News bits: Global warming update; Lying radical right liars; Misinformation update

EurekAlert! discusses some resent new research on human tolerance to heat:

Climate-driven extreme heat may make parts of 

Earth too hot for humans

If global temperatures increase by 1 degree Celsius (C) or more than current levels, each year billions of people will be exposed to heat and humidity so extreme they will be unable to naturally cool themselves, . . . . . 

Results from a new article published today (Oct. 9) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicated that warming of the planet beyond 1.5 C above preindustrial levels will be increasingly devastating for human health across the planet.

Humans can only withstand certain combinations of heat and humidity before their bodies begin to experience heat-related health problems, such as heat stroke or heart attack. As climate change pushes temperatures higher around the world, billions of people could be pushed beyond these limits.  

The ambient wet-bulb temperature limit for young, healthy people is about 31 C, which is equal to 87.8 F at 100% humidity, .... However, in addition to temperature and humidity, the specific threshold for any individual at a specific moment also depends on their exertion level and other environmental factors, including wind speed and solar radiation. In human history, temperatures and humidity that exceed human limits have been recorded only a limited number of times — and only for a few hours at a time — in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, according to the researchers.

Results of the study indicate that if global temperatures increase by 2 C above pre-industrial levels, the 2.2 billion residents of Pakistan and India’s Indus River Valley, the one billion people living in eastern China and the 800 million residents of sub-Saharan Africa will annually experience many hours of heat that surpass human tolerance.  

“Models like these are good at predicting trends, but they do not predict specific events like the 2021 heatwave in Oregon that killed more than 700 people or London reaching 40 C last summer,” said lead author Daniel Vecellio, a bioclimatologist who completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Penn State with Kenney.

Well, this maybe is one way to reduce human overpopulation. It might also be a way to get rid of some species diversity too!

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The mendacity of America's authoritarian radical right is now completely unrestrained. Facts contrary to false narratives that authoritarian radicals routinely spread are simply ignored, or when they can't be ignored, denied or distorted. There's no shame in the authoritarian radical right for lying and being caught doing it. PolitiFact discusses a recent example:

Jesse Watters** stated on September 28, 2023 in a segment of "The Five" on Fox News:

James Biden’s text message to Hunter Biden that says, “I can work with you(r) father alone,” shows that Joe Biden was “in business” with Hunter Biden.

• A single line of a text message from James Biden to Hunter Biden that read, "I can work with you(r) father alone," does not prove President Joe Biden was "in business" with his son. The line was intentionally taken out of context to smear Biden.

• An investigators’ summary of the text message exchange shows that James Biden’s message was about family matters such as alimony and tuition, not business.

** This is the scorecard that PolitiFact has for Jesse Waters

And it wasn't just Faux News and Waters who relied on this blatant lie. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), used it during the Sept. 28, 2023, Biden impeachment inquiry hearing. 

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From here on out, we can expect fake news and blatant lies to be constantly coming at us from the unregulated hellscape called social media. NBC News reports:

A doctored White House news release posted online falsely claimed that the Biden administration had authorized $8 billion in emergency aid to Israel on Saturday. The fact that it was faked didn't stop it from being posted across the internet and rising to the top of Google search results.

The faked document is one of the most far-reaching instances of misinformation to come out of the most recent violent conflict between Hamas and Israel. It fooled several online publications into writing full articles about the fake news, which are still surfacing prominently in online search results.

The faked document appears to be an edited version of President Joe Biden's July memo announcing $400 million in aid to Ukraine. .... The faked document first started appearing on social media accounts Saturday morning. Around noon Saturday, a collection of verified accounts on X, formerly Twitter, began disseminating it.

Geez, that didn't take long. 

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From the Germaine Is Not Alone In His Thinking files: The New Republic writes in an opinion piece:

I Never Thought I’d Live to See Democracy Die. 

But Now I Wonder.

Chaos and corruption are on the rise, the perfect breeding ground for authoritarians to claim control

The situation in Israel precipitated by the vicious Hamas attacks over the weekend is ghastly on its own terms. But it’s not just a potential nightmare for Israel and for the Palestinian people. It could have ramifications around the world, including here in the United States. In sum: It’s going to bring chaos—chaos and instability. And chaos and instability are enemies of democracy.

There are grim signs practically everywhere one looks. Next Sunday, the Polish elections will determine whether the right-wing Law and Justice Party wins an unprecedented third term. If it does—and the party leads in the polls, although somewhat narrowly—some observers think Poland becomes another Hungary (it’s already part of the way down that road). More instability. Today in Europe in general, The Guardian recently reported, 32 percent of voters are casting their votes for anti-establishment parties, up from 20 percent in the 2000s and 12 percent in the 1990s. The vast majority of that increased vote share is going to parties of the far right.

And everything is prelude, of course, to November 5, 2024 in the United States. If Trump wins that election (or worse, narrowly loses and steals it), we’ll have chaos and instability like the world hasn’t seen since the 1940s. We know what Trump will do here at home, because he’s been telling us. He’ll destroy the executive branch, he’ll take whatever steps he can to shut down opposition media and cripple the Democratic Party, ....

And the impact around the world of a second Trump administration? Obviously, the end of NATO will be one early result. More generally, the United States of America will become a global partner of Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and even North Korea. Think about that. Oh, and remember this too. Back in 2016, Trump was getting a briefing from a foreign policy adviser and asked—three times—why the United States can’t use nuclear weapons.

I’m not saying all this will emanate from what happens in Israel. I am saying this: This country, and the world, are in a clear danger zone. In such a context, everything that happens anywhere in the world, especially in such a closely watched flashpoint, has the potential to increase the chaos and instability that turns people toward, and invariably helps, authoritarian propagandists.

.... Democracy won’t completely disappear. And millions of us will fight like hell for it. But the mere fact that so many millions of people across the country and the planet are voting against it—using the chief privilege and tool of democracy, the vote, to destroy it—is staggering.

I grew up thinking democracy was the culmination of human social organization, and that our job was just to perfect it. Now we’re learning it may have been just a phase.

As the chaos, corruption and dictatorship warrior Steve Bannon succinctly said about his preferred anti-democracy tactic, “flood the zone with shit.” That means lie, deceive, slander, irrationally emotionally manipulate and crackpot reasoning people into a state of confusion, division, distraction, irrational distrust and a buttload of false, anti-democracy beliefs.

Germaine is not alone in his thinking.