OUR CHANGING PLANET
Carbon capture and storage is a bad idea, which is one reason why coal is dying — though, evidently, not quickly enough.
What role will clouds play in exacerbating or ameliorating climate change? No one’s quite sure yet. What will climate change do to bridges? (Hint: it’s not good.) Is it time to place tobacco-style limits on the lobbying and influence-wielding of fossil fuel companies?
And on a lighter note (unless you find geological time makes you feel totally insignificant)… plug in your address and see what real sea level change can do with this geological map of the last few hundred million years.
MICROSCOPE ON THE YOUNG
Calling bullshit on TikTok, a middle-aged person’s idea of the social media The Yoof like. Meanwhile, a Trump administration official has quit and is campaigning against the US’ extraordinarily high (and deeply damaging) student debt burden. Talk about self-help and resilience all you like but ultimately we need support and resources and community to deal with major trauma (bonus points here if you deride Todd Sampson).
Understanding suicide rates and the claimed epidemic of white male suicide in the US. Not that non-white people fare better in the US healthcare system: how algorithms prioritise care for white patients.
MOTHERS — WHO ARE THEY AND HOW DO WE GET RID OF THEM?
It’s long been a mystery to me why cash-strapped Fairfax kept paying for Michael Leunig’s soyaccino-froth asininity, so his latest effort on women is no surprise. But nonetheless this is an expert demolition of a work the offence of which was unleavened by how twee and “whimsical” it was. Elsewhere, Mary Beard comes to the defence — kinda sorta — of Germaine Greer over her now-notorious comments about rape. Bertrand Russell, writing in 1932, wanted a more idle world, and by gum he was right.
Black politics and blackening: a new approach to black radical politics is critiqued at length, but is worth a close examination. And Samuel Beckett and white nostalgia: even if you’re sick of Brexit takes, this guide to the genteel poverty of Brexit is wonderful.
MEDIA BLINDSPOTS
As the Troubles continue to tick over, and perhaps flare up again in the wake of Brexit, here’s a history of how the British media has ignored Northern Ireland. On the same note, the US media has ignored the extent to which Mexico now faces an armed insurrection by drug gangs — who are winning, by the way.
Doing the mainstream media’s job for it: an Obama administration warmonger has his past support (now-abandoned) for the Saudi outrage in Yemen forensically dissected. And the always-excellent Mel Campbell looks at the neoliberal characteristics of streaming video services (and TV criticism).
CAPITALISM
We know that Trump’s tax cut package didn’t increase investment or wages and did increase the US deficit, but new research shows it has cost US homeowners a trillion dollars. No problems in the debt collection department then: the encrypted phone company that was run by drug traffickers (and the blogger who got too close to them).
Meanwhile, here’s data on how wage inequality has dramatically deteriorated in the US in recent decades.
AND JUSTICE FOR ALL
So it seems there will never be any justice for the victims of the post-9/11 US/UK program of abduction and torture, with a US perpetrator pardoned in Italy and allowed to return to the United States. The British perpetrators of the abduction and delivery to Gaddafi of the Libyan dissident Abdul Belhaj and his wife Fatima Boudchar — including former Blair home secretary Jack Straw and officials of MI6 — remain unprosecuted despite compelling evidence of the involvement of the British intelligence services, a formal apology from the UK government and evidence of the brutal torture of the couple by Gaddafi. Those responsible in our own case of Mamdouh Habib, rendered to torture in Egypt with the knowledge and cooperation of Howard government ministers and ASIO (hi “George”, if you’re reading), have also never been brought to justice, demonstrating you can do pretty much anything in the name of the War On Terror and never be held accountable.
FINALLY…
Does the evolution of dogs from wolves have lessons for the emergence of Homo Sapiens as the surviving human species?
Sorry, no dog video this week as I’ve been doing too many of them lately. (Just kidding.)
CCS is snake oil. Any assertion that carbon-capture-and-storage is useful denies the impossibility of storing that much stuff, anywhere. Forty billion tonnes per annum of emitted CO2 represents far too much pollutant to store permanently in the forests, soil, aquifers or ocean surface. We should not tolerate any suggestion that we could store a lesser amount and be forgiven for what we continue to emit. The kiddies will judge us for what we have emitted, not for what we have reduced.
Yes indeed Roger. I’d rate the article as a statement of the bleeding obvious but accept that for many people it may not be that obvious.
Disappointed Bernard that you’re jumping on the anti Leung band wagon. His anti vax cartoon was straight out silly but the recent phone one is obviously about all of us. Motherhood has recently become even more untouchable than ever like erm – motherhood.
Of course infant babies don’t fall out of prams. Of course infants are hard, sleep depriving work etc etc. Believe it or not even we fathers experience that too. The cartoon is about the baby. I also happen not to agree about this chapter of moral panic about phones. Methinks some women and men doth protest too much.