As regular newsletter readers know, Israel has a huge positive impact on the world. This week’s news includes an Israeli Covid-19 treatment that also helps cancer patients; super-fast blood tests and DNA sequencing; plus good news for ALS patients, back pain sufferers and sick elderly Ukrainians. Israeli tech is providing better education opportunities for religious women, refugee Ukrainian children, language students, business managers, and those wishing to re-train in the hi-tech industry. The environment is benefiting from smart Israeli agriculture devices and new low-pollution manufacturing and construction processes. Israel’s economy gets better and better, with an unprecedented level of hi-tech exports, European and Asian partnerships, and continued investment in Israeli startups. Finally, as travel restrictions are removed, there is no better opportunity for overseas visitors to get a better view of this remarkable country.
The photo is of Israel’s Dead Sea resort. For many medical conditions, this is one of the best places in the world to get better.
My latest clamuscriptis published in Palaios, coauthored with my advisor Matthew Clapham! It’s the first chapter of my PhD thesis, and it’s titled “Identifying the Ticks of Bivalve Shell Clocks: Seasonal Growth in Relation to Temperature and Food Supply.” I thought I’d write a quick post describing why I tackled this project, what I did, what I found out, and what I think it means! Raw…
After literally years the Pig Trial will finally be coming to a close this Thursday March 9th 2017. Throughout the trial we have heard that Anita Krajnc, who has been criminally charged for giving water to a pig suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration in the summer of 2015, acted out of concern for the animals, as well as the environment, and the health of her fellow humans. Experts upon experts have testified on topics ranging from the environmental devastation of a non-vegan diet to the incredible emotional and cognitive intelligence of farmed animals such as pigs. This trial, which stemmed from an attempt to silence Toronto Pig Save, has brought international attention to the fight for animal rights, and since the first court date years ago, hundreds of groups have been created in countries all over the world and have joined The Save Movement. It is for these reasons that we can confidently say, though we do not yet know the legal outcomes of this trial, that we have won, for any advancement in the world’s compassion for nonhuman animals is a victory in our eyes.
Please join us outside of the Burlington courthouse one last time to show the world that you know that giving water to a suffering being, to show them compassion, is not a crime!!
Schedule: 8:00 am: Vigil at Fearmans slaughterhouse at the corner of Harvester Road and Appleby Line (821 Appleby Line, Burlington)
9:00-10:00 am: Vigil at the Burlington courthouse at 2051 Plains Rd E, Burlington, Ontario, L7R 5A5
10:00 am: Concluding arguments
A simultaneous slaughterhouse vigil will take place at Fearmans pig slaughterhouse, 10 minute drive from the courthouse.
If you are unable to attend, you can still follow! There will be live feed from both the courthouse and from the vigil on the Toronto Pig Savepage.
Friday funday in delicious green! This weekend is all about our Mother Earth who we’ve been treating terribly. Let’s grow out of our angsty, disrespectful teenage years and become the grateful and responsible adult children she deserves. Plant a tree, plant bee friendly flowers, participate in your local march, write a letter, make a call, educate yourself about where your money goes, teach your children, show that you care. Science matters. Facts matter. We’ve only got one Earth.
World Meteorological Organisation update (9 May 2022)
There is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years – and the likelihood is increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Compared to its celestial neighbours Venus and Mars, Earth is a pretty habitable place. So how did we get so lucky? A new study sheds light on the improbable evolutionary path that enabled Earth to sustain life.
“Earth could have easily ended up like present day Venus,” said Jellinek. “A key difference that can tip the balance, however, may be differing extents of impact erosion.”
With less impact erosion, Venus would cool episodically with catastrophic swings in the intensity of volcanic activity driving dramatic and billion-year-long swings in climate.
“We played out this impact erosion story forward in time and we were able to show that the effect of the conditions governing the initial composition of a planet can have profound consequences for its evolution. It’s a very special set of circumstances that make Earth.”
Everything, from workplaces to parks, could be within 15 minutes of walking for Parisians.
The city is working hard in making itself as independent from cars as possible, investing over 300 million euros in its projects. Car parking lots are replaced with parks while bicycle lanes become more common.
Such a move will drastically improve Paris’s carbon emissions which not only helps in the fight against climate change but also makes the city a better place to live.
Going zero waste needs to be a systematic change! Not just an individual’s choice. China, the European Union and some other countries and counties seem to get the idea but haven’t yet reached this ideal.
Boris Johnson expressed his support for a new coal mine in the North of England. The UK will host the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in November…
Woodhouse colliery would be the first new deep coalmine in the UK for three decades.
This decision is truly the a terrible one that must be reversed at once. Not only is it detrimental to the global climate but it also sends mixed messages to countries world-wide about tackling climate change, which is the last thing we need in this fight.
Yup. Mining Bitcoin sure is bad for the planet with an estimated 37 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
To put into perspective how much CO2 that is, we’d need to let grow 155 million mature trees for 10 years to suck out the carbon dioxide emissions caused by Bitcoin mining alone for only one year.
Half of all the crypto mining in the world is done in southwest China where power is provided through the burning of coal. The rest aren’t innocent either as most of the world still gets most of its energy from non-renewable sources that emit powerful greenhouse gases.
The fact that crypto mining is so energy intensive combined with the sources of this energy are what makes it a terrible choice for our planet. This could be prevented if renewables were used for meeting the energy demands.
President Joe Biden just signed “an executive order to supercharge our administration’s ambitious plan to confront the existential threat of climate change.”
He is pledging a million new jobs in the US automobile industry which will be generated by the federal government switching its entire fleet to electric vehicles.
This all is amazing but he then stated again that he will not ban fracking…
Switching to electric cars is great if your (or in this case the government’s) cars are old and need to be changed anyways. It’s also important that the energy they run on doesn’t come from non-renewable sources.
Is this move doing more harm than good by replacing functional vehicles with new electric cars? This executive order seems at best symbolic and at worst damaging.
It’s amazing that he tries to tackle climate change (unlike Trump who refused to acknowledge its existence), but if he truly wants to help he must do it in an effective way that goes beyond his public image.
2020 had good parts after all. This Zero Waste shop has opened in December last year and it’s the first of its kind in the city of Bucharest!
90% of the profit generated is either reinvested in the shop or donated, with a whopping 40% going to the Global Ecovillage Network which is a global organization dedicated to building a more sustainable reality for everyone everywhere.
We started a Team Trees campaign! If you want to join us in donating money for planting trees, you can do so at teamtrees.orgbut make sure to write “The Climate Crisis Movement” in the “Team” section.
Let’s see who plants the most trees in this campaign! Send us a screenshot of your donation and we will happily repost it!
‘Oregon — along with a group of five countries and seven states — used the Paris climate change conference to set lofty new emission goals.
The International Zero-Emission Vehicle Alliance announced the goal of having all new cars sold within its jurisdiction be emission-free by 2050.
That jurisdiction includes Oregon and seven other states, as well as Quebec, Canada; Germany; the Netherlands; Norway and the United Kingdom.
Dave Nordberg, with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, called it an aspirational goal, but not outside the realm of possibility.
“I’m encouraged,” Nordberg said. “We’ve been doing the analysis for several years now and not really making progress for meeting our greenhouse gas reduction targets.
