In visible light, this galaxy looks like a jellyfish with blue "tentacles" of young stars dangling from its disk. In X-ray light, a giant tail of hot gas streams behind the galaxy. Infrared #NASAWebb will study this tail of gas & the stars forming in it. https://go.nasa.gov/2Gk4IDT
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Study: Climate Change Affects Global Economic Inequality, Too
BY STEPHANIE MLOT 04.23.2019
The map on the left shows countries where per capita GDP increased or decreased as a result of global warming between 1961 and 2010. The map on the right shows the same information from 1991, after economic data became available for more countries (via Stanford University)
Glaciers Have Lost More Than 9 Trillion Tons of Ice Since 1961
This Floating City Can Withstand Category 5 Hurricanes
Climate change affects more than just the environment: A Stanford University study shows global warming has increased economic inequality.
While temperature fluctuations have enriched cool countries like Norway and Sweden, warmer nations such as India and Nigeria are suffering.
“Our results show that most of the poorest countries on Earth are considerably poorer than they would have been without global warming,” lead study author and climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh said in a statement. “At the same time, the majority of rich countries are richer than they would have been.”
Based on 50 years of annual temperature and gross domestic product (GDP) measurements for 165 countries, researchers demonstrated that growth during warmer-than-average years has accelerated in cool nations and slowed in warm ones.
Warming that has already happened has increased economic inequality around the world (via Stanford University)
“The historical data clearly shows that crops are more productive, people are healthier, and we are more productive at work when temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold,” according to study co-author Marshall Burke, a Stanford assistant professor of Earth system science.
“This means that in cold countries, a little bit of warming can help,” he said. “The opposite is true in places that are already hot.”
Using climate models to isolate how much each country warmed due to human-induced climate change, researchers were able to estimate a range of outcomes, suggesting what each nation’s economic output might have been had temperatures not increased.
“For most countries, whether global warming has helped or hurt economic growth is pretty certain,” Burke said, admitting that the data is less clear for countries in the middle latitudes, including the US, China, and Japan.
“A few of the largest economies are near the perfect temperature for economic output,” he continued. “Global warming hasn’t pushed them off the top of the hill, and in many cases, it has pushed them toward it.”
The gap between economic output of the world’s richest and poorest countries is 25 percent larger today than it would have been without global warming (via Stanford University)
Things won’t stay this way forever, though: A large amount of warming in the future would mean a severe drop in productivity.
Just ask Sudan, India, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Brazil, which saw a 25 to 36 percent decrease in per capita GDP from global warming between 1961 and 2010.
“The more these countries warm up, the more drag there’s going to be on their development,” Diffenbaugh warned, emphasizing the importance of increased sustainable energy access for poorer countries.
“Our finding that global warming has exacerbated economic inequality suggests that there is an added economic benefit of energy sources that don’t contribute to further warming,” he added.
The full study was published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Global warming has increased global economic inequality
Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Marshall Burke
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2019/04/global-warming-has-increased-global.html
PNAS first published April 22, 2019
US threatens to veto UN resolution on rape as weapon of war, officials say
Exclusive: US warns it will reject measure over language on sexual health in latest example of hardline abortion stance
Julian Borger in Washington
Mon 22 Apr 2019
Exclusive: US warns it will reject measure over language on sexual health in latest example of hardline abortion stance
Julian Borger in Washington
Mon 22 Apr 2019
The United Nations headquarters in New York. Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/Tass
The US is threatening to veto a United Nations resolution on combatting the use of rape as a weapon of war because of its language on reproductive and sexual health, according to a senior UN official and European diplomats.
The German mission hopes the resolution will be adopted at a special UN security council session on Tuesday on sexual violence in conflict.
But the draft resolution has already been stripped of one of its most important elements, the establishment of a formal mechanism to monitor and report atrocities, because of opposition from the US, Russia and China, which opposed creating a new monitoring body.
Even after the formal monitoring mechanism was stripped from the resolution, the US was still threatening to veto the watered-down version, because it includes language on victims’ support from family planning clinics. In recent months, the Trump administration has taken a hard line, refusing to agree to any UN documents that refer to sexual or reproductive health, on grounds that such language implies support for abortions. It has also opposed the use of the word “gender”, seeing it as a cover for liberal promotion of transgender rights.
“We are not even sure whether we are having the resolution tomorrow, because of the threats of a veto from the US,” Pramila Patten, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, told the Guardian.
In cases of disagreement in the security council, member states often fall back on previously agreed text, but the US has made it clear it would no longer accept language from a 2013 resolution on sexual violence.
“They are threatening to use their veto over this agreed language on comprehensive healthcare services including sexual and reproductive health. The language is being maintained for the time being and we’ll see over the next 24 hours how the situation evolves,” Patten said.
“It will be a huge contradiction that you are talking about a survivor-centered approach and you do not have language on sexual and reproductive healthcare services, which is for me the most critical.”
Trump administration ignoring human rights monitors, ACLU tells UN
In a draft of the resolution seen by the Guardian, the contentious phrase is only mentioned once, in a clause that “urges United Nations entities and donors to provide non-discriminatory and comprehensive health services, including sexual and reproductive health, psychosocial, legal and livelihood support and other multi-sectoral services for survivors of sexual violence, taking into account the specific needs of persons with disabilities.”
A spokeswoman for the US mission said it “does not comment on draft resolutions that are under active negotiation”.
European states, led by Germany, the UK and France, have been resisting abandoning the language on access to family planning and women’s health clinics, as they believe it would mean surrendering the gains of recent decades in terms of international recognition of women’s rights.
“If we let the Americans do this and take out this language, it will be watered down for a long time,” a European diplomat, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the negotiations, said. “It is, at its heart, an attack on the progressive normative framework established over the past 25 years.”
“Until the Trump administration, we could always count on the Americans to help us defend it. Now the Americans have switched camp,” the diplomat said. “Now it’s an unholy alliance of the US, the Russians, the Holy See, the Saudis and the Bahrainis, chipping away at the progress that has been made.”
Diplomats at the security council expect a long night of negotiations on the wording.
The latest version of the draft resolution recognises the work of the informal expert group on women, peace and security, but Patten had argued that the current system does not provide a consistent channel to bring violations on sexual violence to the attention of the security council.
A formal mechanism, with a panel regularly assessing compliance and recommending sanctions, would have given her more leverage on states and non-state groups.
“In the current draft as it stands, the formal mechanism is gone,” she said. “It’s very, very weak.”
The US is threatening to veto a United Nations resolution on combatting the use of rape as a weapon of war because of its language on reproductive and sexual health, according to a senior UN official and European diplomats.
The German mission hopes the resolution will be adopted at a special UN security council session on Tuesday on sexual violence in conflict.
But the draft resolution has already been stripped of one of its most important elements, the establishment of a formal mechanism to monitor and report atrocities, because of opposition from the US, Russia and China, which opposed creating a new monitoring body.
Even after the formal monitoring mechanism was stripped from the resolution, the US was still threatening to veto the watered-down version, because it includes language on victims’ support from family planning clinics. In recent months, the Trump administration has taken a hard line, refusing to agree to any UN documents that refer to sexual or reproductive health, on grounds that such language implies support for abortions. It has also opposed the use of the word “gender”, seeing it as a cover for liberal promotion of transgender rights.
“We are not even sure whether we are having the resolution tomorrow, because of the threats of a veto from the US,” Pramila Patten, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, told the Guardian.
In cases of disagreement in the security council, member states often fall back on previously agreed text, but the US has made it clear it would no longer accept language from a 2013 resolution on sexual violence.
“They are threatening to use their veto over this agreed language on comprehensive healthcare services including sexual and reproductive health. The language is being maintained for the time being and we’ll see over the next 24 hours how the situation evolves,” Patten said.
“It will be a huge contradiction that you are talking about a survivor-centered approach and you do not have language on sexual and reproductive healthcare services, which is for me the most critical.”
Trump administration ignoring human rights monitors, ACLU tells UN
In a draft of the resolution seen by the Guardian, the contentious phrase is only mentioned once, in a clause that “urges United Nations entities and donors to provide non-discriminatory and comprehensive health services, including sexual and reproductive health, psychosocial, legal and livelihood support and other multi-sectoral services for survivors of sexual violence, taking into account the specific needs of persons with disabilities.”
A spokeswoman for the US mission said it “does not comment on draft resolutions that are under active negotiation”.
European states, led by Germany, the UK and France, have been resisting abandoning the language on access to family planning and women’s health clinics, as they believe it would mean surrendering the gains of recent decades in terms of international recognition of women’s rights.
“If we let the Americans do this and take out this language, it will be watered down for a long time,” a European diplomat, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the negotiations, said. “It is, at its heart, an attack on the progressive normative framework established over the past 25 years.”
“Until the Trump administration, we could always count on the Americans to help us defend it. Now the Americans have switched camp,” the diplomat said. “Now it’s an unholy alliance of the US, the Russians, the Holy See, the Saudis and the Bahrainis, chipping away at the progress that has been made.”
Diplomats at the security council expect a long night of negotiations on the wording.
The latest version of the draft resolution recognises the work of the informal expert group on women, peace and security, but Patten had argued that the current system does not provide a consistent channel to bring violations on sexual violence to the attention of the security council.
A formal mechanism, with a panel regularly assessing compliance and recommending sanctions, would have given her more leverage on states and non-state groups.
“In the current draft as it stands, the formal mechanism is gone,” she said. “It’s very, very weak.”
SOCIALISM IS SUSTAINABLE CAPITALISM
To stop global catastrophe, we must believe in humans again
Bill McKibben
We have the technology to prevent climate crisis. But now we need to unleash mass resistance too – because collective action does work
@billmckibben
Tue 23 Apr 2019
Innovation doesn’t scare me. I think that if we back off the most crazed frontiers of technology, we can still figure out how to keep humans healthy, safe, productive – and human. Not everyone agrees. Some harbour a deep pessimism about human nature which I confess, as an American in the age of Donald Trump, occasionally seems sound.
Of all the arguments for unhindered technological growth, the single saddest (in the sense that it just gives up on human beings) comes from the Oxford don Julian Savulescu. In essence he contends that, left to themselves, democracies can’t solve climate change, “for in order to do so a majority of their voters must support the adoption of substantial restrictions on their excessively consumerist lifestyle, and there is no indication they would be willing to make such sacrifices”. Also, our ingrained suspicion of outsiders keeps us from working together globally. And so, faced with the need to move quickly, we should “morally bio-enhance” our children or, more likely, use genetic engineering, so they will cooperate.
This is roughly akin to “geoengineering the atmosphere” to prevent climate change – some people, having given up on taming the fossil-fuel companies, want to instead pump the atmosphere full of sulphur to block incoming solar radiation. Both cases are based on the premise that we humans won’t rise to the occasion.
I hope Savulescu seriously underestimates the power of both technology and democracy – of the solar panel and of nonviolence. I believe we have the means at hand to solve our problems short of turning our children into saintly robots – which, in any event, wouldn’t do a thing to solve climate change, given that by the time these morally improved youths had grown into positions of power, the damage would long since have been done. And I’m convinced Savulescu is wrong about people’s selfishness presenting the main obstacle to solving climate change: around the world, polling shows that people are not just highly concerned about global warming, but also willing to pay a price to solve it. Americans, for instance, said in 2017 that they were willing to see their energy bills rise 15% and have the money spent on clean energy programmes – that’s about in line with the size of the carbon taxes that national groups have been campaigning for.
The reason we don’t have a solution to climate change has less to do with the greed of the great, unengineered unwashed than with the greed of the almost unbelievably small percentage of people at the top of the energy heap. That is to say, the Koch brothers and the Exxon execs have never been willing to take a 15% slice off their profits, not when they could spend a much smaller share of their winnings corrupting the political debate with rolls of cash. If you wanted to “morally enhance” anyone, that’s where you’d start – if there are Grinches in need of hearts, it’s pretty obvious who should be at the front of the line.
But let’s not win that way. Let’s operate on the assumption that human beings are not grossly defective. That we’re capable of acting together to do remarkable things.
• Bill McKibben is an environmentalist, author and journalist
This is an edited extract from Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben (Headline)
Global warming has increased global economic inequality
Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Marshall Burke
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2019/04/global-warming-has-increased-global.html
PNAS first published April 22, 2019
To stop global catastrophe, we must believe in humans again
Bill McKibben
We have the technology to prevent climate crisis. But now we need to unleash mass resistance too – because collective action does work
@billmckibben
Tue 23 Apr 2019
‘We have two relatively new inventions that could prove decisive to solving
global warming before it destroys the planet. One is the solar panel.’
Photograph: Gérard Julien/AFP/Getty Images
Because I am concerned about inequality and about the environment, I am usually classed as a progressive, a liberal. But it seems to me that what I care most about is preserving a world that bears some resemblance to the past: a world with some ice at the top and bottom and the odd coral reef in between; a world where people are connected to the past and future (and to one another) instead of turned into obsolete software.
And those seem to me profoundly conservative positions. Meanwhile, oil companies and tech barons strike me as deeply radical, willing to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere, eager to confer immortality.
There is a native conservatism in human beings that resists such efforts, a visceral sense of what’s right or dangerous, rash or proper. You needn’t understand every nuance of germline engineering or the carbon cycle to understand why monkeying around on this scale might be a bad idea. And indeed, polling suggests that most people instinctively oppose, say, living forever or designing babies, just as they want government action to stabilise the climate.
Luckily, we have two relatively new inventions that could prove decisive to solving global warming before it destroys the planet. One is the solar panel, and the other is the nonviolent movement. Obviously, they are not the same sort of inventions: the solar panel (and its cousins, the wind turbine and the lithium-ion battery) is hardware, while the ability to organise en masse for change is more akin to software. Indeed, even to call nonviolent campaigning a “technology” will strike some as odd. Each is still in its infancy; we deploy them, but fairly blindly, finding out by trial and error their best uses. Both come with inherent limits: neither is as decisive or as immediately powerful as, say, a nuclear weapon or a coal-fired power plant. But both are transformative nonetheless – and, crucially, the power they wield is human in scale.
Before we can best employ these technologies, we need to address the two most insidious ideas deployed in defence of the status quo. The first is that there is no need for mass resistance because each of us should choose for ourselves the future we want. The second is that there is no possibility of resistance because the die is already cast.
Choice is the mantra that unites people of many political persuasions. Conservatives say, “you’re not the boss of me”, when it comes to paying taxes; liberals say it when the topic is marijuana. The easiest, laziest way to dispense with a controversy is to say: “Do what you want; don’t tell me what to do.”
If “let anyone do what they want” is a flawed argument, then “no one can stop them anyway” is an infuriating one. Insisting that some horror is inevitable no matter what you do is the response of those who don’t want to be bothered trying to stop it, and I’ve heard it too often to take it entirely seriously.
I remember, for instance, when investigative reporters proved that Exxon had known all about global warming and had covered up that knowledge. Plenty of people on the professionally jaded left told me, in one form or another, “of course they did”, or “all corporations lie”, or “nothing will ever happen to them anyway”. This kind of knowing cynicism is a gift to the Exxons of the world. Happily, far more people reacted with usefully naive outrage: before too long, people were comparing the oil giants with the tobacco companies, and some of the biggest cities in the US were suing them for damages. We don’t know yet precisely how it will end, only that giving them a pass because of their power makes no sense.
Because I am concerned about inequality and about the environment, I am usually classed as a progressive, a liberal. But it seems to me that what I care most about is preserving a world that bears some resemblance to the past: a world with some ice at the top and bottom and the odd coral reef in between; a world where people are connected to the past and future (and to one another) instead of turned into obsolete software.
And those seem to me profoundly conservative positions. Meanwhile, oil companies and tech barons strike me as deeply radical, willing to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere, eager to confer immortality.
There is a native conservatism in human beings that resists such efforts, a visceral sense of what’s right or dangerous, rash or proper. You needn’t understand every nuance of germline engineering or the carbon cycle to understand why monkeying around on this scale might be a bad idea. And indeed, polling suggests that most people instinctively oppose, say, living forever or designing babies, just as they want government action to stabilise the climate.
The financial sector must be at the heart of tackling climate changeMark Carney, François Villeroy de Galhau and Frank Elderson
Luckily, we have two relatively new inventions that could prove decisive to solving global warming before it destroys the planet. One is the solar panel, and the other is the nonviolent movement. Obviously, they are not the same sort of inventions: the solar panel (and its cousins, the wind turbine and the lithium-ion battery) is hardware, while the ability to organise en masse for change is more akin to software. Indeed, even to call nonviolent campaigning a “technology” will strike some as odd. Each is still in its infancy; we deploy them, but fairly blindly, finding out by trial and error their best uses. Both come with inherent limits: neither is as decisive or as immediately powerful as, say, a nuclear weapon or a coal-fired power plant. But both are transformative nonetheless – and, crucially, the power they wield is human in scale.
Before we can best employ these technologies, we need to address the two most insidious ideas deployed in defence of the status quo. The first is that there is no need for mass resistance because each of us should choose for ourselves the future we want. The second is that there is no possibility of resistance because the die is already cast.
Choice is the mantra that unites people of many political persuasions. Conservatives say, “you’re not the boss of me”, when it comes to paying taxes; liberals say it when the topic is marijuana. The easiest, laziest way to dispense with a controversy is to say: “Do what you want; don’t tell me what to do.”
If “let anyone do what they want” is a flawed argument, then “no one can stop them anyway” is an infuriating one. Insisting that some horror is inevitable no matter what you do is the response of those who don’t want to be bothered trying to stop it, and I’ve heard it too often to take it entirely seriously.
I remember, for instance, when investigative reporters proved that Exxon had known all about global warming and had covered up that knowledge. Plenty of people on the professionally jaded left told me, in one form or another, “of course they did”, or “all corporations lie”, or “nothing will ever happen to them anyway”. This kind of knowing cynicism is a gift to the Exxons of the world. Happily, far more people reacted with usefully naive outrage: before too long, people were comparing the oil giants with the tobacco companies, and some of the biggest cities in the US were suing them for damages. We don’t know yet precisely how it will end, only that giving them a pass because of their power makes no sense.Innovation doesn’t scare me. I think that if we back off the most crazed frontiers of technology, we can still figure out how to keep humans healthy, safe, productive – and human. Not everyone agrees. Some harbour a deep pessimism about human nature which I confess, as an American in the age of Donald Trump, occasionally seems sound.
Of all the arguments for unhindered technological growth, the single saddest (in the sense that it just gives up on human beings) comes from the Oxford don Julian Savulescu. In essence he contends that, left to themselves, democracies can’t solve climate change, “for in order to do so a majority of their voters must support the adoption of substantial restrictions on their excessively consumerist lifestyle, and there is no indication they would be willing to make such sacrifices”. Also, our ingrained suspicion of outsiders keeps us from working together globally. And so, faced with the need to move quickly, we should “morally bio-enhance” our children or, more likely, use genetic engineering, so they will cooperate.
This is roughly akin to “geoengineering the atmosphere” to prevent climate change – some people, having given up on taming the fossil-fuel companies, want to instead pump the atmosphere full of sulphur to block incoming solar radiation. Both cases are based on the premise that we humans won’t rise to the occasion.
I hope Savulescu seriously underestimates the power of both technology and democracy – of the solar panel and of nonviolence. I believe we have the means at hand to solve our problems short of turning our children into saintly robots – which, in any event, wouldn’t do a thing to solve climate change, given that by the time these morally improved youths had grown into positions of power, the damage would long since have been done. And I’m convinced Savulescu is wrong about people’s selfishness presenting the main obstacle to solving climate change: around the world, polling shows that people are not just highly concerned about global warming, but also willing to pay a price to solve it. Americans, for instance, said in 2017 that they were willing to see their energy bills rise 15% and have the money spent on clean energy programmes – that’s about in line with the size of the carbon taxes that national groups have been campaigning for.
Glaciers and Arctic ice are vanishing. Time to get radical before it's too lateBill McKibben
The reason we don’t have a solution to climate change has less to do with the greed of the great, unengineered unwashed than with the greed of the almost unbelievably small percentage of people at the top of the energy heap. That is to say, the Koch brothers and the Exxon execs have never been willing to take a 15% slice off their profits, not when they could spend a much smaller share of their winnings corrupting the political debate with rolls of cash. If you wanted to “morally enhance” anyone, that’s where you’d start – if there are Grinches in need of hearts, it’s pretty obvious who should be at the front of the line.
But let’s not win that way. Let’s operate on the assumption that human beings are not grossly defective. That we’re capable of acting together to do remarkable things.
• Bill McKibben is an environmentalist, author and journalist
This is an edited extract from Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben (Headline)
Global warming has increased global economic inequality
Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Marshall Burke
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2019/04/global-warming-has-increased-global.html
PNAS first published April 22, 2019
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