Environment

by EVAGGELOS VALLIANATOS Arctic wolf. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. When I was in elementary school, I had a slingshot for hunting birds. To this day, I find it impossible to explain why I indulged in such unsavory behavior. However, since those youthful days, I never hunted again with either a slingshot or a gun. I abhor the killing of wild and domesticated animals. They have as much right as we do to exist without fearing hunters may kill them. I know humans have hunted and killed animals for food. Such open season lasted for millennia. Hunting of wildlife for food is probably still alive in some form or another in most countries of the world. Hunting for sport is another, even more vicious, kind of killing of wild animals. Affluent European hunters decimated Africa’s wildlif...

In his classic science fiction novel, ‘Foundation’, Isaac Asimov posited a future in which ‘psychohistorians’ could predict outcomes based on past history and the large-scale behaviour of human populations by combining psychology and the mathematics of probability. Using ‘psychohistory’, the protagonist Hari Seldon discovers that the 12,000-year-old Galactic Empire will collapse in 500 years. He warns the galactic rulers of this likely fate, while explaining that an alternative future in which human knowledge is preserved can be attained. For his trouble, he is exiled to the remote planet of Terminus. In today’s world, the prospects for human civilisation, never mind the existence of historians in the future, look bleak indeed. According to many leading climate scientists a...

by MANUEL GARCÍA, JR. Longview, Washington. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. The average global surface temperature rose by 1°C during the 110 years between 1910 and 2020. During the 50 years between 1910 and 1960, the average global temperature rose by 0.25°C, an average rate-of-increase of 0.005°C/year. Another 0.25°C of biosphere heating occurred during the 25 years between 1960 and 1985, a rate-of-rise of 0.010°C/year. During the 20 year span between 1985 and 2005 another 0.25°C of temperature was added, a rate-of-rise of 0.0125°C/year. During the 15 year span from 2005 to 2020 another 0.25°C of temperature rise occurred, with an average rate-of-rise of 0.0167°C/year. While the average temperature rise of 0.25°C was the same for each of the four intervals, the first (between 1910 ...