that, what we might be seeing is increased influence and pervasiveness of these beliefs.”
  • “It used to be a lot harder for things to go viral,” says Micah Schaffer, a technology policy consultant who crafted YouTube’s first policies when he worked for the company between 2006 and 2009. “Now, without any human intervention, you could have a machine that says a lot of people are watching this and put it on blast to a mass audience.”
  • Facebook faced its own pressures to act in March after an Ohio teenager, who got vaccinated against his mother’s wishes, testified about the dangers of misinformation during a widely viewed Senate hearing
  • “Conspiracy theories are effective at doing the things that they do,” says Mike Wood, a lecturer at England’s University of Winchester, who specializes in the psychology of conspiracy theories. “They motivate people to take actions—to vote or to not vote, to vaccinate their kids or not to vaccinate their kids, to do all of these things that are important.”
clairemann

Is It Bad To Get Too Much Sleep? | HuffPost Life - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...eep_l_6042b664c5b613cec15da45f

psychology science research knowledge brain science

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  • For years, we’ve been told how detrimental a lack of sleep can be for our mental and physical health.
  • But is it bad to get too much sleep — and if so, how much is too much?
  • “It’s important to remember that not everyone’s ‘too much sleep’ is the same,” sleep psychologist Jade Wu, a researcher at the Duke University School of Medicine, told HuffPost. “And sleep needs change over the lifetime. For example, a teenager or young adult may very well need nine or more hours per night, whereas a retiree likely doesn’t.”
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  • Oversleeping — typically defined as more than nine or 10 hours in research studies — is associated with certain health risks, including stroke, obesity, depression, diabetes, heart disease and dementia. However, it’s not clear if oversleeping causes these conditions or if it’s just an indicator that something else is wrong.
  • “In other words, we don’t know if it’s the long sleep that’s causing problems over time, or if some underlying health problem is causing someone to sleep longer,”
  • “If someone seems to be an unusually long sleeper, it’s possible that they are simply wired to need more sleep,” Wu said. (That said, it can’t hurt to mention it to your doctor if you have some concerns.)
  • “A number of factors, such as medical conditions, medication side effects, and undiagnosed sleep disorders, can lead to poor sleep quality and non-restful sleep,” she added.
  • if sleep quantity isn’t the issue, then sleep quality probably is. Conditions like sleep apnea can disrupt sleep and leave you feeling fatigued even after spending ample time in bed.
  • “Poor quality sleep means that an individual does not get to the deeper stages of sleep or REM sleep, which restore the brain and body and makes you feel refreshed and rejuvenated the next day,”
  • “Get lots of sunlight, get physically active — or at least decrease long stretches of sitting — and go out of your way to plan some fun and social activities,” Wu said. “Make efforts to prioritize physical and mental health. You may find yourself waking up with more energy after making these changes.”
clairemann

When Will We Need COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters? Here's What We Know So Far. | HuffPost Life - 1 views

www.huffpost.com/...hot_l_6048db31c5b6cf72d09365bd

COVID pandemic Biden technology research

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  • The COVID-19 vaccination rollout is well underway in the United States. Millions of people have already been vaccinated, and states are beginning to widely expand eligibility.
  • Though experts are hopeful that we’ll reach herd immunity by the fall if vaccinations continue at our current pace, there are questions about the need for booster shots and how long our current immunizations will last.
  • At this point, the conversation on the need for booster shots for COVID-19 is still slightly hypothetical, although vaccine manufacturers and researchers are already preparing for the possibility by testing boosters and vaccines adjusting for known coronavirus variants.
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  • “We have not seen any variants evade the vaccination completely,” Javaid said.
  • Right now we use antibody testing as a marker of an immune response. But we need more time to pass to study the population’s response to the vaccines before being able to sufficiently assess the duration of immunity.
clairemann

What Biden's May 1 COVID-19 Vaccine Deadline Means For You | HuffPost Life - 0 views

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COVID pandemic technology Biden

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  • President Joe Biden also said in an address on Thursday that all Americans would be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine by May 1
  • Now, this does not necessarily mean everyone in the country will be rolling up their sleeves on that day. The general public may start scheduling appointments in early May, but it’s probably going to take a few months to work through the general population.
  • So far, the vaccine rollout has been sticky — it’s difficult to secure an appointment and supply continues to be tight across the country.
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  • The country will also need to open more vaccination sites, some of which should be open 24/7 to ensure people who get off work at odd hours have easy access to the vaccine.“This is a wartime sort of response,” Fagbuyi said. “You’re going to pull all the stops and not leave any stone unturned.”
  • “Enjoy the opportunity, but also be cautious and look at what’s going on around you,” Fagbuyi said.
  • So, when will we get to a point where it won’t be so complicated for the general public to score a vaccine appointment? Fagbuyi predicts sometime in June.
  • Adalja predicts that by the Fourth of July, vulnerable people will be vaccinated in all states and there will no longer be concerns about reaching hospital capacity.
  • “We’re going to be trying to convince people to come get vaccinated,” Adalja said.
  • We often hear doctors say we want 70% of the population to be immune to COVID-19, whether through vaccination, natural infection or preexisting immunity, to achieve herd immunity. Each dose pricked in someone’s arm makes it harder for the virus to spread.
  • “What I think is more important than herd immunity is making sure vulnerable populations are vaccinated so that COVID loses the ability to cause severe illness, hospitalization and death,” Adalja said.
clairemann

What Long-Haulers Should Know About Getting The Coronavirus Vaccine | HuffPost Life - 1 views

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COVID pandemic research education technology

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  • Four months after her initial diagnosis, in October, Chason’s physician told her she was suffering from long COVID.
  • Four days after the first dose, Chason said, the symptoms — vertigo, nausea, loss of appetite, chills — hit like a lightning bolt. “I went through every single thing I had been dealing with since I had COVID,” Chason said.
  • Around the world, many other people with long-haul symptoms — a condition now clinically defined as post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, or PASC — have reported similar experiences after getting a vaccine.
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  • COVID-19 survivors, found that 36% of people with long-haul symptoms noticed improvements in their condition after vaccination. About 50% remained the same. Other unofficial surveys have also estimated that about a third of patients with long COVID feel better after getting a vaccine.
  • “We don’t know who gets PASC, who avoids it, what exactly is causing it, or how to even diagnose it effectively,” said William Li, a vascular biologist and medical director of the Angiogenesis Foundation. Without those answers, it’s difficult to clearly see how the vaccines impact long-haulers, for better or worse.
clairemann

The First Big Study On COVID-19 Reinfection Is Here. Here's What It Means. | HuffPost Life - 1 views

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COVID pandemic research brain science education

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  • The possibility of coronavirus reinfection has been a concern since the first reports of people getting sick again began popping up in 2020
  • However, people ages 65 and older are far more likely than younger individuals to experience repeat infection.
  • Overall, they found that a very small percentage of the population — 0.65% — experienced reinfection.
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  • “Since older people are also more likely to experience severe disease symptoms and, sadly, die, our findings make clear how important it is to implement policies to protect the elderly during the pandemic,
  • The large new study out of Denmark did not examine the role of variants in reinfection, given the time frame of the research. So it does not offer any clues about whether variants make it more likely for someone to come down with COVID-19 more than once.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people who have had COVID-19 should get vaccinated once it’s available to them, in large part because there is a slim chance they could become infected again if they come into contact with the virus.
clairemann

Experts Predict What Summer 2021 Will Be Like With The COVID-19 Pandemic | HuffPost Life - 1 views

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COVID pandemic research science

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  • Certain feelings have practically vanished since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic ― the most major of which is hope.
  • “Speaking for the U.S., I’m really hopeful that this summer will be remarkably different from last summer,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “We’re on a good path right now and I just hope that we can stay on the path that we’re on.”
  • “These vaccines are absolutely our way out of this pandemic,” said David Aronoff, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
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  • “One of the things that we are feeling better about is the data around SARS-CoV-2 transmission and recognizing that outdoor activities have not turned out, as best as we can tell, to be a significant factor in pushing the pandemic forward,” Brewer said, referring to the fact that the threat of virus spread is low in socially distant, outdoor settings
  • People who are vaccinated can also spend time indoors with unvaccinated, low-risk people from a single household.
  • “If you look at what’s happening with cases in particular, they’ve really fallen off since the beginning of January,” Brewer said. “It’s really hard to attribute that to population changes; something else has to be driving that. It couldn’t have been vaccines at that point, we didn’t have as many vaccines as we do now.”
  • “I continue to look for signals and continue to scrutinize the data, but so far I’m encouraged by the fact that we haven’t seen a real rise in case numbers particularly in the states where they have reported the variants,” said Nuzzo, who has been tracking COVID-19 trends and data since the pandemic’s beginning.
clairemann

Read This If You Wake Up Hungry In The Middle Of The Night | HuffPost Life - 1 views

www.huffpost.com/...ght_l_605a26bdc5b66a80f4eb7434

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  • Anyone who’s woken up at 3 a.m. with their stomach growling has probably wondered, what gives? Is it even normal to be this hungry at this hour?
  • Hunger levels, which are regulated in part by our circadian rhythms, generally rise throughout the day, are highest in the evening and decline throughout the night and into the morning. So if you’re getting up in the dead of night with major hunger pangs, experts say it’s worth investigating.
  • Waking up for a midnight snack every once in a while probably isn’t anything to be concerned about. But if nocturnal noshing has become a more regular pattern — and an annoying one at that — then you may be looking for answers.
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  • “If you’re dieting or restricting in any way, like by skipping meals or over-exercising, then you may not be eating enough calories,” said registered dietitian Alissa Rumsey, the author of “Unapologetic Eating.”
  • “If someone is not obtaining enough sleep on a regular basis, this could result in increased appetite throughout the day and night.”
  • Sometimes it’s not physical hunger that’s rousing you mid-slumber; it may be your body’s response to a period of stress in your life. Once you’re awake, you might be turning to food to soothe yourself.
  • “[Emotional eating] can certainly slow down your thought processes — if your body is digesting food, then maybe you’re distracted from the anxiety that’s keeping you awake,”
  • Those with NES consume a significant portion of their daily calories after dinner (with little desire to eat earlier in the day), may deal with mood issues that worsen in the evening, have trouble falling or staying asleep and believe they must eat something in order to fall back asleep at night. It’s estimated that 1.5% of the population may suffer from night eating syndrome, though the actual figure could be higher than that.
clairemann

The Way Bosses Conduct And Communicate Layoffs Is Inhumane. There's Another Way. | Huff... - 1 views

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  • During my first mass layoff, my manager called it an “impact.” She gathered some of us into a room and informed us that our colleagues who weren’t present had been impacted by our tech company’s latest pivot.
  • Sandra Sucher, a professor of management at Harvard Business School who has researched layoffs, told me the use of these discomforting metaphors has a name. What these bosses are doing is a form of moral disengagement, she said, a phenomenon first identified by Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura.
  • “One of the types of moral disengagement is euphemistic labeling. So instead of saying, ‘I am ending Sandra’s employment where she has worked for 15 years,' 'I am restructuring.'”
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  • “‘You will be personally be affected by this, here’s what we’re doing, here’s what we’re doing to help you relocate.’ They’re acknowledging they are doing harm by talking to people in very direct ways,” she said.
  • Beyond making language reflect the gravity of the occasion, employers need to make sure their actions support it, too. Generous severance packages, a meaningful rationale for the downsizing, and treating the victims of a layoff with dignity and respect are all actions employees scrutinize to decide if a layoff was fair.
  • “We have had cases where it just wasn’t taken seriously. Swimming pool, the kids in the background, you’re wearing a Hawaiian shirt, not respecting the gravity of the situation,” he said.
  • Abrupt notification is the norm in many companies, but Sucher said it shouldn’t be. “The best practice in this area would almost never look like today is the first day you heard what’s going to happen to you and it’s also your last day at the company,” she said.
clairemann

Mitt Romney Receives JFK Profile In Courage Award For Trump Impeachment Vote | HuffPost - 1 views

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  • Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Friday was named the recipient of the 2021 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his “courageous” vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for abuse of power. 
  • During Trump’s first impeachment trial last year, Romney became the first senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a president from his own party. 
  • “Senator Romney’s commitment to our Constitution makes him a worthy successor to the senators who inspired my father to write ‘Profiles in Courage,’”
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  • “What I’ve found throughout life is doing those things which you know are right, which respond to the promptings of your conscience, allows you to have a greater degree of happiness and satisfaction than if you just do things to try and get ahead,”
clairemann

How To Tackle Deforestation? Give Indigenous People Their Land Rights. | HuffPost - 1 views

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climate world technology US

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  • Deforestation rates are significantly lower in forests protected and governed by Indigenous people, according to a new report.
  • found that, on average, forests in Indigenous and tribal territories have been much better conserved than other forests in the region.
  • Forests are huge carbon sinks and vital tools in holding back the climate crisis as well as stabilizing regional temperatures and rainfall patterns. Indigenous territories hold roughly one-third of all the carbon stored in the forests of Latin America and the Caribbean, and 14% of the carbon in tropical forests around the world. 
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  • These communities, with generations of experience successfully protecting nature, have strong track records of guarding the forest, according to the report. They generally favor smaller-scale, more diverse farming, which extracts far less from the land than industrial operations do. 
  • “The forest provides us food, water and gives us a roof. It’s not something alien to us, but another living being,” said Rivas, who’s also been working to promote gender equality in the agroforestry sector. “We only take what we need, nothing more.”
  • “We need to center and take direction from Indigenous and tribal earth defenders in order to protect forests’ biodiversity and even prevent the next pandemic,”
  • “This scientific consensus [in the report] gives our world’s leaders a mandate to defend the rights of Indigenous and tribal communities,” said Recinos. “Otherwise, sensitive biomes and rainforests, such as the Amazon, will remain under threat or, worse, reach an irreversible tipping point.” 
clairemann

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.
  • a handful of techniques to reflect sunlight back into space or manipulate cloud coverage to temporarily alleviate the effects of pollution-fueled heating.
  • 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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  • The National Academies plan, if implemented, would at least double the total research funding for solar geoengineering to date, and would represent the largest government-led effort anywhere in the world.
  • The proposal calls for a federal research program initially funded with $100 million to $200 million over five years, earmarking roughly 20% for public outreach and ethical governance.
  • “The U.S. solar geoengineering research program should be all about helping society make more informed decisions,”
  • “Spending this money dangles this possibility that there’s this technology out there that might save us, so it diminishes the value of doing the real systemic changes that are needed to address the climate crisis,” said Jennie Stephens, the director of Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. “I don’t think the federal government should be doing this research.” 
clairemann

Democrats Move To Scrap Trump-Era Rollback Of Methane Rules | HuffPost - 1 views

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climate world technology US

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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.
  • “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,”
  • 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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  • The move is “critical to confronting the climate crisis and reducing harmful air pollution,” Heinrich tweeted.
  • The Obama administration’s methane rule sought to rein in methane pollution from fossil fuel operations by requiring operators to monitor and prevent leaks from wells, pipelines and other facilities.
  • “We have over 100,000 wellheads that are not capped, leaking methane,” Biden said. “What are we doing? And by the way, we can put as many pipe fitters and miners to work capping those wells at the same price that they would charge to dig those wells.”
clairemann

2 African Elephant Species Now Listed As Endangered, Monitoring Group Says | HuffPost - 1 views

www.huffpost.com/...ucn_n_605d6bf8c5b6531eed038e16

research technology climate world

shared by clairemann on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The two species of African elephants are now both listed as endangered, thanks to a one-two punch of poaching and habitat loss, according to a new assessment.
  • “The forest elephants, in most cases, have been largely ignored,” Ben Okita, a conservation biologist, told The New York Times. “It’s become clear that genetically these two species are different.”
  • The main threats to the elephants remain poaching for their ivory, and habitat loss.
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  • Savannah elephants have declined by at least 60% over the last half-century.
  • “Africa’s elephants play key roles in ecosystems, economies and in our collective imagination all over the world,”
  • The report did include some good news. Anti-poaching programs in some regions of Gabon and the Republic of the Congo have helped forest elephant numbers stabilize.
clairemann

Biden Team Scraps Trump-Era Opinion That Gave Away Tribal Lands | HuffPost - 1 views

www.huffpost.com/...old_n_6058cb80c5b6f12839d65306

climate science research Biden

shared by clairemann on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The Biden administration scrapped a controversial Trump-era legal opinion on Monday that sought to give North Dakota control over a portion of the Missouri River on Native American land.
  • concluding that the state of North Dakota owns mineral rights beneath the portion of the Missouri River that flows through the Fort Berthold Reservation. 
  • “overturned decades of existing precedent holding that the Missouri riverbed belonged to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara (MHA) Nation,”
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  • “Today’s action will allow us to review the matter and ensure the Interior Department is upholding its trust and treaty obligations in accordance with the law.”
  • Fossil fuel companies have begun using horizontal drilling techniques to access oil and gas resources below the river and Lake Sakakawea, a 200-mile-long reservoir created with the construction of Garrison Dam in the 1950s that permanently flooded one-quarter of the Fort Berthold Reservation and forced 90% of tribal members to relocate.
  • $100 billion in oil and gas royalties and future payments are waiting to be claimed, and the state has pushed for control of mineral rights on the reservation section of the river.
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