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megadeath is not the only thing that makes the Doomsday Machine petrifying. The real terror is in its autonomy, this idea that it would be programmed to detect a series of environmental inputs, then to act, without human interference. “There is no chance of human intervention, control, and final decision,” wrote the military strategist Herman Kahn in his 1960 book, On Thermonuclear War, which laid out the hypothetical for a Doomsday Machine. The concept was to render nuclear war unwinnable, and therefore unthinkable.

No machine should be that powerful by itself—but no one person should be either.

so far, somewhat miraculously, we have figured out how to live with the bomb. Now we need to learn how to survive the social web.

Four in 10 young people around the world are hesitant to have children as a result of the climate crisis, and fear that governments are doing too little to prevent climate catastrophe, a poll in 10 countries has found.

Nearly six in 10 young people, aged 16 to 25, were very or extremely worried about climate change, according to the biggest scientific study yet on climate anxiety and young people

Three-quarters agreed with the statement “the future is frightening”, and more than half felt they would have fewer opportunities than their parents.

Stare at a climate map of the world that we expect to inhabit 50 years from now and you see a band of extreme heat encircling the planet’s midriff. Climate modelling from 2020 suggests that within half a century about 30% of the world’s projected population – unless they are forced to move – will live in places with an average temperature above 29C. This is unbearably hot. Currently, no more than 1% of Earth’s land surface is this hot, and those are mainly uninhabited parts of the Sahara.

The scenario is as dramatic as it is because the regions of the world affected most severely by global heating – above all, sub-Saharan Africa – are those expected to experience the most rapid population growth in coming decades.

But despite this population growth, they are also the regions that, on current trends, will contribute least to the emissions that drive the climate disaster.

In a new study published today in the journal Science, researchers say they have confirmed that eruptions large enough to bury the U.S. under 300 feet (91 meters) of lava occurred at the same time that vast numbers of plant and animal species disappeared from the fossil record. About 201 million years ago, tectonic forces started ripping the supercontinent known as Pangaea apart, said Terrence Blackburn, a geologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., and lead author of the study. The underlying mantle rock melted, generating these large eruptions, he added. The rift, which eventually created the Atlantic Ocean basin, happened between sections of Pangaea that would go on to become North America and Africa. (Read about how Pangaea formed.)

by using a rare mineral called zircon, found in igneous rocks like basalts, the researchers were able to narrow down their margin of error to 20,000 to 30,000 years—pegging the initial eruptions to just before the mass extinction event. “Zircon is a perfect time capsule for dating those rocks,” said Blackburn. When the mineral crystallizes, it incorporates uranium, which decays over a known time with respect to the element lead. By measuring the ratio of uranium to lead in our samples, we can determine the age of those crystals, he explained.

There is evidence that the initial volcanic eruptions doubled the amount of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which led to increased global temperatures and ocean acidification, he noted. This happened quickly, which probably didn’t give organisms at the time much of a chance to adjust to the changes.

By some estimates, Americans sleep two to three hours fewer today than they did before the industrial revolution.

now a new study is challenging that notion. It found that Americans on average sleep as much as people in three different hunter-gatherer societies where there is no electricity and the lifestyles have remained largely the same for thousands of years.

Yet the hunter-gatherers included in the new study, which was published in Current Biology, were relatively fit and healthy despite regularly sleeping amounts that are near the low end of those in industrialized societies.

There is, in other words, a new day dawning, and we’re sure as hell not going to use any of that sunlight for energy. Instead, it’s clear that we’re about to witness the steady demolition, or attempted demolition, of the environmental protections that have been put in place over the past five decades.

There’s not the slightest evidence that Americans want laxer environmental laws. A poll released last week showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans would prefer that the E.P.A.’s powers be preserved or strengthened. Solar power, meanwhile, polls somewhere in the neighborhood of ice cream among Democrats, Independents, and Republicans alike.

But the survey that counts in the Trump Administration is of plutocrats, and, as Jane Mayer demonstrated in her book “Dark Money,” the moguls of the right-wing funding network, whose disciples are now in place across the Cabinet, hate environmental regulation with a passion. We know some of them—the Koch brothers, for instance. But there is a whole league of cartoonish villains, including John Menard, Jr., the richest man in Wisconsin, whose company was once charged with labelling arsenic-tainted mulch as “ideal for playgrounds.” Having paid hundreds of millions in fines, these people paid tens of millions in campaign contributions, and now their bill has come due.

in a warm, sunny climate, a white roof almost certainly doesn’t hurt on an individual basis and may help reduce the need for air-conditioning (as inhabitants of sultry climes have known for a long time)

While a white roof in the southern states will reduce cooling loads and therefore save energy even some white roof manufacturers agree that the benefits of white roofs in the northern states an especialy in most of Canada are negligible at best and even an energy negative in many areas. In the north the only minor benefit may be a slight reductioin in heat island effect, but that only applies while the roof is clean and in urban areas

While programs such as LEED promote white roofs as a blanket policy people need to think the process through, if you have 10 heating degree days for every 1 cooling degree day what is more inportant. In the north most buildings have much higher insulation values negating many of the possibile benefits of the reflective roofing

the United States’ top spy said Thursday the greatest online threat isn’t a crippling digital strike against American infrastructure — but the near-constant, lower-grade attacks that are carried out routinely

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also raised eyebrows among House lawmakers when he declined to describe a recent breach of servers belonging to the Office of Personnel Management as an “attack.” Rather, Clapper called the operation, which U.S. officials privately attribute to China, “a passive intelligence collection activity, just as we do.” The breach resulted in the exfiltration of the personal information of some 21.5 million current, past, and prospective federal employees.

In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Clapper described a permissive online environment in which hackers worldwide are able to operate essentially without impunity. That environment has resulted in difficulties for U.S. officials to deter future attacks, Clapper said, and has led American intelligence officials to conclude that cyber threats will probably intensify in the near future.

Francis’ embrace of the issue of climate change, and his broader critique of global capitalism, stem from his signature economic concern: eradicating poverty.

In the encyclical, Francis writes of “the intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet,” and says, “Both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest.”

He added, “As the effects of climate change worsen, we know that escaping poverty will become even more difficult.”

“Anything that you do that’s not fast food is terrific; cooking once a week is far better than not cooking at all,

“It’s the same argument as exercise: more is better than less and some is a lot better than none.”

The core problem is that cooking is defined as work, and fast food is both a pleasure and a crutch. “People really are stressed out with all that they have to do, and they don’t want to cook,”

what is wrong with us?

entire

We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe – and would benefit the vast majority – are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets.

What's your first and last name? Your education and work experience? Do you have recommendations? And are you willing to be a suicide attacker or would you prefer to be a fighter for ISIS?

Germany's interior minister said he believes data in the documents -- described by European media as the names and personal data of tens of thousands of possible ISIS recruits -- could allow authorities to prosecute people who joined ISIS and then returned to their home countries.

If they did not hear from him, they would know that he is dead."

There is a deep reluctance to engage because of the received wisdom that it is not the place of governments or civil society to intrude into people’s lives and tell them what to eat.”

Other scientists have proposed a meat tax to curb consumption, but the report concludes that keeping meat eating to levels recommended by health authorities would not only lower emissions but also reduce heart disease and cancer.

The research does not show everyone has to be a vegetarian to limit warming to 2C, the stated objective of the world’s governments,” said Bailey.

This week’s dose of societal deterioration arrived early, in the form of freshly scrubbed teenage boys. The boys, students at Wisconsin’s Baraboo High School, were apparently at prom last spring when they decided — more than 60 of them — to pose for a photo. Many of the grinning boys further decided, dressed in their dinner jackets and boutonnieres, that their communal pose would be to extend their arms in a Nazi salute.

On Monday, this photo surfaced online (under the hashtag #BarabooProud) and immediately went viral. The photographer later maintained he’d merely asked the boys to wave, though the gesture didn’t resemble a wave made by any hand-possessing human. In response to an outpouring of outrage, the superintendent issued a statement: “We want to be very clear. The Baraboo School District is a hate-free environment.”

In response to various acts of racism, sexism, bigotry and violence, President Barack Obama used the phrase “That’s not who we are” so often — at least 46 times, as compiled in one video montage — that it had the unintended result of upending his assertion. Maybe that’s exactly who we are: a country that is frequently racist, sexist, bigoted and violent.

The lesser-known, and often overlooked, effects of climate change include the risks and impacts to mental health—the focus of this article.

the risks and impacts of climate change on mental health are already rapidly accelerating, resulting in a number of direct, indirect, and overarching effects that disproportionally affect those who are most marginalized

The overarching threats of a changing climate, can also incite despair and hopelessness as actions to address the ‘wicked problem’ of climate change seem intangible or insignificant in comparison to the scale and magnitude of the threats [29].

The world is increasingly at risk of “climate apartheid”, where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from a UN human rights expert has said.

the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of law.

Alston is critical of the “patently inadequate” steps taken by the UN itself, countries, NGOs and businesses, saying they are “entirely disproportionate to the urgency and magnitude of the threat”

People’s health is being damaged today by climate change through effects ranging from deadly heatwaves in Europe to rising dengue fever in the tropics, according to a report.

“The findings are clear and the stakes could not be higher,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general. “We cannot delay action on climate change. We cannot sleepwalk through this health emergency any longer.”

”A rapidly changing climate has dire implications for every aspect of human life, exposing vulnerable populations to extremes of weather, altering patterns of infectious disease, and compromising food security, safe drinking water and clean air,”