Link Blog
- North Atlantic Right Whale (fewer than 500 left)
- North Pacific Right Whale
- Atlantic Humpback Dolphin
- Sei Whale
- Blue Whale
- Western Gray Whale
- Vaquita (a species of porpoise)
- Baiji (Possibly extinct)
Orcas disrupt boat race near Spain in latest display of dangerous, puzzling behavior | AP News
The behavior defies easy explanation.
Yes, it’s the Orcas with their dangerous behavior that we should focus on.
In other news, these are some of the whales that may go EXTINCT due to the actions of human beings:
But, yes, let’s do go on about the Orcas.
Based on these findings, the authors warn that more than a fifth of ecosystems worldwide, including the Amazon rainforest, are at risk of a catastrophic breakdown within a human lifetime.
“It could happen very soon,” said Prof Simon Willcock of Rothamsted Research, who co-led the study. “We could realistically be the last generation to see the Amazon.”
Ecological tipping points could occur much sooner than expected, study finds | The Guardian
Fossil fuel developers typically pay far lower fees for using public lands than their wind and solar counterparts. For example, before production fees kicked in, as of 2021 oil and gas paid $1.50 to $2 per acre in rental fees each year — although the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act increased some of those rates. But for wind and solar, the BLM currently calculates rental fees according to market-rate land values, which can run up to tens of thousands of dollars per acre.
File this under better late than never?
The feds move to speed up development of wind and solar on public land | Grist
Well, this is COMPLETE BULLSHIT.
Catch-22: Scientific communication failures linked to faster-rising seas | The Hill
Scientists failed for decades to communicate the coming risks of rapid sea-level rise to policymakers and the public, a new study has found.
Feeling a lot of rage as a reaction to this. It’s the media who have utterly failed on this. Over and over. From what I’ve read scientists have bent over backwards trying to communicate. Corporate media turned away for decades and only recently have they begun to do their job.
How to check your iPad’s battery health | Tom’s Guide
Knowing how to check your iPad’s battery health might sound easy, but it’s actually strangely hard information to find, despite how important that data is. Batteries degrade over time, so it’s handy to know how your long-serving tablet’s faring, or how healthy an iPad is if you’re trying to buy or sell it second-hand.
Be sure to read to the end to get the Shortcut which makes it much easier. Apple really should add the Battery health status to the settings app.
That mass drownings have become so common – more than 25,000 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since 2014 – is shameful in itself. What is worse is that these disasters have come to be seen as almost normal. Planes and boats are scrambled to save a handful of people who took a risk for an adventure, while children and adults in imminent danger wait until catastrophe strikes.
Via Patrick Rhone
Some global perspective on income and climate:
The enormity of climate-change inequality has been laid bare by new research showing that the richest 1% of the world’s population produces 175 times as much CO2 per person as the bottom 10%.
The richest tenth of the world’s population produce half the CO2 emissions, while the poorest half generate just 10% of them.
You might read that and be inclined to ridicule that top 10%. But if you’re reading this chances are that you’re actually in the top 5%.
Richest 10% produce half the world’s CO2 emissions | The Independent
On Wednesday June 14, the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean reached an average temperature of 73 degrees Fahrenheit.
The average for this time of year, over the past three decades, is 71 degrees Fahrenheit. That two-degree difference reflects a gargantuan amount of extra energy stored in the ocean. The Atlantic has been riding a wave of extreme heat since last year.
“Scientists have been warning us about this for years. Everybody should be working on reducing fossil fuel emissions. That’s the critical thing: these fires are telling us something.”
My observation: People pretend to care on a superficial level but refuse to make any effort. If there isn’t a magic wand solution waved by someone in a government or corporate office, they don’t want to be bothered. No inconvenience will be tolerated or lifestyle change made.
Our beautiful planet will be a hellscape.
Exhausted crews battle Canadian wildfires as experts issue climate warning | The Guardian
Climate change is remapping where humans can exist on the planet. As optimum conditions shift away from the equator and toward the poles, more than 600 million people have already been stranded outside of a crucial environmental niche that scientists say best supports life.
In other words, 3 to 6 billion people, half of humanity, will be trapped outside of the liveable zone, facing extreme heat, starvation and death. This is to say nothing of the continued mass extinciton of other species.
Climate Crisis Has Stranded 600 Million Outside Most Livable Environment — ProPublica
Tens of millions of people in the US were under air quality alerts on Wednesday, as smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south, turning the sky a murky brown and saturating the air with harmful pollution. Hundreds of fires are burning in Canada, from the western provinces to Nova Scotia and Quebec in the east
Canadian wildfires smoke engulfs north-east – in pictures | The Guardian
Spring has only just begun to transition to summer in the Northern Hemisphere, but some of the season’s most odious and dangerous extreme weather is already running rampant.
Prolonged and punishing heat waves in Asia have sent temperatures soaring to 100 degrees as far north as Siberia and above 110 degrees in Thailand and Vietnam, breaking records.
Wildfires are raging in Canada, which has never seen so much land burn so early in the year. They come after a record-warm May.
Extreme heat, wildfires wreaking havoc with hottest months still ahead - The Washington Post
Using Shortcuts on the iPad to convert an image or pdf, resize, save, rename and extract alt text, all with three taps
One of my regular tasks is updating the front page of our regional library website, either adding upcoming events or removing finished events. Shortcuts automates the process of converting, renaming, extracting text for alt tags and then saving the file for upload to the website. Then I can just paste the name of the file and alt text into my html file. Shortcuts for the win!
iPad Workflow- Using Shortcuts to process images for the web | Beardy Guy Musings
Carl Sagan testified to Congress in 1985 about the danger of global warming and advocated for a transition away from fossil fuels. A beautiful new video animates wildlife automata using his warning of climate disasters: “Carl Sagan’s Message.”
“We’re doing something immensely stupid…The abundance of greenhouse gases is increasing. One degree of temperature change is enough to produce widespread suffering and famine worldwide.” Unfortunately in 2023, the planet has already surpassed one degree, and we now face the immense task of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius.
Source: Colossal
El Niño is the warm phase of the Pacific Ocean’s temperature cycle, and this year’s El Niño is poised to be a big one, sending shock waves into weather patterns around the world.
“A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory,” said Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.
I don’t often speculate about upcoming Apple announcements but I’m going to make an exception with this post. And it’s nothing complicated, just putting a few pieces together. Most of it is probably pretty obvious to folks who have been paying attention Apple news over recent months. Before I continue, for anyone not familiar with my blog, I’m a full-time, very satisfied iPad Pro user. I’m not someone who struggles with the iPad, not someone who longs for macOS on the iPad. For me, iPadOS sings and my interest is in seeing what Apple does to…
As the world warms, extremely hot days are becoming more frequent and intense, reaching unprecedented temperatures associated with excess mortality.
All selected locations may see 1–2 additional months with excess thermal deaths by 2100, which stresses the need for effective adaptation planning.
The length of a human life is around 80 years. You might get 100 if you’re lucky. The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. The vast difference between a human lifespan and the age of the universe can be difficult to grasp — even the words we use in attempting to describe it (like “vast”) are comically insufficient.
To help us visualize what a difference of eight orders of magnitude might look like, Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh have created a scale model of time in the Mojave Desert, from the Big Bang to the present day.
Scientists are “watching with bated breath” to see if ice will return to normal levels. The planetary consequences could be huge.
But sea ice plays a critical role in protecting Antarctica’s colossal ice shelves from deteriorating, and those could dramatically raise ocean levels if they break apart. If it totally melts, the Thwaites Glacier, aka the Doomsday Glacier, could add 10 feet to sea levels.
Antarctic Sea Ice Is at Record Lows. Is It an Alarming Shift? | WIRED
Yet another installment of an “Apple pundit ignores the facts to write a clickbait story about the limitations of iPadOS”. It’s a bummer that they just make stuff up to fit their preferred narrative. Filipe Espósito over at 9to5Mac in his work of fiction, Final Cut for iPad highlights iPadOS limitations:
This week, Apple finally released Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for the iPad – two highly anticipated apps for professionals. While this is a step in the right direction, these apps highlight the limitations of iPadOS.