Sir David Attenborough makes bold statement about the future of humanity: ‘This needs to be shared as much as possible’
Erin Feiger – November 15, 2023
The voice of “Planet Earth” has spoken, and it brings a dire warning and a plea.
Sir David Attenborough, British biologist, natural historian, and narrator of the beloved television series “Planet Earth,” among many other things, spoke about the state of the planet.
The video was shared to X, formerly known as Twitter, and is just over a minute long, yet carries a warning spanning millions of years.
“‘Please make no mistake. Climate change is the biggest threat to global security that modern humans have ever faced.’ Sir David Attenborough,” reads the caption above the video.
"Please make no mistake. Climate change is the biggest threat to global security that modern humans have ever faced." Sir David Attenborough.
The Attenborough quote — which is spoken at the end of the video — is then followed by words from the poster: “No time to wait. #ActOnClimate.”
As for the video itself, Attenborough explains that due to increased warming, “Our atmosphere now contains concentrations of carbon dioxide that have not been equaled for millions of years.”
He continues to say that we are close to reaching tipping points that, once passed, will send global temperatures spiraling.
“If we continue on our current path,” he warns, “We will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security. Food production, access to fresh water, habitable ambient temperatures, and ocean food chains, and if the natural world can no longer support the most basic of our needs, then much of the rest of civilization will quickly break down.”
His warning is not unfounded either, as there are more and more examples of ocean food chains at risk, dangerous extreme temperatures, decreasing water access, and loss of essential ecosystems like glaciers.
While the video and the warning came with the usual level of naysaying and denial, many viewers seemed to hear the message loud and clear.
“The feeling of shouting into a void,” lamented one viewer. “He’s absolutely correct, but no one is listening.”
“This needs to be shared as much as possible,” said another. “Humanity has to realize, we are all in trouble…earth is home to all of us.”
One of the cows reportedly suffered as many as 10,000 tick bites.
Asian longhorned ticks (ALTs) have been spreading across the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. since at least 2017, according to the Center for Disease Prevention (CDC), and the pests’ numbers are now on the rise in Ohio—a recent study from the Ohio State University reveals. According to the study’s authors, 9,287 invasive ticks were removed from a farm in eastern Ohio in the summer of 2021 after three cattle were reported dead from tick bites by the landowner.
During the study—lead-authored by Ohio State Assistant Professor of Veterinary Preventive Medicine Risa Pesapane—scientists continued to monitor the invasive tick population after most of the pests were killed off with pesticides. They found that the Asian longhorn ticks returned to the pasture and continued to spread in June 2022, despite the tick control efforts undertaken in 2021.
“You cannot spray your way out of an Asian longhorned tick infestation,” Pesapane said in a Nov. 3 news release. “They are going to spread to pretty much every part of Ohio and they are going to be a long-term management problem. There is no getting rid of them.”
Pesapane said that the cattle killed during the 2021 ALT infestation in eastern Ohio sustained thousands of tick bites. “One of those was a healthy male bull, about 5 years old,” she said in the press release. “Enormous. To have been taken down by exsanguination by ticks, you can imagine that was tens of thousands of ticks on one animal.” The term “exsanguination” refers to the action of draining a person, animal, or organ of the blood needed to sustain life.
On its website, the CDC says that ALTs, native to east Asia, have spread to 19 U.S. states since they were first reported in New Jersey in 2017. The list includes Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
According to Pesapane, the invasive tick’s rapid spread lies in its ability to reproduce asexually, without mating. “There are no other ticks in North America that do that. So they can just march on, with exponential growth, without any limitation of having to find a mate,” Pesapane said. “Where the habitat is ideal, and anecdotally it seems that un-mowed pastures are an ideal location, there’s little stopping them from generating these huge numbers.”
Read Next: Is Whitetail Deer Blood the Key to Fighting Lyme Disease in Humans?
The CDC is urging anyone who finds an Asian longhorn tick on a person, pet, or on livestock, to remove the pest as quickly as possible. “Save the tick in rubbing alcohol in a jar or a ziplock bag,” the agency advises, “then contact your health department about steps you can take to prevent tick bites and tickborne diseases.
Brazil: Health warnings as country gripped by ‘unbearable’ heatwave
Kathryn Armstrong – BBC News – November 15, 2023
Red alerts have been issued for almost 3,000 towns and cities across Brazil, which have been experiencing an unprecedented heatwave.
Rio de Janeiro recorded 42.5C on Sunday – a record for November – and high humidity on Tuesday meant that it felt like 58.5C, municipal authorities said.
More than a hundred million people have been affected by the heat, which is expected to last until at least Friday.
Officials have attributed it to the El Niño phenomenon and climate change.
The city of São Paulo saw average temperatures of 37.3C on Tuesday afternoon, the National Institute of Meteorology (Inmet) reported.
“I’m exhausted, it’s hard,” Riquelme da Silva, 22, told AFP news agency on the streets there.
“When I get home, it’s cold water, otherwise I can’t even get up because I’m so tired. It’s even hard to sleep.”
Dora, a 60-year-old street vendor, described the heat as “unbearable” for those who worked outside.
The authorities have attributed the heatwave to the El Niño phenomenon and climate change
Inmet has issued red alerts for a large part of the country. These indicate that temperatures may be 5C above average for longer than five days and could pose a serious danger to health.
The heatwave, which comes more than a month before the beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere, has seen Brazil’s energy consumption soar to record levels as people try to keep themselves cool.
Inmet research released last week showed that the average temperature in the country had been above the historical average from July to October.
Extreme weather is becoming more frequent and more intense in many places around the world because of climate change.
Trump Wants Us to Know He Will Stop at Nothing in 2025
By Jamelle Bouie – November 14, 2023
Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times
Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump would do if given a second chance in the White House. And it is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole to say that it looks an awful lot like a set of plans meant to give the former president the power and unchecked authority of a strongman.
Trump would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible. In their place, he would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution.
With the help of these unscrupulous allies, Trump plans to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals. He would use the military to crush protests under the Insurrection Act — which he hoped to do during the summer of 2020 — and turn the power of the federal government against his perceived enemies.
“If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election,” Trump said in a recent interview on the Spanish-language network Univision.
As the former president wrote in a disturbing and authoritarian-minded Veterans Day message to supporters (itself echoing a speech he delivered that same day to supporters in New Hampshire): “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.”
Trump has other plans as well. As several of my Times colleagues reported last week, he hopes to institute a program of mass detainment and deportation of undocumented immigrants. His aides have already drawn up plans for new detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border, where anyone suspected of illegal entry would be held until authorities have settled the person’s immigration status.
Given the former president’s rhetoric attacking political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups, like the homeless — Trump has said that the government should “remove” homeless Americans and put them in tents on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities” — there’s little doubt that some citizens would find themselves in these large and sprawling camps.
Included in this effort to rid the United States of as many immigrants as possible is a proposal to target people here legally — like green-card holders or people on student visas — who harbor supposedly “jihadist sympathies” or espouse views deemed anti-American. Trump also intends to circumvent the 14th Amendment so that he can end birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants.
In the past, Trump has gestured at seeking a third term in office after serving a second four-year term in the White House. “We are going to win four more years,” Trump said during his 2020 campaign. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.” This, too, would violate the Constitution, but then, in a world in which Trump gets his way on his authoritarian agenda, the Constitution — and the rule of law — would already be a dead letter.
It might be tempting to dismiss the former president’s rhetoric and plans as either jokes or the ravings of a lunatic who may eventually find himself in jail. But to borrow an overused phrase, it is important to take the words of both presidents and presidential candidates seriously as well as literally.
They may fail — in fact, they often do — but presidents try to keep their campaign promises and act on their campaign plans. In a rebuke to those who urged us not to take him literally in 2016, we saw Trump attempt to do what he said he would do during his first term in office. He said he would “build a wall,” and he tried to build a wall. He said he would try to keep Muslims out of the country, and he tried to keep Muslims out of the country. He said he would do as much as he could to restrict immigration from Mexico, and he did as much as he could, and then some, to restrict immigration from Mexico.
He even suggested, in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, that he would reject an election defeat. Four years later, he lost his bid for re-election. We know what happened next.
In addition to Trump’s words, which we should treat as a reliable guide to his actions, desires and preoccupations, we have his allies, who are as open in their contempt for democracy as Trump is. Ensconced at institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, Trump’s political and ideological allies have made no secret of their desire to install a reactionary Caesar at the head of the American state.
As Damon Linker noted this month in his essay on these figures for Times Opinion, they exist to give “Republican elites permission and encouragement to do things that just a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable.”
Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that have been hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen.
And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.
Heat projected to kill nearly five times more people by 2050
Daniel Lawler – November 15, 2023
Scientists have warned that the number of heat-related deaths will sore in the coming decades if the world does not decrease its carbon emissions (DAVID SWANSON)
Nearly five times more people will likely die due to extreme heat in the coming decades, an international team of experts said Wednesday, warning that without action on climate change the “health of humanity is at grave risk”.
Lethal heat was just one of the many ways the world’s still-increasing use of fossil fuels threatens human health, according to The Lancet Countdown, a major annual assessment carried out by leading researchers and institutions.
More common droughts will put millions at risk of starving, mosquitoes spreading farther than ever before will take infectious diseases with them, and health systems will struggle to cope with the burden, the researchers warned.
The dire assessment comes during what is expected to be the hottest year in human history — just last week, Europe’s climate monitor declared that last month was the warmest October on record.
It also comes ahead of the COP28 climate talks in Dubai later this month, which will for the first time host a “health day” on December 3 as experts try to shine a light on global warming’s impact on health.
Despite growing calls for global action, energy-related carbon emissions hit new highs last year, the Lancet Countdown report said, singling out still-massive government subsidies and private bank investments into planet-heating fossil fuels.
– ‘Crisis on top of a crisis’ –
Last year people worldwide were exposed to an average of 86 days of life-threatening temperatures, according to the Lancet Countdown study. Around 60 percent of those days were made more than twice as likely due to climate change, it said.
The number of people over 65 who died from heat rose by 85 percent from 1991-2000 to 2013-2022, it added.
“However these impacts that we are seeing today could be just an early symptom of a very dangerous future,” Lancet Countdown’s executive director Marina Romanello said.
Under a scenario in which the world warms by two degrees Celsius by the end of the century — it is currently on track for 2.7C — annual heat-related deaths were projected to increase 370 percent by 2050. That marks a 4.7-fold increase.
Around 520 million more people will experience moderate or severe food insecurity by mid-century, according to the projections.
And mosquito-borne infectious diseases will continue to spread into new areas. The transmission of dengue would increase by 36 percent under a 2C warming scenario, according to the study.
Meanwhile, more than a quarter of cities surveyed by the researchers said they were worried that climate change would overwhelm their capacity to cope.
“We’re facing a crisis on top of a crisis,” said Lancet Countdown’s Georgiana Gordon-Strachan, whose homeland Jamaica is currently in the middle of a dengue outbreak.
“People living in poorer countries, who are often least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, are bearing the brunt of the health impacts,” she said.
– ‘Moving in the wrong direction’ –
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an online conference launching the Lancet Countdown report that limiting warming to the Paris agreement target of 1.5C is a “public health imperative”.
“The world is moving in the wrong direction, unable to curb its addiction to fossil fuels and leaving vulnerable communities behind in the much-needed energy transition,” Tedros said.
On Tuesday, the UN warned that countries’ current pledges will cut global carbon emissions by just two percent by 2030 from 2019 levels — far short of the 43 percent drop needed to limit warming to 1.5C.
Romanello cautioned that if more progress is not made on emissions, then “the growing emphasis on health within climate change negotiations risks being just empty words”.
However there are “glimmers of hope”, she added.
The number of global deaths linked to air pollution from fossil fuels has fallen 16 percent since 2005, mostly thanks to efforts to reduce the impact of coal burning, the report said.
Global investment in green energy rose by 15 percent to $1.6 trillion last year, compared to $1 trillion for fossil fuels.
And if people changed to healthier, lower-carbon diets it would prevent up to 12 million deaths a year, at the same reducing emissions from dairy and red meat production by 57 percent, the report said.
‘Devastating toll’ of climate change now impacting ‘all regions’ of the U.S., Biden says
The federal government’s fifth National Climate Assessment, released Tuesday, details how climate change is affecting every corner of the country.
Ben Adler, Senior Editor – November 14, 2023
Every region of the United States is now seeing rapid warming due to climate change, according to the federal government’s fifth National Climate Assessment, which was released Tuesday.
“I’ve seen firsthand what the report makes clear: the devastating toll of climate change. And its existential threat to all of us,” President Biden said from the White House Tuesday morning. “I’ve walked the streets of Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Florida, Puerto Rico, where historic floods and hurricanes wiped out homes, hospitals, houses of worship.”
“This assessment shows us in clear scientific terms that climate change is impacting all regions, all sectors of the United States — not just some, all,” he added.
The report lays out in stark detail how climate change is already harming communities nationwide.
“Climate change is finally moving from an abstract future issue to a present, concrete, relevant issue. It’s happening right now,” the report’s lead author, Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy and a professor at Texas Tech University, said in a statement.
Here are the key takeaways from the assessment.
Everyone is feeling the heat
National Park Service Rangers Gia Ponce (left) and Christina Caparelli are photographed by Ranger Nicole Bernard next to a digital display of an unofficial heat reading at Furnace Creek Visitor Center in Death Valley National Park in Death Valley, Calif., on July 16. (Ronda Churchill / AFP via Getty Images) (AFP via Getty Images)
This year is on pace to be the warmest on record globally, and in the U.S., the heat is being felt nationwide, according to the report, which the federal government is required by law to produce every five years:
Every single region has higher average temperatures today than it did between 1951 and 1980.
The U.S. is warming faster than most of the world. Since 1970, the Lower 48 states have warmed by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and Alaska by 4.2 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with the global average temperature rise of 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
Phoenix set a record this year with 54 days of high temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or greater, including 31 straight days over 110.
In Alaska, melting glaciers, thawing permafrost and disappearing sea ice are destroying the hunting and fishing-dependent economy. Some Indigenous communities may need to be relocated to flee rising sea levels.
Since warming is happening faster at higher latitudes, the report projects that the U.S. will warm about 40% more than the global average in the future.
Vehicles make their way through floodwater in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Sept. 29. (Ed Jones / AFP via Getty Images) (AFP via Getty Images)
Warmer air holds more moisture, so climate change is throwing the water cycle out of whack, researchers say. Since 2000, the western half of the country has endured a two-decade megadrought that has threatened freshwater supplies for millions of people.
But while annual rainfall has decreased in much of that region, the entire country has seen an increase in heavy precipitation events. As a result, this year saw a series of sometimes deadly flash floods from Californiato Vermont.
Burned trees from recent wildfires stand in a forest in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, Canada, on Sept. 3. The United States has been inundated with wildfire smoke from Canada this year. (Victor R. Caivano/AP Photo) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Warmer temperatures and dried-out vegetation from drought lead to more frequent and severe wildfires. Wildfires and the smoke they create have been an increasingly prevalent and severe problem in the West in recent years, but this summer the Northeast and Midwest were also at times enveloped in thick smoke from Canada’s record-setting wildfire season.
An economic toll
The report notes a sharp rise in the number of billion-dollar disasters in the U.S., with one occurring every three weeks since 2018. In the 1980s, the country experienced a billion-dollar weather disaster once every four months, according to the assessment.
“Extreme events cost the U.S. close to $150 billion each year — a conservative estimate that does not account for loss of life, health care-related costs or damages to ecosystem services,” the report stated.
Growing threats
The report also identifies frequent flooding due to sea-level rise and more powerful storms as a threat to low-lying regions across the country. Health risks, such as food and water contamination, increased air pollution from smoke, dust and pollen are also expected to worsen.
“Climate change threatens vital infrastructure that moves people and goods, powers homes and businesses, and delivers public services,” the report states.
The U.S. has begun to combat climate change
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on his administration’s actions to address the climate crisis in the South Court Auditorium of the White House on Tuesday. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) (AFP via Getty Images)
The report also notes that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions dropped 12% between 2005 and 2019 thanks to the adoption of renewable energy sources like wind and solar energy.
The Biden administration has attempted to build on this progress through regulatory measures, like stiff new fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. And Congress approved $369 billion for investments in clean energy and electric vehicles in the Inflation Reduction Act. But those measures are only projected to cut emissions by 40% by 2030, not the 50% Biden has pledged to the international community.
A need to adapt, and to act
States and cities across the country have begun retrofitting infrastructure to meet the challenges of climate change, and measures such as enhanced storm drain capacity and improved forest management have increased in every region since the last assessment in 2018, according to the assessment.
But the report finds that faster, more ambitious adaptation investments are needed to minimize the still-growing costs of climate change.
Who’s to blame for climate change? Scientists don’t hold back in new federal report.
Dinah Voyles Pulver and Doyle Rice – November 14, 2023
Climate change is here and prompting unprecedented actions in every state to curb the greenhouse gas emissions fueling warming temperatures, but a new federal report out Tuesday says bigger, bolder steps are needed.
In remarks Tuesday morning, President Joe Biden announced more than $6 billion to bolster the electric grid, update water infrastructure, reduce flooding, and advance environmental justice.
“This assessment shows us in clear scientific terms, that climate change is impacting all regions, all sectors of the United States,” Biden said. “We’ve come to the point where it’s foolish for anyone to deny the impacts of climate change anymore.”
The assessment includes more evidence than ever before to demonstrate the cause and effects of the changing climate, said L. Ruby Leung, one of its authors. It also breaks from previous reports by saying unequivocally that humans are responsible for changes to Earth’s climate.
“It’s important for us to recognize that how much climate change we will be experiencing in the future depends on the choices that we make now,” said Leung, a climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and lead author on the earth sciences chapter.
All of the impacts people are feeling, like sea level rise and extreme weather events, she said “are tied to the global warming level, to how warm the earth becomes,” Leung said. “And that depends very much on the level of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.”
In other news, the United Nations released its latest analysis of national climate plans on Tuesday morning and found them “strikingly misaligned” with science. “The chasm between need and action is more menacing than ever,” said Secretary-General António Guterres. “It’s time for a climate ambition supernova in every country, city and sector.”
The impacts of climate change are felt in every corner of the country, the latest National Climate Assessment finds
What is the 2023 National Climate Assessment?
The massive assessment describes the climate and economic impacts Americans will see if further action is not taken to address climate change. The report, issued roughly every four years, was mandated by Congress in the late 1980s and is meant as a reference for the president, Congress, and the public.
“Too many people still think of climate change as an issue that’s distanced from us in space or time or relevance,” said Katharine Hayhoe, an author of the report and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy.
The assessment “clearly explains how climate change is affecting us here in the places where we live, both now and in the future and across every sector of human and natural society,” Hayhoe said. It also shows that “the risks matter and so do our choices.”
Climate Nexus, a nonprofit communications organization, said the new report is “essential reading,” because it highlights the seriousness of current impacts and shows the existing pace of adaptation isn’t enough to keep pace with future climate changes.
“Without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow,” the report states. “Each additional increment of warming is expected to lead to more damage and greater economic losses.”
However, greater reductions in carbon emissions could reduce the risks and impacts, and have immediate health and economic benefits, the report states.
Millions are experiencing more extreme heat waves, with warmer temperatures and longer-lasting heat waves, the report states. It adds climate changes are apparent in every region of the country.
Among the noted effects:
◾ The number of nights with minimum low temperatures at or above 70 degrees has increased compared to 1901-1960 in every corner of the country except the northern Great Plains and Alaska.
◾ Average annual precipitation is increasing in most regions, except the Northwest, Southwest, and Hawaii.
◾ Relative sea levels are increasing along much of the coast, except for Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.
◾ In the 1980s, the country experienced on average a $1 billion disaster every four months but now experiences one every three weeks. This year, the country has set a new record with 25 billion-dollar disasters.
Climate scientists around the world say 2023 is almost certain to be the globe’s warmest year in recorded human history. The global mean temperature through October was 1.4 Celsius (more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial average.
So far this year, the nation is experiencing its 11th warmest year on record through October, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. However, 12 states are experiencing their warmest or second warmest year on record.
Growing evidence that humans are changing the climate
This assessment is most notable for the certainty scientists have gained about warming and its impacts, said Leung, who served as the lead author for the report’s Earth Systems Processes chapter, which lays the scientific groundwork and is used to illustrate points throughout the report.
The chapter, a collaboration among more than a dozen authors, was intended to answer such questions as whether humans are causing global warming, whether warming is changing extreme weather and climate events and how much warming the planet might expect to see.
In prior reports, scientists often hedged their statements, for example saying they were 90% sure humans were responsible for the changes being seen,” Leung said. “In this NCA 5 report, we are now saying that we are totally sure.”
Starting from the 1900s, the observed warming has been caused by human activities, she said. “It’s definitive.”
Another key difference is scientists reduced by 50% the uncertainty in how much temperatures would warm if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles, she said. In previous assessments that number had hovered around a range from 2.7 degrees to 8 degrees. “It was a pretty big range,” she said. “Our goal has always been to narrow this down.”
Thanks to the increase in instrumental observations, satellite data, the study of the paleoclimate, and higher resolution computer modeling, scientists now have amassed more evidence than ever before, giving them more certainty, she said. “Now we can say that the global warming that is caused by a doubling of the CO2 in the atmosphere should be between 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit.”
The Fifth National Climate Assessment shows the U.S. has warmed rapidly since the 1970s.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions
Efforts to adapt to climate change, reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, and be more energy efficient are underway in every U.S. region and have expanded since 2018, the report concludes.
Greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. fell 12% between 2005 and 2019, mostly driven by changes in the way electricity is produced, the assessment concluded. The nation burns less coal, but more natural gas, which is cleaner. Because of the electrical industry’s 40% reduction in emissions, the transportation sector took the lead as the industry with the most emissions.
Growth in the capacity of wind, solar, and battery storage is supported by the falling costs of those technologies, and that ultimately means even more emissions reductions, the report states. For example, wind and solar energy costs have dropped 70% and 90%, respectively.
While the options for cleaner technologies and lower energy use have expanded, the authors found they aren’t happening fast enough for the nation to meet the goal of achieving a carbon-neutral energy system.
Without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, the scientists found severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow. Each additional increment of warming is expected to lead to more damage and greater economic losses compared to previous increments of warming, and the risks of catastrophic consequences also increase.
But the report also finds that reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere can limit future warming and associated increases in many risks, and bring immediate health and economic benefits.
What others are saying about the report:
The scientific assessment is “the latest in a series of alarm bells and illustrates that the changes we’re living through are unprecedented in human history,” said Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a contributor to the report. “The science is irrefutable: we must swiftly reduce heat-trapping emissions and enact transformational climate adaptation policies in every region of the country to limit the stampede of devastating events and the toll each one takes on our lives and the economy.”
The report illustrates three things, said Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
◾ The events Americans have already experienced firsthand are “unfolding as predicted.”
◾ Communities in every state and territory have taken action.
◾ People across the nation can use the assessment to take future actions.
For example, Prabhakar said the report could be used by a water utility manager in Chicago trying to understand extreme rainfall, an urban planner deciding where to locate cooling centers in Texas, or a manager of a Southeastern hospital trying to get ahead of the diseases ticks and mosquitoes are bringing into their region as a result of the changing climate.
What an increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit over pre-industrial temperatures would feel like in the United States.
Why Aren’t More People Getting Married? Ask Women What Dating Is Like.
By Anna Louie Sussman – November 11, 2023
Credit…Wesley Allsbrook
Ms. Sussman writes about gender, dating and reproduction.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Sarah Camino had been in a relationship for two years when she found out she was pregnant. The father, whom she met while they were both working at a restaurant in Times Square, was initially excited. But he had been using drugs lately, and had been fired from his last four jobs; when she ventured that she was scared she might wind up raising the child alone, he got defensive and walked out. She and her daughter now live in Florida with her parents, and he is not a part of their lives.
Ms. Camino, a beautician and hospitality worker, checks all the boxes of the demographic that has been targeted for advice in recent months by an array of columnists and authors, who have argued for the promotion and prioritizing of marriage, sometimes for the sake of overall happiness, but more often for the sake of children’s well-being.
She’s a 37-year-old single mother without a college degree. She cares deeply about her child’s happiness and about providing her with a good future. When I asked what she made of the advice to get married, though, she was skeptical. “I don’t think things are perfect like that,” she told me. She had planned to stay with the father, but that’s not how it happened. “I didn’t think he was gonna leave me like this,” she said.
The most recent wave of commenters have tended to position themselves as iconoclasts speaking hard truths: Two-parent families often result in better outcomes for kids, writes Megan McArdle, in The Washington Post, but “for various reasons,” she goes on, this “is too often left unsaid” — even though policy wonks, and the pundits who trumpet their ideas, have been telling (straight) people to get married for the sake of their children for decades. Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Family Studies, who recently scoffed at “the notion that love, not marriage, makes a family,” has a forthcoming book titled “Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization.” All of these scolds typically rely on the same batch of academic studies, now compiled by economist Melissa Kearney in her new book “The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind,” which show that kids with two parents fare better on a variety of life outcomes than those raised by single parents, who are overwhelmingly women.
This may well be true. But harping on people to get married from high up in the ivory tower fails to engage with the reality on the ground that heterosexual women from many walks of life confront: that is, the state of men today. Having written about gender, dating, and reproduction for years, I’m struck by how blithely these admonitions to get married skate over people’s lived experience. A more granular look at what the reality of dating looks and feels like for straight women can go a long way toward explaining why marriage rates are lower than policy scholars would prefer.
On the rare occasions that women are actually asked about their experiences with relationships, the answers are rarely what anyone wants to hear. In the late 1990s, the sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas interviewed 162 low-income single mothers in Camden, N.J., and Philadelphia to understand why they had children without being married. “Money is seldom the primary reason” why mothers say they are no longer with their children’s fathers. Instead, mothers point to “far more serious” offenses: “It is the drug and alcohol abuse, the criminal behavior and consequent incarceration, the repeated infidelity, and the patterns of intimate violence that are the villains looming largest in poor mothers’ accounts of relational failure.”
But it doesn’t take behavior this harmful to discourage marriage; often, simple compatibility or constancy can be elusive. Ms. Camino, for her part, has dabbled in dating since her partner left, but hasn’t yet met anyone who shares her values, someone who’s funny and — she hesitates to use the word “feminist” — but a man who won’t just roll his eyes and say something about being on her period whenever she voices an opinion. The last person she went out with “ghosted” her, disappearing without warning after four months of dating. “There are women that are just out here trying, and the men aren’t ready,” she told me. “They don’t care, most of them.” Who, exactly, is Ms. Camino supposed to marry?
For as long as people have been promoting marriage, they have also been observing that a good man is hard to find (see: William Julius Wilson, or early Nora Ephron). But what was once dismissed as the complaint of “picky” women is now supported by a raft of data. The same pundits plugging marriage also bemoan the crisis among men and boys, what has come to be known as “male drift” — men turning away from college, dropping out of the work force, or failing to look after their health. Ms. Kearney, for example, acknowledges that improving men’s economic position, especially men without college degrees, is an important step toward making them more attractive partners.
But even this nod ignores the qualitative aspect of the dating experience — the part that’s hard to cover in surveys, or address with policy. Daniel Cox, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who recently surveyed more than 5,000 Americans about dating and relationships, found that nearly half of college-educated women said they were single because they had trouble finding someone who meets their expectations, versus one-third of men. The in-depth interviews, he said, “were even more dispiriting.” For a variety of reasons — mixed messages from the broader culture about toughness and vulnerability, the activity-oriented nature of male friendships — it seems that by the time men begin dating, they are relatively “limited in their ability and willingness to be fully emotionally present and available,” he said.
Navigating interpersonal relationships in a time of evolving gender norms and expectations “requires a level of emotional sensitivity that I think some men probably just lack, or they don’t have the experience,” he added. He had recently read about a high school creative writing assignment in which boys and girls were asked to imagine a day from the perspective of the opposite sex. While girls wrote detailed essays showing they had already spent significant time thinking about the subject, many boys simply refused to do the exercise, or did so resentfully. Mr. Cox likened that to heterosexual relationships today: “The girls do extra and the boys do little or nothing.”
Marriage proponents often contrast the stable relationship patterns of the college-educated with the instability of the less-educated, but a bachelor’s degree is hardly a guarantee of a ring. The Yale anthropologist Marcia Inhorn’s recent book, “Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs,” argues that educated women freeze their eggs because they’re unable to find a suitable male partner: Ms. Inhorn points to a large gap in the number of college-educated women versus college-educated men during their reproductive years — on the order of several million.
But Ms. Inhorn’s book goes beyond these quantitative mismatches to document the qualitative experience of women who are actively searching for partners — the frustration, hurt and disappointment. “Almost without exception,” she writes, “women in this study were ‘trying hard’ to find a loving partner,” mostly through dating sites and apps. Women in their late 30s reported “online ageism,” others described removing their Ph.D from their profiles so as not to intimidate potential dates; still others found that men were often commitment-averse.
The behaviors were ubiquitous enough that Ms. Inhorn compiled a sort of taxonomy of cads, such as the “Alpha males” who “want to be challenged by work, not by their partners” or the “Polyamorous men” who claim “that their multiple attachments to women are all ‘committed.’” Her breakdown — table 1.1 in the book — reads like a rigorous academic version of all the complaints you’ve ever heard from your single female friends.
One of these friends, with whom I went to college, would like nothing more than to be married. She’s beautiful and successful, and not, as far as I can tell, overly “picky.” She has had long-term relationships in the past, and cherishes the intimacy and stability they provide. To that end, she keeps a post-it note on a bulletin board. On it, she has drawn out 10 lines of 10 circles each. Every time she goes on a date with someone new, she fills in a circle. She’s committed to going on at least a hundred dates as she searches for a male partner with whom she can have a family. In two years, she’s filled in nearly half of the circles, and she’s still single. It’s like an SAT test form where every answer is incorrect. When she asks her male friends to set her up with their friends, they consistently tell her that no one they know would be good enough for her. “It’s like, how bad are you guys?” she marvels.
To be sure, many men are fantastic people and partners, and I’m sure many women are loathsome, creepy or otherwise disrespectful. Many of us know these terrific men — they’re our friends, our relatives, our colleagues — and would love to meet someone similar. Relationships are an important part of life; companionship is lovely and a natural human desire. But rather than chiding people (mostly women, mostly single moms) to get married “for the children,” how about a little empathy that we’re living through a juncture where various forces at play have made meaningful companionship hard to find?
There are policy solutions that can help everyone: family allowances to curb child poverty, child care to support working and single parents, retraining out-of-work men, higher ed reform for people who want to attend college but can’t afford the cost. In the process, these policies might encourage marriage by providing economic stability. But to truly address the decline in heterosexual marriage, we must attend to the details — to acknowledge the qualitative aspects of relationship formation. And, in particular, we should listen to the experiences of women who are attempting to find partners. We should care about the interior lives, not just the educational attainment or the employment status, of the men who could be those partners.
All of this is a much trickier proposition, with no clear policy solution in sight. It requires taking the stories of single women seriously, and not treating them as punchlines — something for which there is little historical precedent, but which a handful of scholars are slowly beginning to do. But unless we pay attention to the granular experiences of people in the dating trenches, simply advising people to marry is not only, frankly, obnoxious for the many women out there trying — it’s also just not going to work.
Mind-altering ketamine becomes latest pain treatment, despite little research or regulation
Matthew Perrone – November 6, 2023
Dr. Padma Gulur, a Duke University pain specialist, stands for a portrait on Friday, Oct. 27, 2023, in Durham, N.C. Prescriptions for ketamine have soared in recent years as doctors adopt the mind-altering drug as an alternative pain treatment. Gulur and other specialists see potential for ketamine as a pain therapy, but warn it also carries risks of safety and abuse. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley)Medical equipment used to customize ketamine infusions for patients is seen at the Duke Specialty Infusion Center, Friday, Oct. 27, 2023, in Durham, N.C. Ketamine prescriptions have soared in recent years as an alternative to opioids for pain. But with little research on its effectiveness, some experts worry about the risks of overprescribing another powerful drug that carries risks of safety and abuse. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley)The Duke Specialty Infusion Center is seen prior to opening for patients, Friday, Oct. 27, 2023, in Durham, N.C. Ketamine prescriptions have soared in recent years as an alternative to opioids for pain. But with little research on its effectiveness, some experts worry about the risks of overprescribing another powerful drug that carries risks of safety and abuse. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley)Dr. Padma Gulur, a Duke University pain specialist, stands for a portrait on Friday, Oct. 27, 2023, in Durham, N.C. Prescriptions for ketamine have soared in recent years as doctors adopt the mind-altering drug as an alternative pain treatment. Gulur and other specialists see potential for ketamine as a pain therapy, but warn it also carries risks of safety and abuse. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley)Saline fluid runs through a tube demonstrating how ketamine would be administered to a patient at the Duke Speciality Infusion Center on Friday, Oct. 27, 2023, in Durham, N.C. Ketamine prescriptions have soared in recent years as an alternative to opioids for pain. But with little research on its effectiveness, some experts worry about the risks of overprescribing another powerful drug that carries risks of safety and abuse. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley)A lockbox is held to show where ketamine is placed into while administered at the Duke Speciality Infusion Center, Friday, Oct. 27, 2023, in Durham, N.C. Ketamine prescriptions have soared in recent years as an alternative to opioids for pain. But with little research on its effectiveness, some experts worry about the risks of overprescribing another powerful drug that carries risks of safety and abuse. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley)
WASHINGTON (AP) — As U.S. doctors scale back their use of opioid painkillers, a new option for hard-to-treat pain is taking root: ketamine, the decades-old surgical drug that is now a trendy psychedelic therapy.
Prescriptions for ketamine have soared in recent years, driven by for-profit clinics and telehealth services offering the medication as a treatment for pain, depression, anxiety and other conditions. The generic drug can be purchased cheaply and prescribed by most physicians and some nurses, regardless of their training.
With limited research on its effectiveness against pain, some experts worry the U.S. may be repeating mistakes that gave rise to the opioid crisis: overprescribing a questionable drug that carries significant safety and abuse risks.
“There’s a paucity of options for pain and so there’s a tendency to just grab the next thing that can make a difference,” said Dr. Padma Gulur, a Duke University pain specialist who is studying ketamine’s use. “A medical journal will publish a few papers saying, ‘Oh, look, this is doing good things,’ and then there’s rampant off-label use, without necessarily the science behind it.”
When Gulur and her colleagues tracked 300 patients receiving ketamine at Duke, more than a third of them reported significant side effects that required professional attention, such as hallucinations, troubling thoughts and visual disturbances.
Ketamine also didn’t result in lower rates of opioid prescribing in the months following treatment, a common goal of therapy, according to Gulur. Her research is under review for medical journal publication.
PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE
Ketamine was approved more than 50 years ago as a powerful anesthetic for patients undergoing surgery. At lower doses, it can produce psychedelic, out-of-body experiences, which made it a popular club drug in the 1990s. With its recent adoption for pain, patients are increasingly encountering those same effects.
Daniel Bass, of Southgate, Kentucky, found the visual disturbances “horrifying.” His doctors prescribed four- to six-hour IV infusions of ketamine for pain related to a rare bone and joint disorder. Seated in a bare hospital room with no stimulation or guidance on the drug’s psychological effects, Bass says he felt “like a lab rat.”
Still, he credits ketamine with reducing his pain during the year that he received twice-a-month infusions.
“No matter how horrific an experience is, if it allows me to be more functional, I will do it,” Bass said.
Ketamine targets a brain chemical messenger called glutamate, which is thought to play a role in both pain and depression. It’s unclear whether the psychedelic experience is part of the drug’s therapeutic effect, though some practitioners consider it essential.
“We want patients to disassociate or feel separate from their pain, depression or anxiety,” said Dr. David Mahjoubi, owner of Ketamine Healing Clinic in Los Angeles. “If they feel like they’re just sitting in the chair the whole time, we actually give them more.”
Mahjoubi’s practice is typical of the burgeoning industry: He offers IV ketamine for alcohol addiction, chronic pain, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. The ketamine doses for those indications are well below those used for surgery, but Mahjoubi favors higher doses for pain than for psychiatric conditions.
Patients pay cash because most insurers don’t cover non-surgical uses of ketamine, none of which are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Mahjoubi’s background is in anesthesiology, not psychiatry or addiction.
Patients can pay extra for ketamine nasal sprays and tablets to use between infusions. Those formulations are also not FDA approved and are compounded by specialty pharmacies.
Sending ketamine through the mail has become its own profitable business for telehealth services, such as MindBloom, which jumped into the space after regulators relaxed online prescribing rules during COVID-19.
Pain specialists who study ketamine say there’s little evidence for those versions.
“The literature for the nasal and oral formulations is pretty scant,” said Dr. Eric Schwenk of Thomas Jefferson University. “There’s just not a lot of good evidence to guide you.”
Demand for ketamine has sent prescriptions soaring more than 500% since 2017, according to Epic Research, which analyzed the trend using a database of more than 125 million patients. In each year, pain was the No. 1 condition for which ketamine was prescribed, though depression has been rising quickly.
The prescribing boom has led to shortages of manufactured ketamine, driving up sales of compounded versions.
There is more evidence for ketamine’s use against depression than for pain. In 2019, the FDA approved a ketamine-related chemical developed by Johnson & Johnson for severe depression. The drug, Spravato, is subject to strict FDA safety rules on where and how it can be administered by doctors.
Guidelines from pain societies note some evidence for ketamine’s use in complex regional pain, a chronic condition that usually affects the limbs. But the experts found “weak or no evidence” for ketamine in many more conditions, including back pain, migraines, fibromyalgia and cancer pain.
THE ‘WILD WEST’ OF KETAMINE PRESCRIBING
While the science behind ketamine is murky, the business model is clear: Physicians can purchase ketamine for less than $100 a vial and charge $500 to $1,500 per infusion.
The recent boom has been fueled, in part, by venture capital investors. Another set of consulting businesses offer to help doctors set up new clinics.
A blog post from one, Ketamine Startup, lists “Five reasons you should open a ketamine clinic,” including: “You want to be your own boss” and “You want to take control of your money-making ability.”
The clinics are facing increasing competition from telehealth services like MindBloom and Joyous, which connect potential patients with physicians who can prescribe ketamine remotely and send it through the mail.
In May, federal regulators were scheduled to roll back the COVID-era policy that allowed online prescribing of high-risk drugs like ketamine and opioids. But the Drug Enforcement Administration, facing backlash for telehealth companies and physicians, agreed to extend the flexible approach through 2024.
The current landscape is a “wild west,” said Dr. Samuel Wilkinson, a Yale University psychiatrist who prescribes both Spravato and ketamine for depression. U.S. physicians have “quite a bit of latitude” to prescribe drugs for unapproved, or off-label, uses.
“There’s good things about that and not-so-good things about that,” he said.
When used at high doses, ketamine can cause bladder damage, sometimes seen in people who use the drug recreationally. Far less is known about the neurological effects of long-term use. Ketamine was linked to brain abnormalities in rat studies, FDA regulators note.
Last month, the FDA warned doctors and patients against compounded versions of ketamine, including lozenges and pills, saying the agency does not regulate their contents and cannot assure their safety. The warning followed a similar advisory last year about nasal spray versions of ketamine.
But most compounding pharmacies are small operations, overseen by state officials, not the FDA.
In April, Massachusetts’ board of pharmacy flagged the FDA’s warning to local pharmacies, but noted that state officials wouldn’t take any steps to stop “the continued compounding and dispensing of ketamine nasal spray.”
The FDA likewise has little leverage over physicians promoting ketamine, even those making exaggerated or misleading claims.
Drugmakers are subject to strict FDA regulation in how they promote their medicines — with requirements to balance risk and benefit information. Those rules don’t apply to physicians.
Even when the FDA has tried to regulate risky in-office procedures, such as unproven stem cell infusions, the agency has had a mixed track record of prevailing in court.
For now, experts say it’s unlikely regulators will go beyond their recent warnings about off-label ketamine.
“There’s an element of whack-a-mole and it’s essentially beyond their regulatory purview,” said Dr. Caleb Alexander, a drug safety researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “These clinics would represent yet another front that they would be hard pressed to manage and address.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Startup wants to dump planet-saving substance on beaches and in ocean to help clear the air — could it work?
Susan Elizabeth Turek – November 7, 2023
Ocean waters are already an abundant resource in the battle for clean air, and San Francisco-based startup Vesta hopes to utilize another substance on our beaches and in the ocean to remove 1 billion tons of carbon pollution annually.
Bloomberg reported that the potentially planet-saving substance is olivine, a mineral that removes carbon dioxide (CO2) as part of the natural process that occurs when it dissolves in seawater.
According to IEAGHG, which funds the research and development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, CCS has been around since the 1920s, yet there were only five major CCS projects globally about a decade ago.
Since then, the potential for the technology has gained ground, with a number of new initiatives in development. Scientists are reportedly cautious, however, about investing too much hope in CCS.
Another potential roadblock to the plan? Cost.
The National Academy of Sciences projects it will take between $100 to $150 to remove just a single ton of CO2, per Bloomberg. Yet Vesta reportedly believes it could remove a ton of CO2 for only $21.
If that projection is accurate, the startup’s technology could go a long way in helping our planet.
Our oceans absorb about 31% of harmful carbon pollution. Unfortunately, that can also disrupt the natural balance of the environment and raise the acidity of the ocean, which can harm shellfish, corals, and other marine life, as well as people who rely on fisheries.
Research is ongoing to determine whether dumping large amounts of olivine in the environment would have any negative impacts, but so far, Vesta has discovered “no adverse ecological effect whatsoever” at a test beach in New York’s Hamptons, as Tom Green, Vesta’s CEO, told Bloomberg.
In order to further expand the application of its carbon-capture technology, the startup is reportedly eyeing the Hajar Mountains, which frame the coast of Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
The range has one of the largest deposits of olivine globally, Bloomberg reports, and Vesta believes the warm waters of the region could increase the efficiency of its technology.
