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Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Yes, Humans as a Species Are Headed for Disaster. I Have a Lot of Hope for What Will Come Next.
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. I've spent most of my life terrified of climate change and the apocalyptic future it seems destined to create. I was 2 years old when climate scientist James Hansen historically testified before Congress about the 'greenhouse effect,' and things haven't exactly gotten better from there. But humming just underneath my fear of inevitable disasters, rage about our leaders' decadeslong failure to act, and grief for the version of our planet that was disappearing before my eyes, there used to be a note of dark optimism. Maybe, if it gets bad enough, humans will go extinct, I thought, hopefully. I relished the idea of human extinction not only because it seemed obvious that the Earth would be better off without us, but because we so richly deserved it. And our species does seem determined to bring this worst-case scenario upon ourselves and our fellow creatures. We know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are destroying the ecosystems we live in and depend on, and all the rest besides. No place, no matter how seemingly human-free, is safe. (See: plastic bags in the Mariana Trench.) These facts do not collectively dissuade us: We're barreling toward certain catastrophe with ever-increasing speed. I quietly hoped that one day, not too far in the future, we would have to face the ultimate consequence. It seemed as if we must. Then I spent five years writing a book about catastrophes and cataclysms over the course of human history, from the climate change–fueled collapse of Old Kingdom Egypt to the Black Death. I cover archaeology as a science journalist, and so I ran straight toward my giddy anxiety about our species' future by calling up researchers who study events like societal collapses, plagues, and earlier periods of extreme and rapid climate change. Much to my surprise—and contrary to almost every bit of apocalyptic pop culture I'd ever consumed—many of these stories contained far more cooperation and reinvention than violence and destruction. The book, out now, is called Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures. You can see that by the time I made it to working out a subtitle, I'd had to reverse my thinking. I'm now convinced that the end of things as we know them won't actually mean the end of our species at all. Yes, the details of the apocalypses I've researched throughout history can be tragic, and sometimes horrifying. I'll never forget the seawall that was supposed to protect a village off the coast of Israel from rising seas as the glaciers of the most recent ice age melted—it's now been underwater for 7,000 years—or the way the poorest residents of the previously egalitarian city of Harappa, in Pakistan, died violent deaths as a megadrought dragged on. But, far more often, I found that apocalypses brought out people's creativity and determination. Over and over, I saw how our ancestors tore down the old boundaries, hierarchies, assumptions, and rules that made no sense in a changed and changing world, and how they built futures designed for who they wanted and needed to become to survive. My change of heart really began, though, when researching the story of a human extinction I thought I knew well—that of Neanderthals around 40,000 years ago. The early paleoanthropologists who discovered and first studied Neanderthal bones had assumed from the start that Neanderthals were inferior to Homo sapiens in myriad ways, including and especially intelligence, and that their distinct skeletal features disqualified them from belonging to the category of human. By the time I became an archaeology writer, many of the most egregious misconceptions about Neanderthals were well on their way to being revised and corrected, in Neanderthals' favor. The specific Neanderthal skeleton that had convinced scientists our ancient cousins walked hunched over, for example, was revealed to have belonged to not just any Neanderthal, but an elderly Neanderthal man with arthritis. Not only wasn't he a representative example of the physical abilities of his species—his long life was evidence that his community had taken care of him. The prejudice I found harder to shake, however, wasn't about Neanderthals. It was about us, Homo sapiens. Neanderthals may not have been incapable brutes, but that only made our presumed role in their extinction all the more violent and cruel: We outcompeted them, we killed them, we took over the Earth. They weren't doomed to die because of, well, stereotypically 'Neanderthal' qualities; they were smart, capable, and caring, and we were just indiscriminate killers. In a ghastly rehearsal of the horrible effects of anthropogenic climate change on other animals, our runaway success spelled their doom. But I was wrong: The story is, at the very least, more complicated than that. It turns out that almost every person alive today carries a small portion of Neanderthal DNA in their genome. Very literally, that means that Neanderthals are our ancestors. I started thinking about the kind of relationships between our communities that implied, and what it would have taken to have them come about. The time when Neanderthals disappeared was a period of intense climate instability, and they were already suffering from small group sizes, each trapped in pockets of habitable land during cold snaps and cut off from one another. The known existence of Neanderthal–Homo sapiens babies hints that we started living and working together in a time of hardship. Not everyone, not every group, but enough that our family trees became forever entwined. Is extinction really the right word for people who were desperate, or adventurous, enough to join new communities? Is domination really the right word for the other kinds of people who, in some instances, very likely took them in? One day, the climate change Neanderthals coped with by joining larger and more diverse human groups may well look tame compared with what's in store for us. And in the very long term, it's possible that Earth will become a place largely unlike that which any human has ever inhabited. But we won't get to a worst-case-scenario, 4-degrees-Celsius temperature jump overnight. We will experience climate change as we already are, and as Neanderthals once did—a slow creep, noticeable in the span of a decadeslong human life. Climate change is worth slowing in any way we possibly can: There will be people who will suffer, just as there were Neanderthals who didn't survive. The destruction to human life is already happening. But taking the very long, zoomed-out view, our species will adapt. I don't mean that Homo sapiens' DNA will survive by way of billionaires holed up in expensive bunkers. That adaptation, I learned, is far more likely to take place by forming new communities, new societies, and new kinds of families than it is by destroying each other in a zero-sum game. I've come to see that expecting—or hoping for—human extinction is actually taking the easy way out. Embracing a vision of the future that counts on the worst version of ourselves, doing the worst things we can imagine, lets us off the hook of doing the hard work of dreaming up and working toward the futures we want. Apocalypse forces us to radically change. But by facing the future with optimism instead of doom, we can transform ourselves into the kinds of people—the kinds of communities—who can survive. There is only one thing guaranteed to go extinct in the near future, whether by choice or by force, and that's the kind of society that taught me that humans are nothing but a destructive force in the first place. We live in a society beholden to the apocalyptic philosophy of endless resource extraction. If there's no tomorrow, you can take and take and take some more. The endless consumption will end, if only because there will be nothing left to consume. We have become convinced that giving that up is tantamount to extinction—or maybe it's just that we'd rather go extinct than have to give it up. But there are so many ways to be human and, as my Neanderthal ancestors taught me, so many ways to survive. I'm done fantasizing about human extinction. I'd rather spend my time here, at the beginning of the next apocalypse, imagining what it would mean to truly change.
Fast Company
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Fast Company
This iconic NASA office changed climate science forever. DOGE plans to kill it
In recent months, the drama around Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), President Trump's efforts to defund federal agencies, and the court cases challenging these moves have consumed the news. It's understandable that an announcement last month about a small office lease on the Upper West Side of Manhattan being canceled didn't get much attention. But that 43,000-square-foot space near Columbia University is home to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, or GISS, a NASA research outfit, think tank, and pioneer in climate change research that will see its lease terminated by the end of the month, per a NASA spokesperson. Currently, the institute has no permanent home to move into. It's likely you've seen the building, even if you're not aware of the monumental achievements that have taken place there. The exterior shot of the diner in Seinfeld features that exact building; for decades, scientists working inside have dealt with an occasional fan taking selfies outside. You're also probably more aware of the ideas hatched inside than you think. During the '60s, when the institute was founded, the terms black hole and quasar were coined inside its walls. In the late '80s, NASA scientist James Hansen became famous for his warnings about the dangers posed by climate change. He was then the head of GISS, and the climate modeling that he and his colleagues did there proved the case. 'This is the place we came finally to understand the threat to the Earth that global warming represented—the biggest threat in the history of our species,' climate advocate and author Bill McKibben told Fast Company. 'Nothing less than that. Their datasets were what allowed Hansen to go before Congress and speak with authority. He had the numbers and no one else did.' The end of GISS as we know it represents many things, including the damage the Trump administration's cost-cutting is doing to American scientific preeminence. Current head Gavin Schmidt said without funds for a new lease, he's racing to find a new home. (Though staffers haven't been told where they're moving to, as of yet, none have been terminated; a NASA spokesperson said, 'Over the next several months, employees will be placed on temporary remote work agreements while NASA seeks and evaluates options for a new space for the GISS team.') The move comes as the federal government has decried climate science, cut jobs at NASA, and proposed curtailing its mission. But even the existence of GISS showcases the power of a small group of curious, driven people who, if given resources and freedom, can accomplish incredible things. 'There is something that is quite distinct to working for NASA,' said Schmidt. 'Because, literally the whole universe is your subject.' A Small Office With Expansive Freedoms Located across a few floors in a former apartment building, GISS has never been a well-outfitted office. 'Until recently, it was a shithole,' said Schmidt, who noted that even though a long-overdue renovation was just finished, the air-conditioning system is still pretty much nonfunctional. But the office decor was never the attraction. It was the people you could bump into. Named after rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard, the institute was established in 1961, and initially called the Institute for Space Studies. It was led by Robert Jastrow, a celebrated researcher and public figure who would help millions of Americans learn about space via prolific writings and TV appearances. Locating in New York City helped attract the leading lights of academia from surrounding universities. Jastrow said the institute's goal was to 'arouse the interest and enlist the participation of this rich scientific community.' It became a hotbed for debate and ideas, hosting seminars and talks that are credited with birthing the concepts behind black holes, quasars, and plate tectonics. A sidewalk bookseller who specialized in sci-fi books positioned himself nearby to pick up business from the high concentration of astrophysicists. Jastrow could be a competitive and energetic boss—he would push researchers to pull all-nighters and even get them to run laps with him around Central Park —but academic freedom remained paramount. 'GISS, from the very beginning, was set up as a place with a light federal presence,' said Schmidt, who took the reins at the institute in 2014. 'There would be civil servants, but most of the people there would be postdocs early in their career. The idea was to have this kind of fervent, enthusiastic, free from programmatic responsibilities [space]. It wasn't an operational center. We had a lot of workshops.' In the '70s, Hansen and others helped work on projects that sent probes to other planets, including Venus and Jupiter. By the early '80s, NASA changed its focus to what was called mission Earth; the agency realized it knew more about the polar ice caps on Mars than it did the polar ice caps on Earth, and sought to rectify that. In analyzing Earth's climate, the previous GISS work on other-planetary atmospheres came in handy. Those frameworks could be applied to Earth's climate, and its change over time. In addition to that deep bench of multifaceted scientific talent, GISS also had the gear. At the time, it had one of the most powerful computers in operation. While it still used punch cards and spinning disks, it enabled researchers to create the most sophisticated models of climate change that had been done thus far. McKibben remembers spending time by this machine, as Hansen explained what was being computed. 'I would have been there in the late '80s, right before or after Hansen's testimony [before Congress],' he said. 'I went a bunch of times, and he showed me around the mainframes and interpreted for me what they were spitting out. It was classic big science of that era—spinning disks and all.' Why Its Climate Models Remain So Valuable Having that technology, steady support, and a revolving cast of experts made it a perfect place to perfect climate modeling. According to Schmidt, as the task of analyzing the climate became more and more complicated, there basically ceased to be university-based climate modeling to predict future temperature shifts a few decades ago. Everything globally is done at labs like GISS, and it offers a substantial benefit to research around the world. The institute's famous temperature series, which it has maintained since the 1980s and provides monthly surface temperature data back to 1880, is provided free. It's not even a line-item in the GISS budget; Schmidt says it comes out of general operating expenses. And GISS continues to be one of, if not the most, influential organizations in the field, Schmidt argues, because it's cutting edge without being rigid. It's a small, nimble group of roughly 130 researchers without a strict hierarchy, so new ideas and research can quickly be vetted, tested, and applied to the model to improve its accuracy. GISS continues to refine and improve its model. Earlier this year, NASA launched a long-delayed satellite project called PACE that will explore phytoplankton growth on the ocean surface, algal blooms and aerosols, and other factors impacting temperature shifts. The institute also remains at the forefront of using machine learning to create models that chart the possible course of climate change. What happens to this work when GISS leaves the only home it's ever known remains to be seen. 'Obviously, it is not our idea,' Schmidt said, adding that he doesn't think it'll save money or lead to increased efficiency. The lease termination notice does say the work will continue in a new home. 'Is this going to impact our mission? Yes, of course,' he said. Schmidt has made some progress in his search for a new location, but he's far from finished. He's essentially begging for desks in the neighborhood, looking to find a home at Columbia University, New York University, or the Natural History Museum. He doesn't have any budget, so he can't pay rent and he fears there's a limit to how generous people will be. 'If you want to bring in people who are going to have interesting ideas and who are going to pursue those ideas, they have to have freedom to do so,' he said. 'They can't be so drowned with proposal writing or doing operational stuff or having to do some bullshit thing for somebody else. If you want to keep the smart people and creative people, you have to give them autonomy.'
BBC News
07-05-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Councillor Marion Atkinson sees off leadership challenge in Sefton
Councillor sees off leadership challenge 9 minutes ago Share Save Claire Hamilton BBC Political Reporter, Merseyside Share Save Local Democracy Reporting Service Marion Atkinson saw off the leadership challenge just over a year after she was elected to the role A Merseyside councillor has seen off a leadership challenge just over a year after she was appointed to the role. Sefton Council leader Marion Atkinson was challenged by Sudell ward councillor James Hansen at a meeting on Tuesday night, with just five votes between the Labour politicians. Atkinson became Sefton's first female council leader when she was elected in January 2024, and has been the only female leader on Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. Meanwhile, Labour's Paula Basnett was elected as new Labour leader of Wirral Council and is set to become council leader at a meeting later this month. As leader of Sefton Council's largest party, Marion Atkinson is set to continue to lead the authority. She has overseen investment in Bootle's Salt and Tar venue as leader, and she was relatively new in the role when she led the council's response to the Southport stabbing attack in July 2024. Basnett, who represents the Rock Ferry ward, is set to take over from previous Wirral Council leader Paul Stuart after he stood down, and she will become leader at a full council meeting on 21 May. As the authority has no overall control, any leader needs the support of at least 34 councillors from a minimum of two political parties. Basnett will therefore be seeking support from opposition parties in the council going forward. Her election follows weeks of speculation about an internal battle within Wirral Labour over the top job. Wirral Council Paula Basnett is set to become the new leader of Wirral Council Basnett, who was elected two years ago, said she would look to restore trust in the council's finances, speed up regeneration and housing projects, and focus on building cleaner, safer neighbourhoods. Before she entered politics, she worked as an investment manager at Wirral Council before taking over the Wirral Chamber of Commerce following a funding crisis in 2013. She remains the organisation's chair. The Chamber of Commerce has historically had a close relationship with Wirral Council, with the organisation receiving funding for a business support service contract as well as receiving £1.4m of Town Deal money to support the purchase and refurbishment of Egerton House in Birkenhead. The building was sold in 2024 to the Chamber of Commerce for £1.9m. However, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said the Chamber publicly criticised the council last year about a high turnover in the local authority's regeneration department and alleged lack of engagement with the business sector. Though Basnett was copied into an email at the time, a representative for the Chamber said she had remained independent over the matter. 'Future direction concerns' Commenting on the election, leader of Wirral's Conservatives Jeff Green said: "Wirral's Conservative councillors are not interested in the internal politics of the Labour Party but we are worried for the future direction of the council. He said that over the last two years they had "worked constructively with all the parties to 'right size' the council, while tackling the issues inherited from previous Labour administrations". Green said that while they waited to hear from the new leader of the Labour Group, "I can assure her, and the taxpayers of the borough, that our position has not changed". "If it's good for the residents of Wirral and improves the performance of the council, we'll support it," he added. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Yale researchers use lupus antibody to possibly treat glioblastoma
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — Researchers at Yale Cancer Center have made a breakthrough finding that could lead to a therapies for glioblastoma and other aggressive cancers that are extremely difficult to treat. Dr. James Hansen, a Yale Cancer Center researcher, and his team discovered that using an antibody related to lupus they can breach the tumor and trigger an immune response to fight it. Perimenopause mystery: Some women don't realize what they're experiencing He says that this has not been possible in these tumors previously because they have a way to cloak themselves and remain invisible to the body's immune system. Now, these antibodies can get into the tumor and trigger an attack. 'These antibodies rush in and they say whoa wait a second this is not all good because they've got that ability to really fire up an immune system from lupus then that awakens the bodies own defenses to come in and fight off those tumors,' Hansen said. The findings have proven successful in the lab and his team plans to work as fast as they can to study this treatment further. 'What lupus antibodies can do that make them so magically mysterious is cross through a live cell membrane to fight things from the inside,' Hansen said. 'We're excited about this new way to engage the immune system to treat brain tumors,' Hansen said. 'Equally exciting is the discovery that this lupus antibody delivers genes to cells without needing any help from a virus, meaning it could be used to transform gene therapy strategies.' This was recently published in Scince Signaling. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CNN
10-02-2025
- Science
- CNN
Two new studies suggest Paris climate goal is dead. One scientist is going even further
Swaths of the US may be grappling with frigid weather, but for the planet as a whole, heat records are being obliterated — and it spells very bad news. Two new studies conclude it's a signal the planet is likely on track to breach the Paris climate agreement goal of restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The studies, both published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, are the latest evidence the world is failing to tackle the climate crisis, and they come just weeks after an even starker warning from renowned climate scientist James Hansen, who said the planet was on course to shoot past 2 degrees of global warming over the next two decades. While many scientists have said these levels of warming can be avoided with immediate, rapid emission cuts, the chances of this seem increasingly slim as international climate action falters. One of President Donald Trump's first actions was to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement and now others, including Argentina and Indonesia, are reportedly mulling withdrawal. The Paris agreement is hugely symbolic. In 2015, almost every country in the world agreed to keep global warming to well below 2 degrees above the period before humans began burning large amounts of fossil fuels, with the ambition of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. Above 1.5 degrees, scientists say increasingly extreme heat, drought, floods and fires will become hard for humans and ecosystems to adapt to. At 2 degrees, millions of more lives would be at risk and the danger rises significantly of triggering tipping points such as ice sheet melting and the death of the world's coral reefs. Since 2015, 1.5 has become synonymous with staving off more catastrophic climate change. Yet global temperatures have kept rising. Last year was the first calendar year to breach 1.5 degrees. As Paris goals refer to averages over around two decades, rather than single months or years, this means breaching the agreement can only be confidently confirmed in hindsight, once it's too late. So scientists behind these two new papers attempted to determine whether the world is already in its first long-term period of 1.5 degree warming. The news is not good. The study by Alex Cannon, a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, found there was a 60% to 80% chance the Paris threshold has already been crossed given 12 consecutive months have already been at least 1.5 degrees. If the world experiences 18 consecutive months at or above the 1.5 degree limit, it will be 'virtually certain' the Paris agreement has been breached, the report found. The other paper, led by Emanuele Bevacqua, a climate scientist at the Helmholtz Centre in Germany, used real-world climate data and climate modeling. Looking at historical warming trends, it found the first single year to breach a temperature threshold also fell within the first 20-year period in which average temperatures reached the same threshold. If these trends continue, it is almost certain 2024 will fall within the first 20-year period of 1.5-degree warming, the report concluded. Both papers stress that rapid and strong climate action can still reduce the likelihood of breaching the Paris agreement goals over the next years and decades. 'To all intents and purposes, breaching the 1.5 degree threshold is a given,' said Richard Allen, a climate science professor at the University of Reading, who was not involved in the studies. 'We need to double down efforts to avoid the even more dangerous 2-degree Celsius threshold by rapidly and massively cutting greenhouse gas emissions.' For others, however, that ship has already sailed. The climate scientist James Hansen, who was among the first to publicly warn the world about climate change, said last year the 1.5 goal was 'deader than a doornail.' This month he co-authored a paper which concluded global warming is accelerating faster than expected, due in large part to regulations to reduce shipping pollution. While this pollution is a human health hazard, it also has the effect of reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. As a result, he said, global heating is likely to exceed 2 degrees in the next few decades with devastating consequences, including ice sheet melt and sea level rise. The new papers are undoubtedly bad news, said Daniela Schmidt, professor of Earth sciences at the University of Bristol, but she warned against fixating on 1.5 degrees. It 'has the real risk of reducing actions, demotivating all of us,' if it's surpassed, she said. A lack of ambition will keep the world on its current warming trajectory of around 3 degrees, she added. 'Such warming has immense, and in parts irreversible, consequences for nature and people.'
