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.…
Lost history of Antarctica revealed in octopus DNA
https://www.science.org/content/article/lost-history-antarctica-revealed-octopus-dna By ERIK STOKSTAD . Excerpt: Some 100,000 years ago, scientists believe Antarctica’s massive western ice sheet collapsed, temporarily opening waterways between a trio of seas surrounding the continent. New evidence for that scenario comes from a surprising source: octopus DNA. ...About 129,000 to 116,000 years ago, a warm spell called the last interglacial gave our planet a brief break in between several million years of ice ages. The average temperature of the planet was about 0.5°C warmer than it is today—and climate projections predict it will be again within decades. The global sea level was also 5 meters to 10 meters higher than current levels. Many scientists believe the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and consequent melting could have been a primary reason . ...The findings are consistent with growing geological evidence supporting the ice sheet collapse....