Points

A few noted in 2018:

Terrorists kill more people with guns than with all other methods put together (such as bombs, trucks, chemicals), at least in high-income countries.  The U.S. had the greatest proportion of firearm attacks.  (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gun-terrorism-is-the-deadliest-kind/?wt.mc=SA_App-Share)

The Trump administration has slashed funding and staff for national science institutions – the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, among many others.  (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-trump-administration-rsquo-s-war-on-science-agencies-threatens-the-nation-rsquo-s-health-and-safety/?wt.mc=SA_App-Share)

In the U.K., 200,000 homes have been empty for six months or more (many being “second homes” for the rich), though there is a housing and homelessness crisis and pressure to build more, including on green land.  (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/01/over-11000-homes-have-stood-empty-for-at-least-10-years-data-shows)

Refugees from African countries are a problem for Israel too, so that the government proposed to give them a choice between deportation and indefinite imprisonment.  (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/02/israel-to-tell-african-migrants-leave-or-face-indefinite-imprisonment)

Inuit people have become fearful of venturing out on thinning ice, on their traditional routes, with consequent starvation and raised suicide rates.  (A technological fix, with sensors placed in the ice, is helping.) (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/02/how-smart-ice-is-helping-to-save-lives-on-canada-thinning-sea-ice)

– By the way, these notes are just random pickings.  I’ve expressed myself a bit more systematically elsewhere:
http://universalworkshop.com/guysblog/2016/06/10/brexit-will-break-it/
http://universalworkshop.com/guysblog/2016/11/09/wrong-way-world/
http://www.universalworkshop.com/climate/index.htm

Half of the world’s coral reefs have died in the last 30 years, mainly because of ocean warming, also because of overfishing and pollution.  The reefs protect coasts from storms, and their biodiversity supports fisheries.  Hard-working scientists are finding ingenious ways to preserve coral, locally and regionally, but worldwide there is no way except reduction of greenhouse gas emission.  (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-are-taking-extreme-steps-to-help-corals-survive/?wt.mc=SA_App-Share)

And rising temperature is causing almost all green sea turtles on the Great Barrier Reef to be born female, which is likely to wipe out the species.  (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/08/great-barrier-reef-rising-temperatures-turning-green-sea-turtles-female)

“Dead zones” of the oceans have quadrupled in area since 1950.  In them, oxygen has been driven out of the water by warming, so that fish and other organisms cannot live.  (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/04/oceans-suffocating-dead-zones-oxygen-starved)

Supermarket chains have to declare the amount of plastic they put on the market annually under an EU directive. But the information is kept secret, and Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Waitrose, Asda and Lidl all refused the Guardian’s request, with most saying the information was “commercially sensitive.”  (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/17/nearly-1m-tonnes-every-year-supermarkets-shamed-for-plastic-packaging)

The EU has safety standards on additives in meats.  If Britain leaves, it may have to import meat instead from the US, which has lower standards.  (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/16/bacon-laced-banned-additive-us-trade-deal-food-risk-list)

2017 was the hottest year on record, except for two (1998 and 2016) that happened to be boosted by the El Niño weather pattern.  2018 will probably end up beating the record.  (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/18/2017-was-the-hottest-year-on-record-without-el-nino-boost)

Clouds are the chief reason for the uncertainty in global-warming predictions and the difference between computer modelings of it.  The uncertainty is lessening.  The cooling effect of some clouds is probably exceeded by the warming effect of others.  (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-changing-cloud-cover-accelerate-global-warming/?wt.mc=SA_App-Share)

A sixth category needs to be added to the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, because of the increasing intensity of tropical cyclones, caused by ocean warming.  This proposal was floated by scientists at a world climate-science conference held in New Zealand in February 2018. (Guardian 2018 Feb 23, section World, sub-section In Brief)

King Penguins have to breed on islands far enough north of Antarctica to be ice-free, but have to fish for their food farther south where nutrient-rich water, called the Arctic polar front, wells up.  As a 2018 study shows, climate warming is pushing the Arctic polar front southward.  Penguins have to swim increasingly long distances to feed, and to bring food back to their waiting chicks.  For this reason there is already greater mortality among the chicks.  As the change continues, the penguins will either have to find and compete for breeding places farther south – and there are very few islands scattered in the Arctic Ocean – or dwindle toward extinction. (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/26/antarcticas-king-penguins-could-disappear-by-the-end-of-the-century)

“Orphan” diseases are those affecting so few people that companies would lose profit by spending on research and drugs for them: such as Stargardt’s macular dystrophy, which is destroying the eyesight of only 40,000 people in the U.S.  So tax breaks are given to drug companies to work on diseases designated as “orphan.”  Successful drugs have to be licensed by the MRHA (Medical and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) in the US or by the EMA (European Medicines Agency).  When Britain leaves the EU, it will leave the EMA.  (Sideview, Spring 2018, p. 32-33)

The British Medical Association on June 21 called for a public vote on the terms of Britain’s leaving the European Union.  Various doctors and leaders of the BMA condemned Brexit as “bad for Britain’s health”; it was “a disastrous act of self-harm”; membership in the EU is better for the National Health Service, public health, access to pharmaceuticals, and international cooperation in research.  (Guardian 2018 Jun 22)

The oldest and thickest part of the Arctic Ocean’s ice has, for the first known time, cracked open.  (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/21/arctics-strongest-sea-ice-breaks-up-for-first-time-on-record)

Increased carbon dioxide may reduce zinc and iron levels in food.  (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/27/climate-change-will-make-hundreds-of-millions-more-people-nutrient-deficient)

As the Earth warms, enormously larger percentages of the staple crops will be lost to pests such as locusts.  (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/30/crop-losses-to-pests-will-soar-as-climate-warms-study-warns)

“Enemy of the people”: President Trump, applying this term to journalists if they criticize him, ignores its origin.  It is the title of a great play by Ibsen, in which a man is persecuted because he tells an inconvenient truth.