Humanity is facing a bizarre new pandemic threat, scientists have warned. Ancient viruses frozen in the Arctic permafrost could one day be released by Earth’s warming climate and unleash a major disease outbreak, they say.
LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/21/arctic-zombie-viruses-in-siberia-could-spark-terrifying-new-pandemic-scientists-warn
In a speech about climate change from April 4th of this year, UN General Secretary António Guterres lambasted “the empty pledges that put us on track to an unlivable world” and warned that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster” (1). Although stark, Guterres’ statements were not novel. Guterres has made similar remarks on previous occasions, as have other public figures, including Sir David Attenborough, who warned in 2018 that inaction on climate change could lead to “the collapse of our civilizations” (2). In their article, “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021”—which now has more than 14,700 signatories from 158 countries—William J. Ripple and colleagues state that climate change could “cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable” (3).
READ ARTICLE: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2210525119?s=03
Rapid reduction in fossil fuel burning urgently needed to preserve liveable conditions, say scientists, as climate damage deepens
2023 “smashed” the record for the hottest year by a huge margin, providing “dramatic testimony” of how much warmer and more dangerous today’s climate is from the cooler one in which human civilization developed.
Link to article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/09/2023-record-world-hottest-climate-fossil-fuel
Hello!
ATC is happy to hand out the first issue of the Anti-Tech Collective Journal. The journal features 4 essays but should be enough to keep you busy for a while! This project has been an experiment in focussing on subscriber-submitted contributions, differing significantly from ATC’s past publication projects. We look forward to hearing all of your feedback–both positive and negative–as this is primarily a community endeavor to foster discussion of and expose to anti-tech ideas.
Happy reading, and apologies for the general lack of communication,
The ATC team
ATCJ 1.1
Across the globe, this summer has been unusually, unseasonably, and scarily hot, with the United Nations announcing that we’ve entered the era of “global boiling.” Scientists say this extreme heat wave would be impossible if it weren’t for the warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. And yet it’s hard to grapple with the damage caused by extreme heat. It’s the deadliest kind of climate disaster, and yet victims of heat often die out of sight of the public eye. FEMA doesn’t even respond to extreme heat waves in the way it does to other “major disasters.” Jake Bittle is a staff writer at Grist covering climate impact. In this conversation, Bittle speaks with Brooke about the invisibility of extreme heat, and the challenge it presents to news outlets, and the potential value of naming heat waves.
This is a segment from our August 18, 2023 show, Read All About It.
The soldier of the future will be “flooded with pain-numbing stimulants,” cybernetically enhanced, and, one official sort-of joked, must be eventually “terminated.”
The Pentagon is looking toward a future where the U.S. deploys “super soldiers” directly inspired by Captain America and Iron Man, officials said at a recent conference.
Videos citing the document had been viewed far less than many TikTok posts. Then a journalist made a compilation and posted it to X, causing attention to the manifesto to explode.
On Monday, a TikTok user with 371 followers, using the screen name “_monix2,” posted a video where she read parts of Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” in which the late terrorist leader said his killings of nearly 3,000 Americans in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had been justified by the United States’ support of Israel’s “occupation” of the Palestinian territories.
LINK: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2023/11/16/guardian-osama-bin-laden-letter-to-america/
Chris and Eric Weinstein explore the ramifications of sidelining physics. Why does Eric Weinstein believe it’s crucial to prioritize physics? How does Eric Weinstein attribute physics decline to events in the ’80s? What are Eric Weinstein’s suggestions for restoring interplanetary physics to prominence?
An American lawyer has been arrested in Panama after allegedly shooting two people taking part in an environmental protest Tuesday. Local media reports identified Kenneth Darlington, 77, as a Panama-born U.S. citizen. On Tuesday, he allegedly walked up to a group of protesters blocking the Pan-American Highway in the Chame District and remonstrated with the attendees. He then pulled out a pistol and—in front of a group of journalists reporting on the protest—allegedly opened fire. One victim, Abdiel Díaz Chávez, died at the scene, while another Iván Rodríguez Mendoza, was pronounced dead at a medical facility, according to TVN. Both victims were teachers, the report said, adding that Darlington has been charged with aggravated homicide and illegal possession of firearms.
This year is “virtually certain” to be the warmest in 125,000 years, European Union scientists said on Wednesday, after data showed last month was the world’s hottest October in that period.
Last month smashed through the previous October temperature record, from 2019, by a massive margin, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.
“The record was broken by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is a huge margin,” said C3S Deputy Director Samantha Burgess, who described the October temperature anomaly as “very extreme”.
The heat is a result of continued greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, combined with the emergence this year of the El Nino weather pattern, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Globally, the average surface air temperature in October was 1.7 degrees Celsius warmer than the same month in 1850-1900, which Copernicus defines as the pre-industrial period.
The record-breaking October means 2023 is now “virtually certain” to be the warmest year recorded, C3S said in a statement. The previous record was 2016 – another El Nino year.
Copernicus’ dataset goes back to 1940. “When we combine our data with the IPCC, then we can say that this is the warmest year for the last 125,000 years,” Burgess said.
