Jun 30, 2023 | Salon.com
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr.) is well-known for being an anti-vaxxer. He is less well-known for being hostile to autistic people, but experts agree on one thing: The views that RFK Jr. espouses cause significant harm to real-life autistic individuals.
Autistic people have been victimized by RFK Jr. for decades....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 29, 2023 | Salon.com
The Canadian wildfires are continuing a development that is becoming all too common: Climate change is causing extreme abnormal weather, and millions of people are suffering as a result. As many people in Chicago and the Midwest likely noticed, air quality has plummeted in recent days, thanks to flaming forests to the north....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 27, 2023 | Salon.com
Neanderthals are popularly regarded as the large and stupid cousins of humans who lack our intellectual sophistication. After all, they went extinct — we didn’t (at least not yet.) Despite decades of archaeological research debunking the idea that our ancient relatives were the black sheep of our collective primate family, this disparaging anti-Neanderthal notion persists....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 26, 2023 | Salon.com
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Thursday that it is proposing a new slate of protections for 27 species that are most vulnerable to pesticide use. Among the lucky creatures to be covered by these regulations are an extremely rare two-inch toad from the Rocky Mountains, a beautiful wild chicken whose males sport orange or golden air sacs on their necks and a beetle that was controversially thrown under the bus by a notoriously anti-environmental former American president, Donald Trump....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 25, 2023 | Salon.com
Humans are often thought to be the only animals capable of language. But it’s difficult to prove a negative like this because we’ll never definitively know the subjective interior monologues of other animals, if they even exist. Nonetheless, much research has been poured into the study of animal intellect and whether creatures like orcas, pigeons and octopuses share a similar type of sentience, especially when it comes to our close primate cousins, chimpanzees....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 24, 2023 | Salon.com
British military intelligence revealed earlier this week that Russia has weaponized dolphins to assist in their government’s invasion of Ukraine. They appear to be trained to “counter enemy divers” who may target the country’s main military base in the Black Sea, diligently guarding the port of Sevastopol. These militarized sea mammals are hardly the only cetaceans to make international news in 2023: Millions have watched in awe as orcas have attacked and even sunk ships near Europe....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 22, 2023 | Salon.com
At first glance, Enceladus doesn’t look like much — just a scuffed up, icy white ball that spins around the planet Saturn. Yet a recent study in the journal Nature revealed quite significant evidence for life on the distant moon. Using archival data from a past NASA mission, scientists analyzed a watery plume shot into space from Enceladus’ southern hemisphere, revealing traces of phosphorus....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 21, 2023 | Salon.com
As humans extract more and more groundwater, we are literally changing the composition of the planet, so much so that we are shifting the tilt of the globe.
According to a recent study in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, countless amounts of groundwater has been extracted from beneath our feet....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 19, 2023 | Salon.com
Once upon a time, the mainstream Republican Party did not deny the reality of climate science and even saw the environment as something to be valued and protected, not exploited.
“They staged a coup… the fox was now guarding the hen house from that point forward. Energy and environmental policy, and the Republican Party, was controlled by polluters and they would not look back.”
Jun 17, 2023 | Salon.com
If the victims were not impoverished, disempowered Indians, the Bhopal disaster would probably be on the lips of every human being alive to this day.
People who were in utero during the Bhopal disaster “report decades later to have higher rates of cancer, higher rates of disability precluding employment, and lower levels of education.