#37: Progress.

I have no doubt that everybody already read about the little ice crack issue. So I don't think we really need to even link to it. There's plenty of reasons for it to grow 17 miles in two months. Right? So let's not read into it too much. Because, again, clearly, you've already read about it. And Mother Earth is tougher than that shit. 

Everybody take a deep breath goddammit, and let's focus on the other side of our #raceagainsttime. Because we're making progress, and as that ice crack will tell you, momentum is a motherfucker. We've got your back, Momma.


1. The next time someone talks about "how manufacturing jobs are never coming back and how are we going to make more jobs", forward them this newsletter, because wind and solar - ThinkProgress

"The wind sector added 88,000 new jobs to the U.S. economy in 2015 — more than three times the 28,000 temporary construction jobs that the Trump administration claims would be created by constructing the Keystone XL pipeline (though reports suggest Trump’s estimate is likely grossly inflated). Wind turbine technician is currently the fastest growing job in the United States, and both wind and solar jobs are currently growing at rates faster than the U.S. economy, according to a report released last month by the Environmental Defense Fund. In 2016, for the first time, the number of U.S. jobs in renewable energy surpassed the number of jobs in oil drilling."

+ MY NOTES: Please memorize these things and recite them at your Oscar parties.



2. All them energy jobs aren't vaporware, kid. Trump might want to kill renewables, but we're too far ahead to stop now. - Gizmodo

"Within the power sector, the progress is even more noteworthy: in 2016, greenhouse gas emissions from US power plants dropped 5.3% in just one year. Since 2005, the power sector has shrunk its carbon footprint by 24% – in other words, the US is 75% of the way to the Clean Power Plan’s “32% by 2030” headline target, with 14 additional years left to go.

The report found that only 30% of US electricity currently comes from coal—its lowest share in the 70 years since officials began keep track...The solar industry added a staggering 51,000 jobs just last year, amounting to two percent of all newly created jobs in 2016."

+ MY NOTES: The solar industry grew at 17 TIMES the pace of the rest of the economy. 



3. LA mayor wants to lower the city's temp - which is great, because it's not great, Bob - LA Times

"The built environment is mostly responsible for the problem. More than half of city surfaces are covered by dark pavements and dark roofs. Traditional asphalt absorbs up to 90% of the sun’s radiation. As the asphalt gets hotter, it warms the air around it, adding to the overall heat. Even after the sun goes down, that accumulated heat lingers  for hours and continues to transfer warmth to the night air."

+ MY NOTES: Let's do this!



4. The (arguably) most powerful man in America/the universe is a big problem because (among a WIDE VARIETY OF REASONS) he's fairly sure the apocalypse is coming - Huffington Post

"n Bannon’s view, we are in the midst of an existential war, and everything is a part of that conflict. Treaties must be torn up, enemies named, culture changed. Global conflagration, should it occur, would only prove the theory correct. For Bannon, the Fourth Turning has arrived. The Grey Champion, a messianic strongman figure, may have already emerged. The apocalypse is now.

“What we are witnessing,” Bannon told The Washington Post last month, “is the birth of a new political order.”

The modern world — the era of Western history that Strauss and Howe believe began in the 15th century — might come to an end. We might “spare modernity but mark the end of our nation.” Or we might face “the end of man,” in a global war leading to “omnicidal Armageddon.”

Now, a believer in these vague and unfounded predictions sits in the White House, at the right hand of the president."

+ MY NOTES: Imagine if Obama had a single cat like this in the White House. Trump's got a foxhole full of them.



5. Scientists may have found a way to stop cholera. Massive. - NYTimes

"It began in 1817, after the British East India Company sent thousands of workers deep into the remote Sundarbans, part of the Ganges River Delta, to log the jungles and plant rice. These brackish waters are the cradle of Vibrio cholerae, a bacterium that clings to human intestines and emits a toxin so virulent that the body will pour all of its fluids into the gut to flush it out.

Water loss turns victims ashen; their eyes sink into their sockets, and their blood turns black and congeals in their capillaries. Robbed of electrolytes, their hearts lose their beat. Victims die of shock and organ failure, sometimes in as little as six hours after the first abdominal rumblings.

Cholera probably had festered here for eons. Since that first escape, it has circled the world in seven pandemic cycles that have killed tens of millions...

...after 35 years of work, researchers in Bangladesh and elsewhere have developed an effective cholera vaccine. It has been accepted by the W.H.O. and stockpiled for epidemics like the one that struck Haiti in 2010. Soon, there may be enough to begin routine vaccination in countries where the disease has a permanent foothold."

+ MY NOTES: Holy shit, indeed.



SHIT I DIDN'T HAVE TIME FOR BUT YOU SHOULD STILL READ

Scientists create lab-on-a-chip for testing, well, basically anything, anywhere, that you can make out of your shitty work printer, and I mean Louis Pasteur could crap himself at the things we can do now

Scientists engineer life with alien genetic code so bye I guess

Here's a short but smart podcast episode on universal basic income

Proxima B might be "leaking oxygen" which is a "tiny problem" and things I "just didn't need this week"

Scientists think the sun is spinning too slowly and honestly that's as far as I got