Month: January 2024

Arctic zombie viruses in Siberia could spark terrifying new pandemic, scientists warn

Threat of outbreak from microbes trapped in permafrost for millennia raised by increased Siberian shipping activity
Threat of outbreak from microbes trapped in permafrost for millennia raised by increased Siberian shipping activity

Humanity is facing a bizarre new pandemic threat, scientists have warned. Ancient viruses frozen in the Arctic permafrost could one day be released by Earth’s warming climate and unleash a major disease outbreak, they say.

LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/21/arctic-zombie-viruses-in-siberia-could-spark-terrifying-new-pandemic-scientists-warn

Climate change and the threat to civilization

The consequences of climate change are likely to be dire—and in some scenarios, catastrophic. Scholars need to start discussing the mechanisms whereby climate change could cause the actual collapse of civilizations. Image credit: Flickr/Spencer.
The consequences of climate change are likely to be dire—and in some scenarios, catastrophic. Scholars need to start discussing the mechanisms whereby climate change could cause the actual collapse of civilizations. Image credit: Flickr/Spencer.

In a speech about climate change from April 4th of this year, UN General Secretary António Guterres lambasted “the empty pledges that put us on track to an unlivable world” and warned that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster” (1). Although stark, Guterres’ statements were not novel. Guterres has made similar remarks on previous occasions, as have other public figures, including Sir David Attenborough, who warned in 2018 that inaction on climate change could lead to “the collapse of our civilizations” (2). In their article, “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021”—which now has more than 14,700 signatories from 158 countries—William J. Ripple and colleagues state that climate change could “cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable” (3).

READ ARTICLE: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2210525119?s=03

2023 smashes record for world’s hottest year by huge margin

Rapid reduction in fossil fuel burning urgently needed to preserve liveable conditions, say scientists, as climate damage deepens

Aftermath of a wildfire caused by a deadly heatwave near the city of Santa Juana, Chile, in February 2023. Photograph: Pablo Hidalgo/EPA
Aftermath of a wildfire caused by a deadly heatwave near the city of Santa Juana, Chile, in February 2023. Photograph: Pablo Hidalgo/EPA

2023 “smashed” the record for the hottest year by a huge margin, providing “dramatic testimony” of how much warmer and more dangerous today’s climate is from the cooler one in which human civilization developed.

Link to article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/09/2023-record-world-hottest-climate-fossil-fuel

the anti-tech collective journal

the anti-tech collective journal

Hello!

ATC is happy to hand out the first issue of the Anti-Tech Collective Journal. The journal features 4 essays but should be enough to keep you busy for a while! This project has been an experiment in focussing on subscriber-submitted contributions, differing significantly from ATC’s past publication projects. We look forward to hearing all of your feedback–both positive and negative–as this is primarily a community endeavor to foster discussion of and expose to anti-tech ideas.

Happy reading, and apologies for the general lack of communication,

The ATC team

ATCJ 1.1