2022-06-19. Republican Drive to Tilt Courts Against Climate Action Reaches a Crucial Moment. [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/climate/supreme-court-climate-epa.html] By Coral Davenport, The New york Times. Excerpt: ...The [Supreme Court] case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming. Coming up through the federal courts are more climate cases, some featuring novel legal arguments, each carefully selected for its potential to block the government’s ability to regulate industries and businesses that produce greenhouse gases.…
Rude Awakening
https://www.science.org/content/article/how-rains-pigs-and-waterbirds-fueled-shocking-disease-outbreak-australia By MEREDITH WADMAN , Science. Excerpt: The appearance of a “tropical” mosquito-borne illness in southeastern Australia has unsettled researchers. ...McCann was the fourth patient in as many weeks admitted to Albury with encephalitis. Like McCann, the three others had turned up feverish and confused. ...among the possible causes were mosquito-borne viruses, in particular two encephalitis-causing viruses endemic to Australia: Kunjin, a strain of West Nile virus, and Murray Valley encephalitis virus (MVEV), named for the river valley where McCann has swum, water skied, fished, and boated since he was a boy. ...As with other weather events, the record-breaking wetness of the 2021–22 season can’t be attributed with certainty to climate change. But as the globe warms, the atmosphere holds more water, enabling more intense rainfall and flooding; daily rainfall associated with th