Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is Winnie the U.K. gets into a tight place:
• Study: Impact on global warming from permafrost thawing depends on how wet or dry soil conditions become.
• Meanwhile leaders of 31 scientific organizations sent a letter reminding Congress of the urgent need for climate action: There was nothing in the letter that lawmakers with at least half a brain shouldn’t already know. “The severity of climate change impacts is increasing and is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades,” it stated. “To reduce the risk of the most severe impacts of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions must be substantially reduced. In addition, adaptation is necessary to address unavoidable consequences for human health and safety, food security, water availability, and national security, among others.” That response you hear from Republicans in Congress: la-la-la-la-la.
• Testing the world’s most powerful rocket booster, including video:
In the future, two boosters exactly like this one will provide around 80 percent of the lift that NASA’s Space Launch System rocket—and the Orion habitat that will soon(ish) be packed with humans and astronaut ice cream—from the ground. For every second of their mayfly-short life, the boosters will eat through 5.5 tons of propellant. Once spent, they will dive from the main rocket’s sides back down to Earth. The rocket itself will continue to fire, carrying future astronauts to deep-space destinations.
• For the 69th consecutive week, Labor Dept. reports fewer than 300,000 initial applications for unemployment compensation were filed: That’s the longest such streak since 1973.
• Mother Jones provides a brief history of the private prison industry:
In the early 1980s, the Corrections Corporation of America pioneered the idea of running prisons for a profit. "You just sell it like you were selling cars, or real estate, or hamburgers," one of its founders told Inc. magazine. Today, corporate-run prisons hold eight percent of America's inmates.
• DNA testing cannot tell whether Elizabeth Warren or anyone else is Cherokee:
DNA testing cannot definitively prove whether a person is Cherokee. Or a member of any community, at least not reliably. To assume it can is to assume that there’s something inherently different in the genetic makeup of tribal members and that this thing is universal within that community. That’s not true.
• Grizzly kills mountain biker near Glacier National Park: Such killings are rare. Authorities say grizzly attacks on humans are rare, but not unheard of. Ten people have been killed by grizzlies in the park since it was founded in 1910. The last time a grizzly killed someone in northwest Montana was 2001. Six people have died in fatal grizzly attacks in the Montana and Wyoming areas of Yellowstone National Park since 2010. The cyclist, Brad Treat, a local resident, was a law enforcement officer for the U.S. Forest Service.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin rounds up news and the latest Trump/Brexit takes, including one that posits that culture counts more than class. More fuel for the dumpster fire: the latest in Trump frauds & cons includes the Trump Institute, Trump Network & Trump’s charitable giving.
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