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running commentary

The internet is filled with things. Here are some of them.

#extinction

2024

The Once-Great Salt Lake 2024 Oct 13
Utah's Great Salt Lake is going away. Like so many other salt lakes across the world, such as the Aral Sea, a combination of less precipitation, higher heat, and greater diversion of its sourcewaters to irrigation have cost the lake to the point that it's near to going away. And as salt lakes go away and leave dry lakebeds in their wake, those dry lakebeds turn into dust bowls with far-reaching harms.

It's ok, though, Utah is working on plans to save their lake. Water conservation is one obvious answer, you'd think. There's also plans to steal water from other watersheds, robbing Peter to pay Paul, basically, and some cockamamie idea to just pump in the Pacific Ocean. But Utah's favorite answer, of course, is to pray for rain:
the most common strategy echoed by the Utahans interviewed for this story: Pray for snow
As Asteroid hit the Earth today 2024 Jan 24
It was very small and burned up in the sky near Berlin. This isn't wholly remarkable, except for that teams of international astronomers (powered by NASA and JPL) spotted this asteroid a full 95 minutes prior to it hitting Earth, and were able to track it through multiple sources of observation. This may not seem like much, but it's evidence of a solid step forward in humanity's ability to predict other, larger, potentially life-impacting asteroids.

2023

Antarctic sea-ice at 'mind-blowing' low alarms experts 2023 Sep 17
The sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is well below any previous recorded winter level, satellite data shows, a worrying new benchmark for a region that once seemed resistant to global warming.
Ocean heat record broken, with grim implications for the planet 2023 Aug 5
Good news!
The oceans have hit their hottest ever recorded temperature as they soak up warmth from climate change, with dire implications for our planet's health.