stories of more than passing significance from this week’s feeds
Ocean Current Scene One of the scariest bits from John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes is the bit when the baddy aliens melt the polar ice caps, wrecking the world’s weather and nearly destroying humanity. But hey, who needs aliens? Read this from Nature Briefings
There are worrying signs that torrents of fresh water melting off Antarctica are disrupting the flows of cold, salty, oxygen-rich water that drive crucial deep-ocean currents. These powerful currents store and transport huge amounts of heat and carbon around the world, and support marine life by churning nutrient-rich water from the depths to the surface. A slowdown in this ‘overturning circulation’ could drive further melting and shift rainfall patterns around the globe.The Straits Times | 4 min read
Reference: Nature paper
Live Fast, Die Young, US-style Amazing how, with all those advances in medicine and science, people are starting to die younger and younger. At least in the United States. And it may surprise you to learn it’s not all down to the gun lobby. Nature Briefings, so good we ran it twice
Ten years after a landmark study on life expectancy in the United States, the news is grim: the number of years a person can expect to live has dropped for the second year in a row, down to 76 years. Maternal mortality and child mortality are rising. And many of the myriad causes of shortened life expectancy are more likely to affect younger people: death from guns, cars and opioids, for example. One thing that might help, say public-health researchers, is for people to open their minds to what works in other countries. “You look at these healthier countries, they’re free countries — England, France, Italy — they’re not banning delicious foods. They’re not chaining people to treadmills,” notes Ravi Sawhney, a co-author of the landmark report.NPR | 11 min read
Reference: US Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health report (from 2013)
Banks for the memory Two weeks ago the media were full of the SVB debacle and its consequences Think the whole thing’s gone away? Your troubles are just beginning according to The Conversation
He saw it coming The Guardian long read can be just that, so normally we wouldn’t recommend it to busy people. But Professor Timothy Snyder saw Putin coming, long ago That’s prescience indeed:
He saw it coming too Real Climate scientists do real original work. And have been doing it for decades. The so called skeptics just cherry pick bits of data, bluster and try to cast doubt, and rarely do original research of their own. Claude Lorius belonged to the former group, and right back in 1965 he may already have started to save your childrens’ lives
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65060965
Music for former Presidents Recently, we came across a web site called 20 Classic Songs about Prison and Spending Time in the Slammer Tracks include
JAILHOUSE ROCK Elvis Presley JAILBREAK Thin Lizzy LOCKED UP IN JAIL John Lee Hooker
CHAIN GANG Sam Cooke……and lots, lots more more Why do we think a certain rather orange coloured former President of the United States might find it appropriate?
Enjoy your weekend, Donald. And everyone else too.
#global warming #climate change #antarctic #life expectancy #health
Learning, Science and Society 