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Significance

Research blending climate models with physiological data has projected that large geographical areas may soon experience heat stress exceeding limits for human thermoregulation. Modeled thermoregulatory limits were derived from laboratory research using thermal-step protocols. Despite the growing popularity of this technique, its principal assumption—that core temperature inflection during stepped increases in heat or humidity demarcates thermoregulatory upper limits—has not been validated. By exposing participants for 9 h to conditions just above or below the core temperature inflection point, we found that thermal-step protocols effectively identify the conditions above which thermoregulation is impossible. Our findings provide critical support for heat stress projections incorporating empirical tolerance limits. We also provide data characterizing physiological strain during prolonged, uncompensable heat exposure.

Abstract

Recent projections suggest that large geographical areas will soon experience heat and humidity exceeding limits for human thermoregulation. The survivability limits modeled in that research were based on laboratory studies suggesting that humans cannot effectively thermoregulate in wet bulb temperatures (Twb) above 26 to 31 °C, values considerably lower than the widely publicized theoretical threshold of 35 °C. The newly proposed empirical limits were derived from the Twb corresponding to the core temperature inflection point in participants exposed to stepped increases in air temperature or relative humidity in a climate-controlled chamber. Despite the increasing use of these thermal-step protocols, their validity has not been established. We used a humidity-step protocol to estimate the Twb threshold for core temperature inflection in 12 volunteers. To determine whether this threshold truly demarcates the Twb above which thermoregulation is impossible, each participant was subsequently exposed to Twb above (~33.7 °C, Tabove) and below (~30.9 °C, Tbelow) their respective inflection point (~32.3 °C, Twb) for up to 9 h (in random order). Core temperature rose continuously in Tabove. It was projected that core temperatures associated with heat stroke (40.2 °C) would occur within 10 h. While Tbelow was also uncompensable, the core temperature rate of rise was considerably lower than in Tabove such that it would take >24 h to reach 40.2 °C. Our study supports thermal-step protocols as an effective technique for evaluating survivability limits for heat exposure and provides a direct assessment of the limits of human thermoregulation.

This is relevant document if you want a high IQ version to get your bearings of what is going on right now, rather than complete noise and low information media.

Behind most things elites do there is someone at a think-tank publishing things that usually get followed, but public usually doesn't read or know about the documents because our media is run by morons and propagandists rather than actual journalists.

Anyways in the past reading these kinds of things has given me lots of predictive insights.

below is executive summary but its worth reading the whole thing for the details

November 2024 Executive Summary The desire to reform the global trading system and put American industry on fairer ground vis-à-vis the rest of the world has been a consistent theme for President Trump for decades. We may be on the cusp of generational change in the international trade and financial systems. The root of the economic imbalances lies in persistent dollar overvaluation that prevents the balancing of international trade, and this overvaluation is driven by inelastic demand for reserve assets. As global GDP grows, it becomes increasingly burdensome for the United States to finance the provision of reserve assets and the defense umbrella, as the manufacturing and tradeable sectors bear the brunt of the costs. In this essay I attempt to catalogue some of the available tools for reshaping these systems, the tradeoffs that accompany the use of those tools, and policy options for minimizing side effects. This is not policy advocacy, but an attempt to understand the financial market consequences of potential significant changes in trade or financial policy. Tariffs provide revenue, and if offset by currency adjustments, present minimal inflationary or otherwise adverse side effects, consistent with the experience in 2018-2019. While currency offset can inhibit adjustments to trade flows, it suggests that tariffs are ultimately financed by the tariffed nation, whose real purchasing power and wealth decline, and that the revenue raised improves burden sharing for reserve asset provision. Tariffs will likely be implemented in a manner deeply intertwined with national security concerns, and I discuss a variety of possible implementation schemes. I also discuss optimal tariff rates in the context of the rest of the U.S. taxation system. Currency policy aimed at correcting the undervaluation of other nations’ currencies brings an entirely different set of tradeoffs and potential implications. Historically, the United States has pursued multilateral approaches to currency adjustments. While many analysts believe there are no tools available to unilaterally address currency misvaluation, that is not true. I describe some potential avenues for both multilateral and unilateral currency adjustment strategies, as well as means of mitigating unwanted side effects. Finally, I discuss a variety of financial market consequences of these policy tools, and possible sequencing.

Bend down on a coastal beach or a riverbank and you will inevitably spot them. A quick look into a gutter and there they are. Drag a plankton net into a lake, river, or ocean, and you will easily collect them. Plastic debris is everywhere. It knows no borders, transferring the thousands of chemicals that compose it—or attach themselves to its surface—from one ecosystem to another, along with the microorganisms (including pathogens) that colonize it.

By dedicating this special issue of Environmental Science and Pollution Research (ESPR) to the source, fate, and effects of plastic litters in the European land-sea continuum, we aimed to bring together scientists from different fields of expertise to improve our understanding of plastic pollution across ecosystem boundaries. Most of them took part in the Mission Tara Microplastics conducted over 7 months to investigate plastic pollution across nine major European rivers. They discovered that the median concentration of large microplastics (LMPs, 500 µm–5 mm)—the most studied size fraction to date—was lower in European rivers than in other global regions, while small microplastics (SMPs, 25–500 µm) were found to dominate in mass, with SMP/LMP ratios reaching up to 1000:1 in some rivers. Results were also coming from other field campaigns, including a comparison between the two most plastic-polluted zones of the world ocean (Tara Mediterranean and Tara Pacific). The use of a 3D Lagrangian simulation of the dispersion of riverine microplastics into the Mediterranean Sea indicated that 65% of river inputs consist of floating microplastics drifting in the surface layer and 35% of dense MPs sinking to deeper layers, with further dispersion at sea driven by mesoscale and sub-mesoscale structures.

A citizen science initiative with schoolchildren Plastique à la loupe was also introduced, which compared for the first time the distribution of different litter sizes (macrolitter and meso- and microplastics) over a large set of riverbanks and coastal beaches sampled in France. Special emphasis was also given to the mismanaged litters in French urban areas, with articles depicting their composition, spatiotemporal variations, sources, and transport dynamics in cities of all sizes. An example of the physiological impact of microplastics was given by exposing beached plastic pellets to mussels, key intertidal bioengineers, and filter-feeders that are particularly susceptible to both plastic ingestion and release of potentially toxic mixtures of intrinsic and extrinsic chemical compounds. Finally, a pan-European study of the bacterial plastisphere revealed for the first time the presence of a virulent human pathogenic bacterium (Shewanella putrefaciens) detected on microplastics in a river. A clear distinction between plastisphere metabolomes and diversity from freshwater and marine water was found in most of the river-to-sea continuum, helping to mitigate the risk of pathogens transfer between freshwater and marine systems. With the United Nations global plastic treaty on the horizon, this special issue emphasizes the need to unite interdisciplinary expertise to deepen our understanding of plastic pollution and to conduct reliable ecological risk assessments across ecosystem boundaries.

 Six months ago staunch allies like Canada and Australia would have loved to help, although they couldn’t replace China overnight. But the same tariffs that led to China’s new licenses for critical minerals are hitting the former allies Trump is treating like enemies.

Executive Summary: https://www.stateofthebirds.org/2025/executive-summary/

5 Years After the 3 Billion Birds Lost Research, America Is Still Losing Birds

A 2019 study published in the journal Science sounded the alarm—showing a net loss of 3 billion birds in North America in the past 50 years. The 2025 State of the Birds report shows those losses are continuing, with declines among several bird trend indicators. Notably duck populations—a bright spot in past State of the Birds reports, with strong increases since 1970—have trended downward in recent years.

Population Trend Graphic

Can we hope for new technology to deliver a solution for climate change? " Actually, petroleum increased the demand for whale oil: top-of-the-range lubricants for gearboxes and machine tools used to contain whale oil."

Abstract

Inland waters are an important resource, a highly diverse habitat, and a key component of global biogeochemical cycles. Oxygen plays a major role in inland-water ecosystem functioning, but long-term changes in its cycling remain unknown. Here, we quantify global inland-water oxygen production, consumption, and exchange with the atmosphere during 1900–2010 using a spatially explicit, mass-balanced, mechanistic model that takes into account changes in climate, hydrology, human activities, and the coupled biogeochemical (oxygen-nutrient-organic matter) dynamics. The model results show that global inland-water oxygen turnover increased during 1900–2010: production from 0.16 to 0.94 Pg year−1 and consumption from 0.44 to 1.47 Pg year−1. Inland waters overall remained heterotrophic and a sink of atmospheric oxygen. Direct human perturbations (changes in hydrology and nutrient supply) were more important in increasing oxygen turnover than indirect effects via warming.

so its come to this then..

We find that aerosol cooling, and thus climate sensitivity, are understated in the best estimate of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As a result, shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is likely within the next 20-30 years.

In an internal FEMA memorandum obtained and first reported by Grist, the Trump administration announced its plans to dismantle that program — the biggest climate adaptation initiative the federal government has ever funded — even as disasters incur hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damages across the United States.

“BRIC was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” a FEMA spokesperson told Grist. “It was more concerned with climate change than helping Americans effected by natural disasters.”

BRIC generally shoulders 75 percent of the cost of a given resilience project, and up to 90 percent of the cost of projects in disadvantaged communities. The program’s emphasis on equity is what may have marked it for demolition — the Trump administration has been systematically dismantling Biden-era efforts to infuse equity into governmental programs and direct more climate spending toward underrepresented groups.

The decision comes as at least seven people were killed this week as tornadoes and catastrophic flooding descended on the central United States in what meteorologists called a once in a generation event.

The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies.

The argument set out by Thallinger in a LinkedIn post begins with the increasingly severe damage being caused by the climate crisis: “Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time.”

“We are fast approaching temperature levels – 1.5C, 2C, 3C – where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks,” he said. “The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.”

“This applies not only to housing, but to infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and industry,” he said. “The economic value of entire regions – coastal, arid, wildfire-prone – will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate-driven market failure looks like.”

https://archive.ph/gc27x

Abstract

Bitcoin mines—massive computing clusters generating cryptocurrency tokens—consume vast amounts of electricity. The amount of fine particle (PM2.5) air pollution created because of their electricity consumption and its effect on environmental health is pending. In this study, we located the 34 largest mines in the United States in 2022, identified the electricity-generating plants that responded to them, and pinpointed communities most harmed by Bitcoin mine-attributable air pollution. From mid-2022 to mid-2023, the 34 mines consumed 32.3 terawatt-hours of electricity—33% more than Los Angeles—85% of which came from fossil fuels. We estimated that 1.9 million Americans were exposed to ≥0.1 μg/m3 of additional PM2.5 pollution from Bitcoin mines, often hundreds of miles away from the communities they affected. Americans living in four regions—including New York City and near Houston—were exposed to the highest Bitcoin mine-attributable PM2.5 concentrations (≥0.5 μg/m3) with the greatest health risks.

Abstract

Homo sapiens has evolved to reproduce exponentially, expand geographically, and consume all available resources. For most of humanity’s evolutionary history, such expansionist tendencies have been countered by negative feedback. However, the scientific revolution and the use of fossil fuels reduced many forms of negative feedback, enabling us to realize our full potential for exponential growth. This natural capacity is being reinforced by growth-oriented neoliberal economics—nurture complements nature. Problem: the human enterprise is a ‘dissipative structure’ and sub-system of the ecosphere—it can grow and maintain itself only by consuming and dissipating available energy and resources extracted from its host system, the ecosphere, and discharging waste back into its host. The population increase from one to eight billion, and >100-fold expansion of real GWP in just two centuries on a finite planet, has thus propelled modern techno-industrial society into a state of advanced overshoot. We are consuming and polluting the biophysical basis of our own existence. Climate change is the best-known symptom of overshoot, but mainstream ‘solutions’ will actually accelerate climate disruption and worsen overshoot. Humanity is exhibiting the characteristic dynamics of a one-off population boom–bust cycle. The global economy will inevitably contract and humanity will suffer a major population ‘correction’ in this century.

Keywords: overshoot; exceptionalism; human nature; cognitive obsolescence; exponential growth; ‘K’ strategist; over population; over consumption; climate change; energy transition; dissipative structure; civilizational collapse; population correction