science

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The surgeon general, Jerome Adams, has announced that the coming week will see enormous numbers of coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations, calling it this generation’s “Pearl Harbor.” But while Pearl Harbor was a plot of far right wing Japanese generals to get the US fleet out of the way so they […]

Epidemics

Why the ‘herd immunity’ route to fighting coronavirus is unethical and potentially dangerous

The Conversation

By Arindam Basu | – As most of the world tries to suppress the coronavirus spread, some countries are going it alone – trying to manage the pandemic through so-called “herd immunity”. Herd immunity means letting a large number of people catch a disease, and hence develop immunity to it, to stop the virus spreading. […]

Australia

Climate Catastrophe: With a Billion Animals Dead and the Koala in Danger, Will Australia’s Ecology Ever be the Same?

The Conversation

By Darren Evans | – The sheer scale and intensity of the Australian bushfire crisis have led to apocalyptic scenes making the front pages of newspapers the world over. An estimated 10 million hectares (100,000 sq km) of land have burned since 1 July 2019. At least 28 people have died. And over a billion […]

Climate Crisis

What the Dinosaurs Teach us: Earth won’t Recover from Human-Caused Mass Extinction for 2 mn Years

The Conversation

By Paul Bown, Samantha Gibbs, and Sarah Alvarez | – Around 66 million years ago, a giant asteroid struck the Earth, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs, ammonites, and many other species. The asteroid was equally devastating at a microscopic level, driving ocean plankton to near-extinction. This crippled the base of the marine food chain […]

astronomy and outer space

No, Ben Shapiro, Science isn’t White

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In this clip via Twitter, Ben Shapiro, who is somehow touted as a serious thinker on the Right, alleges that the scientific method is peculiar to something he calls “the West.” He appears to think it consists of Greek empiricism mixed with what he terms a “Judeo-Christian” conviction that to […]

Mass Extinction

We are about to drive 1 million species to extinction w/out a Revolution in our relationship with Nature

The Conversation

By Michelle Lim | – We are witnessing the loss of biodiversity at rates never before seen in human history. Nearly a million species face extinction if we do not fundamentally change our relationship with the natural world, according to the world’s largest assessment of biodiversity. Last week, in the culmination of a process involving […]

astronomy and outer space

The Coming Great Satellite Space War between Nuclear-Armed India and Pakistan

Dilip Hiro

It’s still the most dangerous border on Earth. Yet compared to the recent tweets of President Donald Trump, it remains a marginal news story. That doesn’t for a moment diminish the chance that the globe’s first (and possibly ultimate) nuclear conflagration could break out along that 480-mile border known as the Line of Control (and, […]

astronomy and outer space

A New Space Race? China First to Land on Far Side of Moon

The Conversation

By Wendy Whitman Cobb | – China became the third country to land a probe on the Moon on Jan. 2. But, more importantly, it became the first to do so on the far side of the moon, often called the dark side. The ability to land on the far side of the moon is […]

Artificial Intelligence

“Alexa, Launch Our Nukes!” Artificial Intelligence and the Future of War

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com) – There could be no more consequential decision than launching atomic weapons and possibly triggering a nuclear holocaust. President John F. Kennedy faced just such a moment during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and, after envisioning the catastrophic outcome of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear exchange, he came to the conclusion that the atomic […]